Writing teacher Stephen Lane’s essay in the Boston Globe is titled “AI in the classroom could spare educators from having to teach writing.” There are two reasons to teach writing. First, it is a skill that students will need as adults, even in a world drenched in AI tools. And second, learning to write is…
I write. I edit. I ghostwrite. I also use AI — carefully — to help me with ideation and summarize research content. But I don’t substitute AI for own abilities. Unfortunately for the quality of the text I work on, my clients have made different choices. Here are two examples — an author that used…
I’m in the trail stages of a serious nonfiction ghostwriting project right now. It’s a great project; I really want to do it. The author has asked for the impossible. He wants writing that’s captivating and compelling, but the source material, while excellent, isn’t very sexy. I could keep trying to rewrite things until something…
I was incredibly lucky. My first book Groundswell, written for Forrester Research with my fellow analyst Charlene Li in 2008, took off like a rocket soon after it was published. I thought, “Ah, I have this book thing figured out.” Fifty-plus book projects later, I’ve learned which of the lessons I took away were actually…
Newsletter 70. When artists should (or mustn’t) use AI; standing desks aren’t worth it; low satisfaction for publishing workers. Plus three people to follow and three books to read. Should you use AI to create? Many of us make our living by creating. This includes both freelancers in the so-called creator economy and people who…
Two things are true. One: that many of our most important decisions depend on data generated by the government. And two: regarding the people who produce the government data, president-elect Trump has promised that “As many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out — and I mean immediately — of Washington.” Here’s why that…
Tomorrow (Tuesday 12 November) at 2pm ET, I’ll be sharing data about the 93 authors in the 2024 Business Book ROI Study who had hybrid publishers. Register for the free LinkedIn Live session here. I’ll be joined by Naren Aryal, CEO and founder of the hybrid publisher Amplify Publishing. Amplify has published one of my…
Imagine that you were going to select a work partner who would take up half your time and generate half your income for the next year. How would you choose? Very carefully. That’s the situation when I ghost write. One book is half my income and takes up half my time for six months to…
I’ve lived in Portland, Maine since 2021. I moved here from Massachusetts, where I’d lived for 42 years. In Massachusetts, it seemed like nearly everybody I knew came from somewhere else originally. Lots of people come to Massachusetts for college and then never leave (which was my story, too). If you’re from California, it’s probably…