Editors often ask writers to do things they’d rather not do. I once edited a book for a brilliant thinker. He’d written the book stream of consciousness. It was full of great insights as well as infuriating, distracting, and self-serving asides. I found that if we deleted the asides, the rest was great — so…
Newsletter 82: How to manage beta readers, who’s licensing what to which AI, how not to blurb, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Benefiting from beta Software that’s finished enough to use, but not complete, is in the beta testing stage. And lately it’s been similarly fashionable for authors to recruit…
If you read this blog, you may be considering writing and publishing a nonfiction book. You’ve probably seen lots of service providers — developmental editors, writing coaches, hybrid publishers, self-publishing services, book publicists, and the like — who are encouraging you to write that book. “You can do it!”, they say. What you can’t hear…
Few people, when deciding to work on a business book, recognize what they are really creating. A book is not just an idea made real and and powerful. It’s not just a way to spread influence and generate business. It’s a database that you can mine to power much of your work moving forward. How…
Newsletter 81. Using machines to enforce prejudice backfires, don’t use AI to apply to AI companies, a copyright legal shocker, and a list of words to avoid. Plus, three people to follow and three books to read. Machines can’t make trans people disappear — but they can sure do a lot of damage when they…
Why is it so taxing, and why does it take so long, to write a nonfiction book? Here’s one way to think about it. A typical book might be 50,000 words long. You must decide which words to use — and those are not easy choices. That’s 50,000 decisions right there. Of course, not everything…
Newsletter 81. Can you really win by threatening your negotiating partners? Plus, Simon & Schuster ditches blurbs, Ray Dalio dribbles out insights, three books to read and three people to follow. The price of brinksmanship Our president Donald Trump is adept at brinksmanship. Look at his actions over time and you can see a pattern:…
Authors and their publishers are partners. But partners need clarity regarding their rights in a relationship. As an author working with a publisher, you have the right to review and approve: If your publishing contract does not include these elements, ask that they be included. Even if your signed publishing agreement does not include these…
Publishers are under profit pressure. Like many such businesses, they have responded by merging, eliminating redundancies, automating processes, and offshoring to save labor costs. Authors are creative. Most have no experience in publishing processes; even those who’ve written a book or two will be like be encountering some elements of the process for the first…