All Posts by AlisonJones

Bakers and Eaters

Well, that was a long-held ambition realized: I just interviewed Guy Kawasaki for The Extraordinary Business Book Club. (I still can’t believe I get to talk to some of the people who’ve most influenced my entrepreneurial career and who’ve been such a powerful force in shaping my ideas over the last few years – I […]

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DIY luck

Today’s guest lecturer on the editorial module of the MA in Publishing at Brookes University was Simon Winder, pubishing director at Penguin Press. He has a massive amount of book industry experience from both the publishing and the writing side (his books include Germania and my personal favourite, The Man Who Saved Britain, a cultural history of James […]

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Small courtesies – the hallmark of great minds

I received a very lovely and unexpected email today from David Taylor, author of The Naked Leader series, Visiting Professor of Leadership at Warwick and Ulster Business Schools, and one of the top business thinkers in the world. I interviewed him recently for The Extraordinary Business Book Club (the episode, which is a belter, by the […]

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The thing you should never forget about books…

…is just how much they mean to those who’ve written them.  Publishers sometimes lose sight of this. We are so used to producing books. It’s not that we stop valuing them, but sometimes you forget just how exciting and life-changing it is for an author when their first book arrives on their doorstep.  I had […]

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The latest Apple product is not what you might expect…

Here’s a bit of news you might not have expected: the latest must-have Apple product is a book. Yes, an actual print book. Designed by Apple in California is beautiful (of course), bound in white lined with embossing and silver-edged paper, and contains 450 luscious shots of iconic Apple design and the processes behind them. […]

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Thankfulness without the agenda

I’ve had several emails this morning from businesses with a similar formula: I’m so thankful for you, you are my reason for living, let me show you how grateful I am by offering you this special price on my product.  I do get that business is business and Black Friday is a thing. I do.  […]

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There is no such thing as ‘the general reader’. OK?

In today’s seminar activity with the MA Publishing students at Oxford Brookes we were looking at book proposals, and identifying the key points, warning signs and questions that an editor looks out for whenever they read a submission. The ‘fake’ proposal that they were critiquing contained a favourite phrase of mine: ‘This book will appeal […]

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See what your mind tells you

In today’s Extraordinary Business Book Club episode Robbie Kellman Baxter talks about writing The Membership Economy. I’m not going to talk about that today (though I will soon, believe me, because it’s FASCINATING); instead I just wanted to share with you one of her insights into the process of writing the book. In a blog […]

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Stirred up, not shaken

Stir (vb): Rise or wake from sleep; Begin or cause to begin to be active or to develop; Arouse strong feeling in (someone); Move or excite. Today marks one of my favourite days of the year – Stir-up Sunday.  The name comes from the collect, or prayer, for this, the last Sunday before Advent in the traditional Anglican […]

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