We’ve just been to see the Lego Batman movie. It is absolutely brilliant, and full of clever details that fly straight over the heads of kids to provide a knowing chuckle for their parents. Alfred wears a grey Batman suit at the end (‘I miss the 60s’) and there’s a nod to the comic-book convention […]
Continue readingPublishing books is a pretty darn marvellous way to make a living (assuming you CAN make a living at it (there’s an old industry joke: ‘I run a non-profit publishing house. It’s not supposed to be non-profit, that’s just the way it turned out.’). It may not be high margin, but it’s rich in intrinsic […]
Continue readingThis week in the This Book Means Business Bootcamp we’re focusing on how you can use the process of writing your book to build your professional network (and indeed use your professional network to write your book – nice bit of bilateral symmetry). I love this week’s task as it always creates so many ‘aha’ […]
Continue readingToday’s blog is over at BookMachine – reflections on my conversation with Guy Kawasaki. https://bookmachine.org/2017/02/15/24365building-the-book-in-public/
Continue readingRoses are red, violets are…. Well, they’re violet, actually. It may sound less romantic But it ticks the boxes factually.
Continue readingI usually do Extraordinary Business Book Club interviews by Skype, but today I drove the 45 minutes or so to Liphook, deeper into Hampshire, to meet Ross Lovelock of Scquare. Despite the lovely leafiness of Liphook, or maybe because of it, the internet is apparently dial-up slow. So we sat in Scquare’s meeting room overlooking […]
Continue readingBecause of my poorly planned travel arrangements, I missed Terence Mauri’s keynote speech on innovation at the IPG Spring Conference this week. But I’ve just read the write-up in The Bookseller, and discovered this phrase which I thought was worth sharing: Arguing that in order to innovate, businesses need to make the familiar feel unfamiliar, Mauri proposed […]
Continue reading‘Post-truth – Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year, 2016 I don’t usually ‘do’ politics, but these are not usual times. I can’t stop thinking about what happened while I was in […]
Continue readingAnd that’s a wrap – another IPG Spring Conference over. I was there less than 24 hours but feel like I’ve eaten, drunk, laughed, learned and chatted at least a week’s worth, maybe more. There are now over 600 members of the IPG, from huge players like Bloomsbury down to tiny one-man operations publishing just […]
Continue readingSo far today I have landed at international arrivals at LHR Terminal 3, fluffed up my entry through passport control by getting my glasses hopelessly tangled in my hair and then being unable to read the instructions on the gate, slept in a car on the way home, spent 10 mins at home (just time […]
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