You've Been Scooped - Or So You Think. What Do You Do Next?

Stay calm, then focus on truly differentiating your thought leadership campaign, article, or book project. Read on to learn how. 

TL;DR

--> As a business leader, you have the mental muscles to clearly differentiate your campaign, article, or book - if you know how to get started. 

--> I'm sharing my protocol + templates for differentiating against those interlocutors with whom you most closely agree -- so you can serve your readership in an entirely original way. 

There is a moment in almost every expository writing journey when an author discovers that their idea – what they have come to believe in as an absolutely original, uniquely game-changing paradigm shift– is, well, not so much. 

It’s a hard moment. You or your ghostwriter is reading and researching, listening to other thinkers’ TedX talks, podcasts, competitive titles, and then you find it: the book or article or Substack that makes an argument so similar to yours that it’s hard to see daylight between what you’re writing and what has already been written. 

"Oh sh***," you think. Your stomach sinks. Your anxiety response flares. The sunk cost fallacy sets in: How is it possible that you’ve spent so much time, energy, and effort developing something that has already been done? Next, imposter syndrome: What am I even doing, trying to be a thought leader? I have nothing new to say. 

It is so easy to become frustrated at this moment, and then to stall out. I have seen smart, confident thought leaders delay or even abandon research and writing that they’ve spent hours developing, simply because they did know how to emotionally and intellectually navigate this experience, which is entirely inevitable within the process of writing persuasive, expository works. 

I get it, and I’ve been there. With one line of inquiry seemingly closed off, how do you move forward with the project at hand? 

I’ve always found it helpful to reframe this experience: when you understand that this moment is not in fact a problem facing your project but an opportunity to be seized, you can learn to handle it like the experienced authors, scholars, and journalists who know that it is simply part of every creative endeavor.  

Because what this moment really means is this – you have something important to say, and there are people who are eager to hear it. And it’s time to get on to the rest of the work of differentiating your point of view to yourself first, and then your audiences too. 

In this post, I'll share how I do it. You'll learn:

• How to handle the emotional impact of this moment so that you can move forward with clarity.
• My differentiation protocol + thought templates to help you develop a clearly original, unique project that serves your readership. 
  

Emotions are Information. And the “Oh S**” Moment is Valuable Intel. 

The emotional attachments that we forge with our creative works are varied and tangled. I have always found them to be surprising too. Our projects can give us feelings of energy and wellbeing; the same project, two weeks later, might become a source of frustration and overwhelm. Sustaining interest in long-form projects can feel tough – until a new bit of research buoys your motivation. Few of us plug along with absolute calm and clarity in our creative lives – we are all prone to emotional experiences when we are doing creative work. 

But efficient, productive writers learn how to understand those emotions for what they are: information guiding them to their next breakthrough. 

Our emotional attachments to our writing exist because when we write, we claim the ideas on the page for our own, and piece those ideas into the larger fabric of our identity. We are quite literally creating ourselves in the act of writing, regardless of genre, purpose, audience.  As I.A. Richards has said, “Language is an instrument for controlling our becoming.” When we write, we are making ourselves. And that is a vulnerable, complicated, and beautiful thing to do. It’s happening in the background of everything we write, regardless of topic, genre, deliverable. This cognitive work is the magic of writing as a uniquely human technology. 

It’s also why “oh s***” moments can feel so disempowering - your understanding of yourself, your business model, your field and industry suddenly doesn’t feel the same. Someone else has laid claim to your framework, your argument, your ideas. And that feels a little bit like claiming a piece of you. 

But the facts are this: your thoughts, yourself, are still in development. You are not finished yet, and neither is your project. In fact, when you get to this stage of development, encountering similar arguments, data, and points of view is a good thing: it means that you have a marketable, important, and relevant concept that people want to learn about. It means that there are like-minded individuals out there with whom you can connect and collaborate, and even better, readers who are eager to learn more. 

Here’s more reason to be encouraged when you realize you’ve been scooped: You are unique. You don’t see the world in the same way as your competitors. You don’t read in the same way. You don’t engage with clients and customers in the same way. You don’t do business in the same way. 

Your context matters in differentiating your book. And chances are that when you thoroughly compare and contrast your approach against your closest interlocutors, you will find plenty of space for your unique point of view.  

Don't panic. Instead, compare and contrast.

Another piece of good news: in leading executive thought leaders and authors through this moment, I find that they are often uniquely prepared for it, in ways that writers from other backgrounds may not be. Business leaders do the work of differentiation every day - they are constantly attending to market movements, customer appetites, and competitor releases, and pivoting accordingly. So you already have the mental muscle you need to do this work. You just need to know what to do next to activate that muscle in the context of your project. 

