A working manual for the platform that walks non-fiction business book authors from "I want to write a book" to "I am someone who wrote a book — and it's working for me." Use it as your cockpit guide. Or read it as the most honest sales page we'll ever write.
This is your playbook. Every feature, every phase, every shortcut you might miss. Bookmark it. The platform does a lot — this is the map.
This is what you'd be getting. We didn't write a sales page; we wrote the real thing. If the depth here is what you've been missing, you'll know by the end.
Most writing tools focus on the writing. Book Preflight covers the whole flight — strategy before you write, structure as you write, launch and leverage long after. The journey has four phases of mind, before it has twelve phases of work.
Ideas everywhere. Half-drafts. Three notebooks. The voice in your head that says "I should write a book" but no clear path. This is where everyone starts.
One reader. One promise. One framework. Decisions that cut the noise in half and make the next 12 months possible. The hardest, most valuable phase.
The writing. The editing. The design. The grind dressed up as craft. With the constraints in place, this is mostly execution — which is the easy part, comparatively.
Published, yes — but more than that. Launched, leveraged, used. Speaking gigs. Lead magnets. Repurposed posts. The book working for you, not gathering dust.
Each phase has a checklist of items, a time estimate, and Debbie's video walking you through it. Phases group into three pillars — pick your starting point, see the whole flight plan, and never lose track of what's next.
Before a single word, before a chapter outline — decide who this book is for, what it promises them, and how it earns its place in your business. Most book failures are baked in here, and most authors skip it.
Define the one reader, the one promise, and the one role this book plays in your business ecosystem. If you can't name your reader's Tuesday morning, you're not ready to write.
What you'll have at the endOne named reader. One transformation promise. One ownable framework. A working title and a credible publishing timeline.
Pick the structure model that fits your idea — framework, transformation, contrarian, playbook, case-study. Outline every chapter so the manuscript becomes execution, not invention.
What you'll have at the endA chapter-by-chapter outline detailed enough to hand to a ghostwriter. Existing content mapped to chapters so you know what's already half-done.
Drafting, editing, designing, producing. The longest stretch — and where most amateur projects unravel because nobody told them which order to do things in, or that some phases run in parallel.
A working writing routine. The SCQA structure inside chapters. AI used as a thinking partner without losing your voice. The "shitty first draft" finished, not perfect.
What you'll have at the endA complete first manuscript. Written your way, with a system that survived the boring middle.
Don't wait until launch to have an audience. The build-in-public phase runs alongside everything else, turning your writing journey into content that grows your readership before the book exists.
What you'll have at the endA documentation habit. A growing audience. The first signups for your Book Lovers Team — people waiting to read it.
Developmental edit, copy edit, proof. Knowing the difference. Briefing each editor properly. Resisting the urge to skip the parts that hurt to read.
What you'll have at the endA manuscript that earns the word "edited." A book your future self won't be embarrassed by.
Cover, interior layout, ebook formatting, print-ready files. The phase where amateur books reveal themselves at a glance. Deliberately built to overlap with editing so you don't lose months.
What you'll have at the endA cover that earns the click. Interior design that matches a traditional publisher's standard. Print-ready and ebook files in hand.
Publishing setup, metadata, platform, launch, and the long post-launch tail where most of the ROI actually happens. The phase most authors don't even know exists.
ISBN, copyright, KDP and IngramSpark accounts, distribution decisions. The boring-but-permanent stuff. Get this wrong and you'll be unwinding mistakes for years.
BISAC categories, keywords, A+ content, book description. The invisible 80% of why books get found — or don't.
Your author website. LinkedIn alignment. The endorsements you actually go and ask for. Speaker reel, lead magnet, bio. The plumbing that lets the book do business work.
The 30-day run-up. Activating your Book Lovers Team. Coordinating launch-team posts. Pre-orders, podcast pitches, the email sequence. Where the build-in-public seed crop gets harvested.
Launch week itself. Coordination, not heroics. Knowing what to ignore, what to amplify, and how not to burn out on day three.
