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Category Archives for "TBMB"

0 Surfing the (Design)Crowd

Although I had the cover for This Book Means Business designed some time ago, once I’d finished the book I couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t quite right. The book has ended up with more attitude than I’d expected, it’s got personality. As I wrote it, I found myself writing more confidently, more in my own […]

0 From page to stage – your signature talk

There’s lots of reasons to write a book, but one I hear again and again is ‘to get speaking gigs’. There’s no doubt that a book makes you more interesting to anyone who needs to book a speaker: it’s proof that you’ve developed your thinking and have something to say. Even the fact that you’re […]

0 How long should your book be?

When you complete a book proposal form for a publisher, one of the key fields you must complete is ‘extent’: how long will your book be, in thousands of words? Publishers need this information so they can create a p&l, a profit and loss spreadsheet for your book, to see if they can make a […]

0 Speedy reading

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 […]

0 Building a brain trust

Big 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, […]

0 The IKEA effect for your book

For 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 […]

0 Commonplacing

We’ve been discussing the ‘best’ way to make notes in the This Book Means Business Bootcamp – in quotes as of course your best way may be very different to my best way, and frankly my best way one day might be different to my best day on another. One of the bootcampers brought up […]

0 Wonderful workbooks

Recognise this thought process? ‘I want this to be more than just a book you read. I want people to engage with it, to be able to reflect and scribble down thoughts and answer questions as they go: I know, I’ll put space for them to write in the book!’ It’s a good thought process, […]

0 Your author biography

One of the hardest days of the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge is Day 5: author biography. It’s like writing your CV for that first job: how to come across as confident and credible without sounding cocky? Part of the problem with writing the ‘About the Author’ piece is seeing yourself as an author in […]

0 Less is more

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 […]

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