Here’s the order of operations I use to help clients differentiate their frameworks in a competitive market. Assess Audience, then Genre, then Methodology, then Argumentation. This is a hierarchy, for a reason: they are organized by the amount of impact they can generate in serving your market. If, for example, you are reaching an underserved but substantial audience, you have a much more marketable concept than if you are differentiating on the minutiae of argumentation alone. 

They are also organized by the level of granularity you'll need to bring to your critical analysis: understanding differences in audiences doesn't take a lot of fine detailed reading, but parsing differences in argumentation does. Start with what's impactful and simple, and then move forward if necessary. 

Differentiate by Audience

This is the easiest place to begin. Authors have to be transparent about their audience. They will tell you who this book is for. If it’s not your readers, then you already have one important difference to leverage. 

A case in point: I helped a client develop a book strategy that differentiated her project in the relatively active market on product innovation. There are lots of texts written on how to create a culture of product innovation. There were no texts specifically serving the unique cultural and business challenges of professional services firms who were executing a productization strategy. This one difference drove this author’s entire content strategy - everything we wrote was geared for these readers. When there was conceptual overlap with a competitor, we practiced forwarding their argument to the world of professional services for our readers – we explained how an idea our readers may have encountered in these other texts could become applicable to their environment. That’s a way of working with a competitive text that acknowledges its value and recontextualizes that value for your particular readers.

I bring you this “writerly move” from Joseph Harris’s book Rewriting: How to Do Things With Texts. I’ll explore a few more of his concepts below, but this friendly, generous, and useful book on expository writing is my go-to anytime I am differentiating an argument.

Differentiate by Genre

The next easiest differentiator to assess, in my view, is genre. 

There has been so much ink spilled on the definitions and boundaries of genre, especially fictional genres. We will not get into that here. There are many non-fiction genres, too, that don’t apply to thought leadership (travel, cooking, etc.)  – although like any genre, thought leadership does borrow, beg, and steal from others for the purposes of innovation. I’m not going to tell you what genres to work with – if we are fearlessly committing to writing your business book as a travel log, so be it. 

What I am asking you to do is to know and understand your purpose, and map it against those of your competitors. 

Chances are very strong that you have one of three purposes if you are writing long-form thought leadership:

1. To coin and socialize a big idea
2. To teach your readers how to do something
3. To share a personal story – that will help you to do either of the ideas above

As you review competitors, you will find that different generic approaches shape similar arguments in surprising ways. Because genres are, loosely defined, a set of criteria that determines what content gets included, the choice of genre is not neutral - it is determinative of what an author can reasonably say. Which means that they may not be covering your topic or even a similar line of thought in the same way that you and your text might be. 

Ask yourself: what is the purpose of this competitive title? Is this a memoir? A how-to? A big idea book? And then drill down a little further: Is this article or book heavily research-oriented? Technical in nature? Historical? Infused with personal anecdotes, but not primarily memoir? How is the book formatted – am I guided with titles and subtitles through a simple set of to-dos, or do these subtitles suggest a story? 

Most importantly, ask: is this genre one that delivers the best value to our shared readership? If, in your assessment, the audience would welcome a different approach to learning about this topic (an approach you happen to take), you’ve found another difference to leverage. 

Differentiate by Method 

If you haven’t found strong differentiation via audience and genre, it’s time to get technical. 

Your next step: understanding disciplinary, theoretical, and philosophical underpinnings. This is often harder work because it requires facility with the larger thought leadership and research trends shaping your field, and developed opinions about their limitations and affordances. Start by stating your own method, in simplest terms: 

[My research/article/book] examines [topic] by leveraging [theory(ies)/method(s)] because [state affordances of your approach]. 

Be honest, and state the limitations of your method here too:

This approach does not offer insight into [state limitations of your approach]. 

Then use these templates to generate methodological statements for each of your competitors. Look at how they approach research. Why do they research in this way? What’s the impact of that for your shared readership? How does it differ from your approach? There can be a lot to consider here:

• How do they collect, analyze, and present evidence? 
• How do they engage disciplines? If they are taking an interdisciplinary approach, why? 

Then ask all the same questions of your own project, again. Why are you doing what you’re doing? If you have already done a thought leadership or book strategy, it may already be documented there. Review that documentation, but also question it. It might be time, in light of this new information, to change tack. 

Or, it might be time to fully commit to a line of research that is truly unique in the market, and to argue more strongly for it. One of my authors has been working on a book on healthcare reform for the last several months. When he realized that he agreed in fundamental ways with two of his top competitors, I reminded him that his method was completely unique in this marketplace, even though every author in this space fundamentally agrees on what needs to happen to make healthcare better. For this author, the value to his readers lies in making a case for his theoretical and methodological approach to healthcare reform – why that approach will make these changes more efficient, cost-effective, human-centered, faster. So to reiterate, while his conclusions are not new, his method is entirely original in this space. And that is a differentiator driving his vision for the book itself.

