I frequently advise nonfiction authors to be planners, not pantsers (that is, seat-of-the-pants writers). Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work. True, some people have a conception of the whole book in their heads. This allows them to set down a table of contents and, after doing research, create a fat outline before writing each chapter. But…
A friend of mine just received the following direct email pitch: Re: Crush the Competition: Seize Their visitor who view their website by Dominating Their Audience Attention Prepare yourself for total dominance. Our goal is to destroy your competition and establish your brand as the undisputed leader, not to be diplomatic. Our ruthless [name redacted]…
People making a point tend to cite statistics. And with simple tools like SurveyMonkey, anyone can create a poll. But if you don’t know how statistics really work, you can seem like a fool. I don’t trust people who use statistical tools in a misleading way. Do you? What’s wrong with this poll on LinkedIn?…
Newsletter 33: How to be suspicious of shiny objects, self-publishing bestseller pirated, China skews the Hugos, plus three people to follow and three brand-new books to read. The curse of the new We live in a world where newness generates attention. I learned this emphatically and repeatedly in two decades as a technology analyst. Every…
After an extended outage on February 22 that left around 50 million mobile customers (including me) without service for many hours, AT&T is crediting some people’s accounts by $5. Is that the right compensation? What went wrong AT&T says the cause of the problem was an error in installing software — and there is no…
I’ve met thousands of people over my long career — colleagues, clients, direct reports, bosses, executives, and “influencers” of every stripe. I also have a really poor memory for people. So I’m a decent test case for the question, “Who will remember you?” If I remember somebody after decades of work, they were truly memorable….
Here’s the scene. Two analysts have been tapped to address the San Francisco chapter of an industry organization. The rules are: you have ten minutes to speak, and you cannot use slides. The organization is for executives and managers of the cable television industry. One of the analysts is me. I analyze the television industry…
If you are writing about data, you have a choice to make: singular or plural. Singular: The data is so persuasive that only one conclusion is possible. Plural: The data are so persuasive that only one conclusion is possible. Both are correct, depending on the audience Colloquially, most people speak about “data” as a singular…
Newsletter week 32. How to think about ideas, book bans, AI killing everything, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Full-stack idea development: don’t be an ASS or a PEON Authors have ideas. Authors have expertise. But unless those ideas and expertise reinforce each other properly, you can’t build a good book…