I, like every other Microsoft Word user, started a document on January 16 only to find a strange icon cluttering up my word processor screen. This is Microsoft Copilot, which exists to provide me with artificial intelligence help in writing documents. I’ve been a professional writer since 1982 and am making my current living as…
There is an elephant in the room today. There is no point in talking about anything else today, when all anyone can see is the elephant. Soon, people will start blaming nearly everything on the elephant, or alternatively, giving it credit for nearly everything. This is a mistake. A lot what happens next has been…
When the Soviet Union fell, a collection of individuals took control of privatized industries and began to accumulate massive wealth and political power. These individuals were called oligarchs, a term meaning a small group who together hold political power. Now liberal pundit Robert Reich is talking about American oligarchs. Do we really have powerful oligarchs…
I recently received this email (some words redacted): Hey Josh, I hope you’re doing well! About this time last year, we started to put together our very first [redacted] Summit, and we knew when 200 experts and speakers responded to our call to participate, we had something special. That said, it still blew our expectations…
Newsletter 77. The relationship between timing and success, an audio-only imprint for self-publishers, how to license your book for AI, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Thoughts on timing If I’ve learned one thing in 50 years in business, it is that timing matters. Great ideas need good timing to succeed….
Popular Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin announced that she’s leaving the Post and joining a number of other writers to start a subscription-based Substack channel called The Contrarian: Not Owned By Anybody. To me, this looks like the start of a rush towards the exits for popular newspaper writers and what will be an increasingly…
An editor has a challenge. They must know everything about writing and, essentially, nothing about anything else. The power of remaining naïve Of course, I’m exaggerating. Editors tend to know a little bit about a lot of things, because they have to read so many things in detail. And editors in a specific genre need…
A.I. is hotter than hot. If you have a unique point of view, by all means write an article about it. But I don’t care how much you know, this is no time to write a book about it. Five kinds of A.I. books and why you shouldn’t write them There are more than 20,000…
John Taylor “Ike” Williams was my agent and publishing lawyer. He died on December 26, 2024 at the age of 86. Ike was a commanding presence at his literary agency, Kneerim & Williams, and law firm, Sennott & Williams. Six-foot-six and good-looking, he had a unique combination of unshakable Boston Brahmin confidence and good humor….