Differentiate by Argument

If you find that you cannot differentiate on audience, genre, or method, then you’ll need to compare and contrast the argumentative structure itself in greater detail. This can be harder work: you will need to actively read for detail, develop a clear understanding of the author’s data and data interpretation, and be ready to question all of it. This is what Harris calls "countering"and it’s essential for thought leaders to learn. 

You can start by simply noting places where you agree across the text with an A. Note places where you disagree with a D. Read through to the end, and absorb the entirety of the argument. You may have just one or two Ds - and that’s ok! The important next step is to understand and document your reasons for that disagreement. Has this author:

• • • • • Missed an important data set?
        • Chosen not to engage with critical data or information? 
        • Misinterpreted data, or interpreted that data in a way that has merit, but which is counter to your own interpretation?
        • Fallen prey to a common bias (confirmation, halo effect, anchoring bias, etc.)? 
        • Set up fallacies that undercut their argument? Failed to follow through on logic? 
        • Or, do they simply follow a different, but still logical, pathway through their interpretation of a problem, or in their recommendations to readers?  

This is where differentiation can happen between two closely-paralleled texts: ultimately, you are providing your readers with a different point of view on a topic they already are invested in learning a lot about. And if you can intrigue them in that point of view and articulate its value, you will have hooked an already engaged readership.   

Then commit – and stay confident. 

Ok - you’ve compared, contrasted, and have found a strong way to differentiate yourself in the market. Now you need to commit. And that can be easier said than done. 

Pro-tip: write it down. Write a sentence that explains your differentiation in simple but compelling terms. Because you will need that sentence in your book proposal, for example, but you will also need that sentence to help you forge belief in your new direction – again, for yourself. Here are a few templates:

Audience: [Title of book] reaches an underserved audience in the marketplace on [topic]: [audience]. While works like [competitor, competitor, competitor] explore [topic] for [respective audiences], my audience is eager for an application of [common belief that you all share] to the world of [audience’s space]. 

Genre: The non-fiction marketplace is flooded with [genre] for [topic]. [Your book] takes a different approach, harnessing [your genre choice] to [purpose for your genre choice]. In doing so, [your book] reaches readers who have otherwise been underserved by this marketplace because [justify your generic choice].  

Method: [Title of book] is the only extant work exploring the issue of [topic] via [research methodology]. 

Argument: I agree fundamentally with my interlocutors in this space, including [name, name, and name]. It is true that [point(s) of agreement here]. However, in arguing [point of disagreement], these authors fail to see [reason for disagreement]. My book takes a different tack: [your perspective].  

Or try:  I agree with authors like [name, name, name] that [point of agreement here]. But in approaching [topic] from a [methodology] perspective, these authors have overlooked the critical role that [differentiator] plays in [field of influence]. It’s not only that we must [point of agreement]; we must also [differentiator]. 

Once you’ve drafted your differentiation statement for yourself, share it with your co-writer or ghostwriter for feedback, and so that they can start the work of making technical changes throughout your text. They will help you understand the scope of the revision required to execute this new vision: new research, new argumentative or narrative structure, substantial line editing, and so on. 

One great way to avoid the “oh s**” moment: do a book strategy in the early days of idea development. This exercise is entirely devoted to developing a differentiated, rigorously researched argument from the get-go. 

A Word to the Wise

 If you cannot find a form of disagreement at this stage, then the most important work is still in front of you. 

Continue to research, learn, and explore your topic until you find the perspective that truly stands apart and resonates with your readers too. You will find this perspective! But it may take more time in the stacks, interviewing, polling, talking to people across your field, or experimentation in the lab. And it will also likely require a pivot in your research agenda - you might need to change your topic slightly, or your methodology, to find the gap that hasn’t been addressed. This is important and necessary work – and it takes patience and perseverance.

If you’re feeling lost in the weeds, connect with your co-writer or ghostwriter, who can often help you navigate material and see perspectives you might otherwise miss.  

There is always room for more critical thought. 

I promise - there is room for you and your ideas with your ideal readers. Despite so many nihilistic views to the contrary, you, your context, your point of view are inherently original: there is no other constellation of experiences and stories and knowledge like it in the world. So go ahead, sharpen your focus. Clarify your approach, and why it's meaningful. Reconsider your data story. Review your interlocutors, and make sure you really understand their approach. Because when you do the hard work of critical inquiry, you find ways to serve readers that sometimes they didn’t even know they needed. And that’s where true thought leadership begins and ends. 

- K

If you’re feeling scooped, give us a call. Fledgling helps authors craft differentiated thought leadership campaigns and titles with strategic and creative services. Book a free consultation, and we’ll help you navigate this tough moment with the patience, persistence, and skill it requires.