One of my favorite charts from the Business Book ROI Study is this log-log plot of investment vs. revenue. Each dot represents the most recent book of a single published business author. The axes are logarithmic because the spending and revenues vary over several orders of magnitude. The red dotted line is the profitability line:…
Gotham Ghostwriters and the American Society of Journalists and Authors are soliciting entries for the second annual “Andy” awards. The Andys go to authors and ghostwriters who collaborated to create great books. To win one, both the author and the ghostwriter have to agree to submit the book. The categories are Business and Thought Leadership,…
What the hell am I doing here? What in the world would possess an intelligent person to spend about an hour a day on blogging? The answer is simple: me, and you. Let’s start with you I have a very clear idea of who you, my audience are. You are an author, or someone who…
The basics of publishing contracts are simple: the publisher agrees to pay you (the author) money up front (an advance) and royalties on book sales, and in exchange you give the publisher exclusive rights to print and sell copies of your book and keep part of the proceeds. But as the economics of publishing have…
Newsletter 72. Integrity is a pain in the ass, but the only long-term way to live with yourself. Plus, AI grannybots to annoy spammers, a ghostwriting compensation study, three people to follow, three books to read, and my self-serving holiday gift recommendations. The price of integrity A few years ago, I was given the opportunity…
Everyone is creative. The value of experience is the application of experience in the right place. The newbie cook applies his creativity to understanding the instructions in the recipe, figuring out how to slice the tomatoes, finding the right knife, determining if the meat is fully cooked. The experienced chef does all that by habit…
There are a lot of ways to write a book chapter. Most of them are wrong. I can already hear the villagers gathering with torches and pitchforks, so before you start storming my castle, let me explain. A well-written book chapter has these qualities: It is entertaining from beginning to end. It makes a point…
The self-publishing platform Spines announced cheap packages that will use AI to rapidly edit, design, and publish 8000 books next year. Or perhaps I should use scare quotes around “edit” and “design,” because with AI doing the work, these are only simulacra of actual human creative activities. If you care about your reputation, you must…
I like to believe I am really good at what I do. Perhaps, but I am also very lucky. Thanksgiving seems like the right moment to look back at all the ways fate dealt me a favorable hand. I was lucky to have been born to loving and intelligent parents. My father, raised in a…