why and what should companies publish books about [и как не испортить их в погоне за KPI по рекламе и продажам]

I will tell you what a “corporate book” is and how it differs from “hardcover success stories.” And also why it is easier to publish such a book than many companies think, and more useful than a mountain of advertising posts and presentations.

Companies usually gravitate towards small forms of corporate content: posts on social networks, push notifications in applications, reels and, at worst, advertising. Against this background, even texts for a corporate blog seem like fairly epic works – not to mention books. In addition, there are several prejudices regarding corporate books:

• nobody does that;

• nobody reads them;

• It's all very expensive.

I'll try to dispel them. But I'll start with the main thing:

Corporate books != Business books about successful success

The first association with corporate books is the “business literature” shelf. On it you can find books about the history of companies (like Adidas, Netflix), the authors of which try to unravel the “phenomenon of their popularity” based on interviews with employees and documentary information. At the same time, the authors themselves often have no relation to the company. For example, one of the popular books about the principles of Google's work (The Google Way) was written by business consultant Bernard Girard – his work was highly appreciated precisely for its “independent assessment of the company's management.”

Another popular representative of the genre is autobiographies of business leaders or their professional advice. Usually they are also not written independently, but in collaboration with people who have made a career on this kind of help. For the companies themselves, such books are an incredibly expensive pleasure. Any head of a small regional business, looking at the conventional biography of Steve Jobs, quite rightly estimates his chances of success in creating something similar as approximately zero. In order for an opus about you to be sold in hard cover, you need, for starters:

• collect interesting material about yourself or the company;

• find a team of writers, interviewers, editors, proofreaders, agents who will turn the sketches into a real book;

• convince some decent publishing house that the book should be published. And/or do it with your own money;

• invest and reinvest in promoting the book.

And most importantly: you or the company must be well-known, have achieved outstanding success in business. Or, at worst, the managers must be media personalities, owners of that very personal brand, well-known not only in narrow circles.

Bad news: The conventional (albeit successful in its field) LLC IT-Romashka is as far from these achievements as the moon is from it. Good news: This is absolutely unimportant, because (attention!) all this business literature is a very special case of a corporate book. And in a broad sense, a corporate book is a voluminous text/graphic material, the content of which: (1) is directly related to the company's business; (2) solves a specific problem for the company – in addition to increasing media coverage.

The second point is not so good for traditional business literature, because books for the “mass market” do not pursue this goal in principle. In the format of “hardcover success stories” it is simply impossible, for example, to tell about the features of products or services, give detailed recommendations for employment in the company, describe in detail the principles of teamwork – because this is completely uninteresting to those who do not buy anything from you and do not want to work for you.

But this does not mean that such information will not be useful to anyone at all. It will be very useful – it's just that the principles of its collection, presentation and distribution are strikingly different from the traditional format of business literature.

What a corporate book can be

Its main difference from fiction and business literature of a broad profile is that it solves a specific problem of the company. What problems can these be:

1. A story about working with technology and designing products. This can be a collection of best practices and recommendations. Some companies also include detailed explanations there – what the high-level architecture of the product looks like, what technology stack they use, why a particular programming language, service, tool or platform was chosen. And many other questions, from the philosophy of development to examples of solving specific problems. Such a book does not necessarily have to look like a printed brochure or a pdf file: it can be, for example, a git repository. It is easy to update and supplement, convenient to structure, plus it is a familiar and understandable format for many in IT. Approach usesfor example, Artsy (the largest marketplace for art objects). By the way, the company dedicated one section of the repository timeline their activities directly related to development.

