Parallelism — that is, consistency in lists — isn’t just an arbitrary rule that copy editors enforce. It’s a powerful tool to help your readers navigate your writing, and to trust you. What is parallelism? It is consistency in length, parts of speech, and all other qualities in a list of items such as a…
It takes hundreds of hours to build a quality business book. It only takes a few hours to pull together a quickie book and post it on Amazon. Why not save all that time and effort? What’s wrong with a cutting a few corners? After all, you could be a “published author” in less than…
People contact me all the time for help with books. I usually take the time to talk with them and help if I can. I’ve become very efficient: in five minutes, I can typically tell whether to take the book idea seriously or not. I look for three things: Unless the author and their idea…
Self-help is a huge genre of business books. They mostly leave me flat. I admit I’m biased. I started with advantages both economic and talentwise. I’ve always believed I could do things — at least academic and career-type things — so doubt was rarely a problem. But put my biases aside for a moment. I…
The job of an author is inescapably lumpy. There are intensely challenging times and other moments — gaps — in which everything on the to-do list is lower priority. If you find yourself with an hour block or more that’s free, don’t waste it. Invest that time in efforts that will pay off in the…
Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, managing director of editorial at Berrett-Koehler Publishers, recently posted on LinkedIn that he doesn’t see much promise in “big idea” books. I was shocked, because Berrett-Koehler is a significant publisher of great business books, and from where I sit, big ideas are central to the success of many important books. Here’s what Sivasubramaniam…
Occasionally, I will agree to work with an author pro-bono (that is, for no charge). I do this when all of the following are true: (I don’t have space in my schedule for the foreseeable future, so I’m not taking on any pro-bono work at the moment. Please don’t ask.) Looking back, nearly all of…
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Since I published my book, people are coming out of the woodwork asking me to ghostwrite for them. Ghostwriters are expensive and are often unavailable. So you should think carefully if you really need one, or if you need a developmental editor. Here’s a table of tasks that developmental editors and ghostwriters for nonfiction books…