In an ideal world, I’d curl up with one brilliant business book after another and read every one slowly, carefully and thoughtfully. Maybe that’s how I’ll spend my retirement. But for now, it’s only one book in a hundred or so that gets the full immersive treatment, I’m afraid. The rest get my best ‘speedy […]
Continue readingI think we’ve always known that reading is a qualitatively different (by which I mean better) way of getting your entertainment than watching TV, say, but now it’s official. Kingston University student Rose Turner has conducted research that proves that regular readers of novels are kinder with better social skills than those who get their […]
Continue readingThis is gorgeous: the Guardian is running a series of recipes drawn from literature by Kate Young. Friday’s was Wonton Soup from Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, previous recipes have included the Easter fruitcake from one of my favourite books of all time, 84, Charing Cross Road, and Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight from Charlie and the […]
Continue readingI’ve posted before about the Diagram Prize, one of the grandest traditions of the publishing industry, in which a bottle of claret is awarded with great ceremony by the Bookseller’s Horace Dent to the person who nominates the title that is popularly chosen as the year’s oddest. This year’s winner has now been announced: The Commuter […]
Continue readingOn Wednesday I had lunch in London with a publishing friend who happens to be a member of the Tate. ‘Have you seen the Giacometti exhibition?’ she asked. I reminded her that I live in the sticks with small(ish) children and that my cultural life ended, or at least went on hold, c.2003. She took […]
Continue readingBig companies have boards of directors, which provide governance, a wide range of expertise and access to useful networks. When they work well, board meetings are focused, challenging, supportive and collaborative. (That’s a big ask, and they don’t always work well.) Creating a board of directors for your book is a bit over the top, […]
Continue readingAfter I’d posted yesterday’s blog on the IKEA effect and how you can use it to your advantage when writing your book, it occurred to me that there’s another interesting was of leveraging the phenomenon in publishing: personalization, where the customer co-creates the book to some extent. Two great examples of this are LostMyName, now Wonderbly, […]
Continue readingFor years I’ve been encouraging authors to get other people involved in their books way before publication. There are a number of reeasons for this: accountability – as soon as you tell other people you’re writing a book you feel an obligation to make some progress, if only to save embarassment when they ask how […]
Continue readingI’ve just interviewed Matt Watkinson, author of The Grid: The Decision-Making Tool for Every Business (Including Yours), for the Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast. He’s an extraordinarily nice bloke: today’s interview had to be rescheduled when my call recording tech failed last week (thankfully I realised before we’d got too far into the interview), and […]
Continue readingI was speaking to someone yesterday who bemoaned the fact that ‘these days’ you need a platform, that it’s virtually impossible just to write a really good book and have its merit recognised by a waiting world. I’m not sure that was EVER true, frankly, but in a world where attention is at a premium […]
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