In my heart of hearts, there’s only one real reason I wrote Build a Better Business Book. It’s because it makes me so sad to see authors stymied — or worse, exploited — because they don’t understand how the process of authoring a book works. In other words, I don’t just want you to succeed….
When pitching yourself as a ghostwriter, you may worry most that you won’t get the job. But perhaps you should worry more about what happens if you succeed. At the start of ghostwriting projects, everyone is smiling and optimistic. It’s no fun to think about what might go wrong. But unless you protect yourself, you…
Lawrence Weinstein, cofounder of Harvard’s Writing Center and director of the writing center at Bentley University, wrote Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us. This is a writing book that explores not just the best ways to write, but how those methods are connected to…
The name of the store in Inverness, Scotland, UK was Leakey’s Bookshop. As soon as I walked in the door I knew I would be there a while. I’ve been in a lot of used bookstores in my day. I’m drawn magnetically to the classic science fiction, the history books written from a decades-old perspective,…
Publisher’s Lunch, usually a reputable source, is reporting that “Ghostwriting and publishing services firm Scribe Media abruptly shut down yesterday, laying off its staff.” A second source that I trust received an email saying that Scribe had laid off most of the staff in preparation for a sale. Other authors are reporting no response to…
Promoting your nonfiction book seems like ego-stoking work of the most extreme sort. Me, me, me! Pay attention to me! My book is great! In truth, though, successful book promotion is a work of service and selflessness. Why selfless beats selfish in book promotion Start with the book itself. Your book will succeed to the…
Nonfiction books are about ideas. If you’re considering writing a book, you must make sure your idea has four key qualities: it must be simple, big, new, and right. Let’s look at a popular recent book, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results by James Clear, and show how it satisfies all four qualities. Book ideas…
I’m assembling a crack team of regular readers and prospective authors who’d like to participate in the launch of my book Build a Better Business Book over the next two months. What you get: insider perspectives on what’s happening, early access to content, and camaraderie with fellow authors on the same quest, and, within reason,…
Over the next six weeks, I’ll be sharing data from the 2019-2022 survey I did of 242 nonfiction authors, 172 of which had completed publishing a book. I’ll share information about the struggles they had, the challenges they found most difficult, and the tools they used. But today I’m going to start at the very…