You may have read that the publisher HarperCollins was offering payments to authors to license their books for AI training. Well, it’s really happening. They contacted my agent, who forwarded their offer to have me license my 2016 book Writing Without Bullshit. I signed the contract and a month or so later I got the…
Authors worry. A lot. Will I get a publisher? How big an advance? What if I don’t get a publisher? Is this the right title? No really, is this the right title? Does my writing suck? Is my idea commonplace? Am I the right person to write this? Do I need a coauthor? Do I…
There is no right way of thinking. Diversity of thought is what creates progress. If you can only think of what has already been thought of, no one ever learns anything new. Diversity of thought comes from diversity of viewpoints. Young people, maturing people, old people. Single people, married people. Men, women, non-binary people. People…
Face it. Your publisher doesn’t care about you. You have an incredible idea that will change the world. Your publisher doesn’t care. You can write with such deftness and skill that readers will be captivated. Your publisher doesn’t care. You’ve conducted three years of painstaking research. They don’t care. You have incredible ideas on how…
Newsletter 89: Why charm, competence, and respect aren’t just good for business, but are a way of life. Plus Shopify won’t hire for what AI can do better; suing Trump to preserve libraries, Amazon recaps books with AI, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Charm, Competence, Respect How in heck was…
I was startled to read this quote in The Athletic (part of the New York Times) from a federal judge overseeing an antitrust case regarding the NCAA and college sports conferences: [U.S. District Court Judge Claudia] Wilken raised several questions related to the objections, but she also expressed optimism for eventual approval if those questions…
Donald Trump’s tariff-centered push to remake who we are as a nation reminded me of something I’d seen before: a pivot. What is a pivot? In the world of startups, a pivot is radical decision to shift the strategic direction of a company, usually because the original strategy is just not resonating. You see this,…
Business and nonfiction books span a vast universe, from million-selling juggernauts to dashed-off self-published quickies. If you are planning or writing a business book, you need to calibrate your level of ambition. It’s fine for the lead in the local production of “Our Town” to dream of being the star of a tentpole studio action…
Authors dream. Their dreams are fueled by watching their peers with books achieving choice speaking slots, huge following on social media, successful and growing consulting businesses, and the like. So they plan to write a book. Will they have the same level of success? It’s possible. But it’s far from certain. The bad news about…