The phase that separates "I wrote a book" from "I have a book working for me." Repurposing chapters into talks, posts, courses, lead magnets. Speaking gigs. The next book idea, already being seeded.
What you'll have at the endAn asset producing leads, authority, and conversations on autopilot. Identity confirmed: you are now someone who wrote a book — and it's working for you.
A working pilot doesn't memorise the manual — they know which dial does what, and where to look when something matters. Here's what every dial does inside Book Preflight.
Every step has a description detailed enough to do it yourself, a who-label so you know if it's yours or your editor's, an estimated time, and (where helpful) Debbie on video.
Set your target publish date and the timeline calculates backwards, showing which phases overlap and where the squeeze points are. Toggle on the dashboard.
One purchase covers every book you'll ever write. The "My Books" selector lets you switch between projects without losing context. Each book has its own checklist, notes, and BLT.
A pre-launch audience builder, included for everyone. Public signup page at bookpreflight.com/[your-slug]/join. Tag members as Beta Reader, Endorser, Launch Team, or Social Sharer.
Debbie introduces every phase on video — what it is, the common mistakes, what "done" actually looks like. Plus celebration clips when you complete a phase. Plus 30-second nudges if you stall.
Announcement Kit on day one. Countdown graphic when you set your launch date. Cover Reveal generator. Milestone badges with one-click share. Embeddable progress widget for your site.
Bring in a Coach (sees the internal items, can hold you accountable) or an Assistant (sees only the doable tasks, can execute). Each gets their own free account, scoped to your book.
An optional public URL — bookpreflight.com/your-name — showing your book, current phase, and countdown. New BLT members can sign up here. Toggle visibility per book in settings.
Book Preflight is the same platform for every user — but the right entry point depends on where you actually are. Pick the closest match. The platform handles the rest.
Book Preflight was built first as a delivery tool for Debbie's full-service publishing clients. Which means the team architecture is real — not a feature added later. Bring in support without losing control of your project.
Invited by you (or by Debbie, for her full-service clients). Sees the strategic items and the internal quality checks. Can check items off and add notes alongside you. Gets a "My Clients" dashboard.
Sees only the tasks you'd hand off — formatting, uploads, scheduling posts. Can't see the strategic or internal items. Perfect for a VA who shouldn't need to know your business model to help you publish.
A playbook is also a statement of values. Here's what we believe, baked into every checklist item and every interface decision.
I've been in the publishing trenches since 2003. Through my first publishing company I commissioned, edited and published over 80 business books in the coaching, self-improvement and small business development space. I exited that company in 2011 and went on to help dozens more business owners write the books they actually needed — books that worked as assets, not vanity projects.
Through Intellectual Perspective Press, my current cohort publishing company, my coaching clients have been published with Bloomsbury, Pearson, Taylor & Francis, Business Expert Press and BIS. Others have chosen hybrid or self-publishing routes — all valid, all supported. I've also ghostwritten at least ten books for venture capitalists, CFOs, MBEs, professors, mentors and coaches who had the ideas but not the time to put them on the page.
My own book, Stop The Credibility Crisis, won a Stevie Award for Women in Business. But the award didn't show what produced it: a system. A checklist. A structured process where every decision happened in the right order and nothing fell through the cracks. That system lived for years in Trello, Excel, Google Sheets and my team's heads — slightly different every time.
Book Preflight is the proper version. The same method behind an award-winning book, behind hundreds of clients' books, packaged as software for any business book author who wants the discipline without the price tag of a full publishing service.
I have a 1st Class Degree in Electronics Engineering, which means I look for sustainable solutions and build systems that survive contact with reality. I live at the Disaster Farm in Southern Spain (that's not a typo) with cats, dogs, goats, horses and my Italian partner Giorgio. I can swear in three languages.
The playbook does most of the talking for us. If you're already a member, your dashboard is one click away. If you're not — and what you've read here matches what you've been missing — head to the site and we'll take it from there.