The marketing thinker Scott Wilder recently posed this question on LinkedIn: “Would you write a business book today even though in a few years all information will be created and discoverable using AI?” What do you think? Will all information be discoverable using AI? You could have asked this question 15 years ago in the…
I recently wrote about how to negotiate with your publisher. But the publisher-author dance is remarkably subtle, and if you don’t know the steps, you might inadvertently make the relationship awkward. The key for authors is to know when to go first . . . and when to expect the publisher to go first. The…
Why I love text more than other medium, how Amazon prices, a machine reads your book pitch, plus three people to follow, three books to read, and witty link. Why text is good and books are best There’s an explosion in content. Blogs, Substacks, Medium posts, Threads, Podcasts, vlogs, you name it. Which format is…
If you’re going to hire me (or anyone else) to help you writing or editing your book, I’m going to ask a bunch of seemingly invasive questions. There are good reasons for those uncomfortable questions. In fact, I’ll go further: if you’re working with a writer, editor, or coach who doesn’t ask these sorts of…
I use a variety of tools to plan writing projects. These are usually based on intermediate deliverables and milestones, like plans and treatments. They’re great tools — but they’re only tools. Optimizing the intermediate deliverables is a wasteful fetish. Useful planning tools It’s a big mistake to begin a book without careful planning. Here’s a…
The whole point of pitching a book proposal is to get a publishing contract. Why not work directly with a publisher? Here’s how to decide: With the help of an agent, you’re more likely to find a publisher, get the best possible offer, and have a successful negotiation. If you don’t have an agent or…
If you are creating a draft of a book chapter, essay, blog post, or other content that others must review, it’s tempting to just assemble something quickly and fling it out there. After all, people are just going to criticize it anyway. Alternatively, you may be tempted to make your draft as complete and polished…
Writing is easy. Planning is hard. Research is time-consuming. Ideation comes from experience. Those four thoughts, taken together, are the fundamental theorem of nonfiction writing. Imagine a book chapter. (It’s not very different if it’s an article or a blog post — the same thing applies.) Ideation can often happen quickly. One moment you don’t…
Whether you’re writing in a corporate setting or as a freelancer, you’re likely to face this common issue: multiple “client” individuals that you must satisfy before the project is complete. How can a writer serve more than one master? In my experience, this is both extremely common and very tricky. In the business writer survey…