Patrick Vlaskovits, co-author of Hustle and The Lean Entrepreneur, used a great phrase in this week’s Extraordinary Business Book Club episode which was a new one on me, although I knew just what he meant. (Patrick specializes in this, to be honest – providing just the right phrase for concepts without a name. We talked […]
Continue readingWhile you’re thinking about the content of your book and its structure, scope, tone and so on, don’t forget the prelims and endmatter, and particularly the foreword (NB NOT ‘forward’, it’s the ‘word’ to the reader that goes be’fore’ the main text). Why bother with a foreword? Here are just a few reasons: Credibility. […]
Continue readingYou might think that SWOT analysis is a management consultancy cliché, but with a little bit of a twist it can be a surprisingly useful tool for business book writers… Read today’s Birds on the Blog post to find out more: http://birdsontheblog.co.uk/so-what-a-twist-on-swot-for-business-book-writers/
Continue readingOne of my favourite tools for business thinking isn’t one of the models I learned on my MBA course, it’s a poem from Rudyard Kipling: I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. And it all starts with […]
Continue readingSitting staring at a blank Word document can be a killer. That’s a lot of white space to fill. If you want to feel better about that, you have two options: 1. turn up the font size to 50, OR 2. make the white space smaller. Allow me to introduce: the Powerpoint slide. If you’re […]
Continue readingI had a fascinating conversation with a publishing buddy this week, talking about the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair. ‘I don’t really get Book Fairs,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve never had a single conversation or done a single bit of business without thinking, “We could have done this any old day of the year. Why here?”‘ And […]
Continue readingToday’s blog is over at BookMachine – it’s all about HarperCollins’s clever new initiative BookGig. https://bookmachine.org/2016/10/12/bookgig-the-publisher-agnostic-initiative-launched-by-harpercollins/
Continue readingLast year my son had a pair of football boots he absolutely loved. They were blue and orange, comfortable, and made him feel like his hero, Arsenal player Aaron Ramsey. Wearing them he learned to chip and dodge and feint. Theirs were the first laces he successfully tied in a double bow himself. He hung […]
Continue readingSo this is neat – the clever folk over at self-publishing platform Reedsy have launched Reedsy Learning, a series of free mini-courses from top publishing talent. I’ve contributed this one: How to Write a Business Book. 10 days, 10 emails, just enough to get you kickstarted. There are courses on marketing, self-publishing, overcoming procrastination, Amazon algorithms, […]
Continue readingHow do you cut up a birthday cake? If you’re like me until last year, you cut out wedges – a segment of arc tapering to a fragile point – and unless you eat the entire cake in one sitting (which can happen, of course) you’re left with a tricky shape to wrap in cling-film, […]
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