I’m grateful to Chris Taylor, who wrote a piece on Mashable that breaks down everything you learn from self-help books — and why they’re all the same. If you’re an author, you may find it depressing. Especially if your ideas are ordinary. The piece is called “Every self-help book ever, boiled down to 11 simple…
A friend and fellow author recently asked me to be his coauthor on a topic close to his heart. I said no. Quickly. It has nothing to do with him. It has to do with the nature of coauthoring. What a coauthor is, and why I won’t be yours I’ve coauthored three books. Here’s the…
IngramSpark, a self-publishing service, has now defined a set of trash book categories that it will no longer feature or distribute, including AI-generated books. As AI books get better, though, they might want to reconsider. IngramSpark is a print-on-demand and ebook distribution service offered by Ingram, a major book distributor. It delivers the same features…
Andy Matuschak wrote a thoughtful piece called “Why books don’t work.” I think he’s a bit off-target. But his arguments will get you thinking about how your book can work better. If you’re an author with any capability for introspection, Matuschak’s essay ought to make you think. Here’s some of what he wrote: And at…
There are four questions you really should answer before setting out on a business book journey. They’ll determine everything from your title to your content to your publishing model. I first created the ROAM test for general business writing. It includes four elements: Readers, Objective, Action, and iMpression. If you’re going to work on something…
On its face, this is an absurd question. But my friends are hearing this question and wondering about bias in the publishing industry. Today I’d like to explode those myths. The impetus for this post was the testimony of a female author I know who is trying to sell her next book. She has asked…
I have a books problem. My parents read Dr. Seuss books to me when I was a child, and that was where it started. Every weekend they would take me to the library. It started with the books on science and astronomy. Once I had read them all, they introduced me to the grownup side…
Most business books are boring because there are no people — just endless rambling on about strategy. You need people and stories to make them come alive. I wrote my first business book proposal in 2005. It was for a book called “The End of TV as We Know It,” and it reflected my decade…
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