whitefox: helping brands, thought leaders and writers create beautiful bespoke books

The challenge

Alan Lucas is an entrepreneur, coach and motivational speaker who helps his clients with self-improvement and personal development. He created the SYSO System to help people improve their own mental health through seven steps, and he decided to share this with the world via his book, You Don’t Need Therapy: 7 Steps to Sort Your Sh*t Out. It includes seventy practical exercises for readers to use as they go about changing their mindset and their life.

Alan originally wanted to take the traditional route to publish his book, but then he discovered that self-publishing better suited his goals. He wanted to maintain creative control and to experience a faster publishing process, while still receiving the same high-quality services of a traditional publisher.

‘Originally I planned to go down the traditional publishing route but soon realised all the same quality resources that traditional publishers use are now available to self-publishers. Combined with a much quicker process and being more in control of the content, it seemed a more efficient and effective route for me. I wanted to make sure the quality in all areas was of the same high standard delivered by traditional publishers, and that’s when I discovered whitefox’ ~ Alan Lucas.

The solution

whitefox worked closely with Alan to bring his book into the world. Providing support in project management, editorial, digital and audio conversion, sales and distribution, whitefox ensured that the final product was of the highest standard.

A superb cover design gave the book its bold and attention-grabbing aesthetic. It was created by master cover designer Jon Gray, who has designed covers for Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney, to name just two. The cover of You Don’t Need Therapy makes use of vibrant colours and hand-drawn illustrations to attract the eye even when displayed as a tiny thumbnail image on online retail platforms.

One of the other features that makes You Don’t Need Therapy stand out is its distillation of complicated self-help advice into a simple and easy-to-follow system. In developing his book, Alan drew upon on his studies of various therapies and coaching disciplines, gathering the most useful pieces of guidance, and stripping away their jargon and confusing elements to reveal their core takeaways.

‘Everything we need to know to change our lives is actually already out there. It’s already been written, and in the truest sense we don’t really need any more self-help books! The issue, however, is information overload.’ ~ Alan Lucas.

The result

With expert support from whitefox, Alan was able to ensure that his book would be an accessible and practical resource. The result is an elegant, refreshingly straightforward guide that anyone can find useful for improving their mental health. 

You Don’t Need Therapy has seen excellent sales and is already on its third reprint since its publication in January. It has received high praise from multiple  online media outlets. The Inspired Narrative wrote, ‘Not only does Alan Lucas provide a different angle into better mental wellbeing, he backs up his points with use of scientific research without too much jargon… This book is a must-read for anybody who is interested in the mind or who may be looking to overcome a mental health challenge they are facing.’ The book has been featured on the blogs Female First and Confessions of a Bookworm. And it has been hailed as a ‘fascinating and enlightening read’ by the blog Jera’s Jamboree.

The combination of Alan’s unique vision and whitefox’s input behind the scenes has resulted in a distinctive self-help book that possesses the high level of quality needed to help it stand out in the marketplace.