Newsletter 66: Why polls captivate us; AI fails at reasoning; the valued discipline of writing, plus three people to follow, three books to read, and a free report on how business books generate revenue and profit. About that presidential horse race Why are we so fascinated with polls? Well, put that aside for a minute….
Months ago, I joined up with four author service organizations — Amplify Publishing, Gotham Ghostwriters, Thought Leadership Leverage, and Smith Publicity — to undertake the first-ever large-scale study of the return on investment from business and thought leadership books. Today, we release the results of that study free to the public. You can download your…
Here’s a wall-chart. Download or print out to remind yourself how to structure your book. Feel free to share. PDF version is available here.
Join me for a free “Brown Bag Lunch” discussion hosted by Gotham Ghostwriters, tomorrow (Wednesday, 16 August) at 12 noon Eastern Time. I’ll be joined by one of my favorite people, veteran ghostwriter Toni Robino. If you’re pursuing a freelance career that includes ghostwriting business books, we’ll try to answer all your questions. I look…
I do almost everything on the internet these days, including meeting with clients, coaching, editing, researching, and reviewing drafts. Every meeting is a Zoom meeting. But I’ve learned the hard way that it’s best to kick off each ghostwriting project with an in-person meeting of at least half a day. There are four types of…
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…
A great collection of case studies and stories are what make business books come alive. But if the protagonists of your stories all look alike, you’re limiting your audience and constraining your insights. An expansive view of diversity The purpose of case studies and other stories in your book is to allow your reader to…
I set out to help authors. Fifteen years and 50 books later, I keep hearing the same questions — about everything from how to create ideas to how to select a publishing path to how to do book promotion. So I put everything I knew in one place: my new book Build a Better Business…
Why should authors put in the work to create a better book? The goal of a business book is to help the reader to succeed. Everything about it should support that goal. That means maximizing the value of the reader experience. Let’s call it RX, by analogy with CX (customer experience) and UX (user experience)….