Bernadette Jiwa writes brilliant books. Books like Difference, Marketing: A Love Story, and Hunch. And one of the first things you notice about them is that they’re very short. Beautifully, enticingly, ‘it-would-so-easy-to-read-this short. I asked her about it when I interviewed her recently on The Extraordinary Business Book Club. ‘You know what I noticed, I […]
Continue reading…check it out online. We’re doing titles today in the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge (yes, I know it’s Day 4, but the title has to fall out of the thinking we do on reader and summary, so although the title may be at the top of the proposal document, it’s not the starting point […]
Continue readingIt’s Day 2 of the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge, and we’re focusing on defining and evidencing the target market. This is a tough job, one of the chewiest of the whole challenge (and that’s saying something….) but it’s also one of the most valuable. The typical mistake most non-fiction authors make is to keep […]
Continue readingAfter the colouring books for grown-ups trend there have been a few attempts to find the Next Big Thing that could be smuggled in under the ‘mindfulness’ banner: dot-to-dot was one of the most dismal, in my opinion, but I’m more cheerful about a new title in the works from Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint: Scriptorium: Healing […]
Continue readingHow many times have you said that over the last year/month/week/day? If your life is like mine, saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else, so you need to budget your time carefully. I spend my life helping people create books and put out regular content to build their business, knowing […]
Continue readingI stumbled today upon a delicious article in the Guardian about librarians who buck the twinset-and-specs stereotype, or who subvert it. One of my favourites is the YA librarian with the Dewey Decimal code for librarians – 020.23 – tattooed on her upper arm. I’ve worked with librarians throughout my career and they are some […]
Continue readingA truly magical day: the first in-person meeting of my inaugural This Book Means Business Mastermind group. It’s a small group of four, all business owners with distinctive ideas and approaches, great expertise, and a vision for growing their business and transforming their visibility with the book they’re writing. We’re focusing on four areas of […]
Continue readingYou have to feel a little bit sorry for Ivanka Trump. She’s brought out a book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the rules for success. So far so good: there aren’t enough business books by women. Even if I did have a stab of unease at the title. (Here’s a useful rule of thumb: whenever a […]
Continue readingToday, 23 April 2017 – Shakespeare’s birthday (and Roy Orbinson’s, apparently), St George’s Day, and this year the London Marathon day too – is also World Book Day. And more importantly, since I’m posting this rather late, World Book Night. All across the country people are pressing a copy of their favourite book into the […]
Continue readingI’ve always known I’m not alone in my book-sniffing habit – when I worked at Waterstones, I caught several of my colleagues sticking their heads into freshly opened boxes to breathe in deeply that glorious fresh, woody, inky scent – but I hadn’t realised how many people take bibliosmia even more seriously than I do. For […]
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