What does a it cost to get a book chapter written? There’s an eightfold variation in cost depending on the source material and process. Let’s assume you’re working with a writer who charges $250 per hour. (I charge more, other writers may charge less, but let’s keep this number because it’s easy to calculate with.)…
Great writers, thinkers, and researchers see patterns that others cannot. They then tell you about what they see and what you can do about it. Of course, of the things AI is best at is recognizing patterns. Does this mean writers, thinkers, and researchers are going to become obsolete? Not quite. First off, people see…
Newsletter 37: Why sharing and not hoarding is the only path to happiness, translators vs. AI, 500-billion word training set, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Why nobody owns anything We spend much of our lives striving to own things. We want to own a house, a car, a smartphone, a…
Authors have often debuted their book content as a speech. So why not use those PowerPoint (or Keynote) slides from the speech as graphics in the book? After all, they’re perfectly aligned with the content and they’re instantly available. If you’re using Microsoft Word for text, why not use Microsoft’s PowerPoint for graphics? It’s a…
Book publishing nearly always requires a team of people: editors, copy editors, designers, publishers, publicists, researchers, and so on. But when I’m hired as a developmental editor, a coach, or a ghostwriter, I have only only one rule: I work for the author. Life is just simpler if you serve only one master. What does…
Newsletter 37: Ignorance amid abundant knowledge, traumatic writer’s block, burgeoning book bans, plus three people to follow and three books to read. The problem with ignorance Ignorance bugs the hell out of me. The urge to eliminate ignorance is the driving force in my career and much of my life. This is a good thing….
A recent piece by Maris Kreizman in LitHub bemoans the rise of “gig work” in publishing — and in particular the freelancer-driven model being pursued by the new publishing venture Author’s Equity. What naive and misguided claptrap. What’s Kreizman’s objection? In an essay titled “Publishing Models That Rely on Gig Workers Are Bad For Everybody,”…
I never write anything without the thread in mind. What is the thread? It is the throughline of any blog post, essay, or book chapter. Start with the end in mind. What is the point? Write the title and the lede based on that. Then, the setup. What is the problem? What is have I…
A new politics arises from the ashes of the American disaster, AI proponents and doomsayers wrestle, books as chatbots, plus three people to follow, three books to read, and a chance to see me debate at Berkeley. The inspirational rise of the muscular middle I’ve freakin’ had it with the American political system. It’s time…