A friend of mine once confided in me that she was having trouble getting paid for her freelance work. After a little conversation, we figured out that she wasn’t sending invoices because she was embarrassed to talk about money with the client. No bill, no pay. It is embarrassing to talk about money. We’d all…
In the Wall Street Journal, Jacqui Shine just published a piece called “Want to Earn Six Figures as a Writer? Try Ghostwriting.” Before you writers all start rushing into the ghostwriting field with your hands out, I thought it might be instructive to describe what it actually takes to become a well-compensated ghostwriter. First, a…
Newsletter 73. A nuanced look at simplification, the Author’s Guild’s AI rights position; a mega-agency that might forget creativity, plus three people to follow, three books to read, two podcast interviews, and a partridge in a . . . no, enough of that already! It’s complicated We crave simplicity. Boiling things down to their essence…
When freelancers get together, they complain about clients. “You won’t believe what she’s making me do.” “He thinks he has the right to spell words any way he wants.” “They’re violating all the rules of design and logic.” When clients get together, they complain, too. “Everything has a price tag.” “He didn’t listen to me…
A case study is a story. That tells you everything you need to know about how to research and write it. Specifically: do not interrupt case study stories with any other type of content. What you read here comes from experience researching, interviewing, writing, and publishing more than 100 case studies in business books, as…
Bill Belichick, the 72-year-old former longtime head coach of the New England Patriots and winner of a record six Super Bowls as head coach, just accepted a role as head coach of the football program of the University of North Carolina. Everyone seems to think that, by choosing a college role instead of another NFL…
Case studies will make your business book more credible and readable. But they don’t all have the same impact. After writing more than one hundred case studies in my own books and editing hundreds of others, I’ve developed this set of criteria you can use to evaluate your own case study list. More is better,…
Newsletter 73. Change you can believe in is change you can understand, merry Christmas to booksellers, how to stump ChatGPT, plus three people to follow and three books to read. How change feels There are two kinds of change: change in what you do, and change in who you are. Both create uncertainty. But the…
You are an expert on your topic and your ideas. I will never know as much about your topic as you do. I am expert on nonfiction books. You hired me because I know more about books than you do. This is the basis of our collaboration. It’s our greatest strength. It’s also our greatest…