To prepare for two recent presentations to groups of women authors, I revisited my survey of over 200 nonfiction authors, examining whether their answers varied by gender. For the most part, women and men authors in my survey had the same experiences and used many of the same tactics. But one dramatic difference emerged: the…
Week 10: writers, authors, and credit; top AI tool tips; poorly written book ban undone, plus 3 people to follow, 3 books to read, and plugcasting. Let’s stop pretending that writing books is a solitary activity The actress Millie Bobby Brown has written a book, Nineteen Steps, based on her family’s experience during World War II. She…
Are you trying to decide which of several book ideas is best for you to spend your time on? If you’re in this position, you need to determine which potential book will best advance your career. In what area do you want to be known as an expert? Are you solving a big problem for…
Jann Wenner made some arguably sexist and racist remarks in a New York Times interview. Then the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ejected him from its board of directors. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime. What Jann Wenner said Wenner has a new book called The Masters coming out, based on conversations with seven…
Don’t try to sell an acquisitions editor. They hate it. To pitch a book to a traditional publisher, you need a book proposal that describes what’s in the book and how you will promote it. The audience for that proposal is the acquisitions editor at a publishing house: the person or group who makes the…
Parallelism — that is, consistency in lists — isn’t just an arbitrary rule that copy editors enforce. It’s a powerful tool to help your readers navigate your writing, and to trust you. What is parallelism? It is consistency in length, parts of speech, and all other qualities in a list of items such as a…
Week 9: George Colony nails it: reading stuff for us is AI’s job. Also: leveraged burnout at Simon & Schuster, KDP spies on your toolbox, plus 3 people to follow, 3 books to read, and pluggerating. Why A.I. upends everything, according to George Colony There are two common perspectives on the rise of generative A.I.,…
It takes hundreds of hours to build a quality business book. It only takes a few hours to pull together a quickie book and post it on Amazon. Why not save all that time and effort? What’s wrong with a cutting a few corners? After all, you could be a “published author” in less than…
You can spend your life avoiding the unknown. You will fail. Or you can embrace it fully — but not recklessly. In 1995, I faced the unknown. I was hired as a technology analyst. I had no idea if I could actually do the job. I thought, “I have enough trouble analyzing the prospects of…