2. Introducing new employees to the corporate culture. A book of this type usually contains answers to specific practical questions that every “newbie” faces. For example, what the process of hiring employees and career growth in the company looks like, what details of the work process can be discussed on social networks and what cannot, how to arrange vacation and time off, and much more. Such guides can become a desktop guide for HR and relieve some of the burden on them and other employees during the onboarding process for newcomers. And it is convenient for old-timers to turn to such a book if they encounter some unusual question for the first time. Sometimes companies combine this and the previous task (about management principles and approaches). A classic example is handbook for new Valve employees. It contains both high-level information about the company and tips for newcomers (including office space features). As well as rules that team leaders and their subordinates should follow – for example, the features of a “flat” organizational structure, peer review principles, and the role of employees in finding and hiring new colleagues.

3. Specific recommendations in a selected area (for example, management). To solve such a problem, small brochures are prepared. This is a convenient format that helps to highlight a separate topic or task – if they acquire special importance for the company. At the same time, the mini-format can include strategic issues, and recommendations for developers, and individual practical advice – in the context of the topic to which the book is devoted. Recently, for example, companies have been publishing separate books on organizing remote work. Moreover, they can be addressed both to employees and to a wide range of readers. Trello and did an illustrated brochure about the myths and possibilities of remote work, as well as about the services that help remote workers organize an effective work environment.

A couple more features of corporate books

They do not necessarily have to be released on a physical medium. Most corporate books are published in pdf format, some – as repositories or even a compilation of blog posts. Or in the format of a separate site with the corresponding subsections. The reason is simple: the task of such a book is to be as accessible as possible to the reader, be it a potential client or a company employee.

As a result, most often such books are distributed free of charge. Of course, there are exceptions, but usually companies (or specific authors) do not pursue the goal of getting rich by selling the publication.

Corporate books don’t have to be big. The approach is the same: a book shouldn’t meet some standard, it should do its job. If the task is to explain to employees how to set up a remote workspace, what services to use when working from home, and what to avoid, there’s no need to inflate the content to volumes comparable to a printed “brick.” The main thing for such a book is not to be boughtbut so that they read it and use it in their work.

And what corporate book is better not to make

If there are best practices, there must be worst ones. Here is a short list of what a company should avoid if it decides to publish a corporate book:

• Make a promotional presentation out of a book. If we are talking about a book for clients, it should contain information about products and services. Another thing is how to present it: you can tell where to start working, what to pay attention to, how to choose the best package of services, explain some non-obvious points. Or you can simply repeat many times how advanced, the best and the top you are – it is clear which option will bring more benefit. The principle is the same as for blog posts – they are expected to provide useful experience, analytics, recommendations, not advertising.

• Branding and going overboard with funny pictures. The creators of corporate literature are guilty of the following sin: stuffing the book with all the evidence that it was made by Company N: starting with the logo and design in corporate colors, ending with watermarks on each page. I'm exaggerating, but the point is clear: you can show that a book was made in a certain company without flickering logos and other identities (by the way, a similar approach works with illustrations for Habraposts). In other cases, the power of the lunar prism of design is resorted to if the text volume is not enough, but you want to make it “more solid”. Then we get beautifully laid out “quotes from the greats” in large letters, obvious infographics or stock photos with collaborating employees – which also does not add value to the book.

• Making a book “to make it happen”. Unfortunately, this also happens – instead of specific steps, principles, approaches, the reader gets general words. Perhaps, even in this case, the project will perform some kind of PR task. But, in my opinion, if you take on the work, it is worth spending your energy more rationally and looking for a topic about which the company can say something worthwhile.

All this, by the way, does not mean that such a book should remain a niche object, a wall of text, completely devoid of corporate identity and interesting to a narrow circle of people. A good example is the same guide from Valve. At one time it became popular far beyond the company as an example of: 1) simply a beautifully laid out text with funny illustrations and references to Portal and Half Life; 2) an interesting approach to organizing work in a creative environment. The book was of interest and highly appreciated by many more people than the authors initially expected, because it was really well written and designed, even if it concerned the inner workings of Valve.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg in the topic of corporate literature. In the following posts I will continue to talk about worthwhile books without advertising that are published by companies.

P.S. We also write about how companies can work with blogs to write not only about Programmer's Day and space, but also to share truly useful experiences.