I am very selective about ghostwriting clients and very open to a broad range of editing clients. Part of the reason is that a ghostwriting commitment means living in your skin for six or nine months, while an editing commitment means living in your manuscript for two or three weeks. But it’s not just the…
When it comes book sales, how does your business book fit among all the other books out there? No matter who you are, there are people selling more than you and people selling fewer. And sales are a very crude measure of success; some niche authors might sell 500 copies and generate 50 million-dollar leads….
Authors have questions. Once they start working on a book, the same things seem to come up over and over. So let’s get you some answers. Is my idea worth writing a book about? An idea worthy of a whole book should be big enough to have a set of nonobvious consequences. You should have…
I’m grateful to the hardworking podcasters and video creators who’ve been interested enough in my book to interview me. These are some of the most creative and best-prepared thinkers out there, working hard to come up with new perspectives that will benefit their listeners and viewers. Here’s a short list of unique interviews I’ve just…
There are two kinds of research: primary research and secondary research. Primary research means finding new facts that have never been published before. Secondary research means finding facts that were already published. Nonfiction books that matter almost always include primary research, because otherwise the book is just a rehash. It’s very hard to draw startling…
If you missed my Webinar with Amplify Publishing last week, you can now see it on YouTube. It’s here and also viewable below. In conjunction with the Webinar, Amplify is now offering a 20% discount, which will typically save you $5.99, on purchases of Build a Better Business Book. Buy here; at the top of…
Much like salaries, book advances are surrounded by mystery. Authors who get big advances like to brag — but how much can you actually expect? Here’s a frustrating answer: it depends. But in this post, I’ll at least give you some benchmarks for advances, based on my survey of nonfiction authors, and explain how you…
In Medium, Stian Westlake rails against “The Tyranny of Malcolms,” that is, those Malcolm Gladwellesque anecdotes people often use to open nonfiction book chapters. Since I’ve written (both in this blog and in my new book) that you should consider opening your chapters with a story, I feel compelled to explain why it’s still a…
Business books are stories. This isn’t an exaggeration. Every successful business book is story about how to solve a problem. And the ones you remember are full of stories about people solving problems. The biggest problem business authors have — at least based on my interactions with them — is they haven’t collected enough stories…