I recently gave a talk at a weminar with a ‘secrets and spies’ theme. My brief was to talk about ‘succes and agility’ – obvioulsy I tunred to 007 for inspiration. (The best-looking slide deck I’ve ever put together.) Here’s a sneak peek, from my BookMachine blog… What is James Bond’s most effective weapon? Could […]
Continue readingThis week’s Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast episode features Giles Colborne, one of the world’s leading experts in user experience. His book Simple and Usable is, as you might expect, utterly beautiful from a design perspective. I asked him about the parallels between user experience design and writing: AJ: It made me laugh when you […]
Continue readingI’ve always loved the Northern word ‘canny’. There’s a calculating edge to it, but in a wholesome, no-nonsense, practical sort of a way, rather than any underhand scheming. It’s not a bad word to describe my approaching to writing, either. Here’s a bit of etymology for all you word geeks out there: Can (modal verb) […]
Continue reading(With apologies to Haruki Murakami.) Someone who read my blog about streaking pointed out that I often seem to talk about running and writing in the same breath. Maybe it’s because I’m a former blogging runner turned running writer. But I think fundamentally it’s because learning to run changed everything about me. I wasn’t a […]
Continue readingYesterday I accidentally committed to run every day and to blog every day. Here’s how it happened…. On Tuesday I emailed Seth Godin inviting him to be a guest on my podcast. If you’d asked me to rate the chances of him answering, let alone saying yes, I’d have estimated around 1 in 10. He […]
Continue readingThis is Day 1 of a who-knows-how-long-streak. Here’s the blog post that kicked it all off: the decision to commit to run and blog every day emerged in the process of writing this article… http://birdsontheblog.co.uk/what-seth-and-ron-taught-me-about-streaking/ And it’s all Seth Godin’s fault.
Continue readingFor publishers, the proposal is the business case for the book and for you as its author. It tells them whether you’re both worth taking a risk on: does the book have a strong concept and a clear market? Have you really thought it through? In this LinkedIn post I invite you to take part in […]
Continue readingRachel Bridge, author of Ambition: Why it’s good to want more and how to get it, is an extraordinary woman. I interviewed her on the Extraordinary Book Club Podcast recently, and her energetic, creative approach to writing made me reflect on how things are changing across the board. Rachel and I hooked up in the […]
Continue readingMight online bookstores one day become passé? The social web is where we share ideas and consume content, and increasingly it’s where we purchase, too. In the Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast this week I talk to Marcus Woodburn, Vice President Digital Products at Ingram Content Group, about Aer.io, their new social selling tool (Ingram was an early […]
Continue readingIt’s a terrible irony of nonfiction publishing that the people with the most interesting things to say are often too busy actually doing their thing to sit down and write a book about it. Business leaders are not natural writers, at least not usually. They’re often great communicators, especially on a conference stage or in […]
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