Newsletter week 32. How to think about ideas, book bans, AI killing everything, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Full-stack idea development: don’t be an ASS or a PEON Authors have ideas. Authors have expertise. But unless those ideas and expertise reinforce each other properly, you can’t build a good book…
Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, editorial director of the publisher Berrett-Koehler, recently wrote that if you love your editor, they’re probably not doing a good job. This contradicts my experience. Great writers love great editors — and hate them at the same time. It’s a strange relationship. An analogy Imagine that you are working with a personal trainer…
A clash between two rights characterizes every story you read in a nonfiction book. You, the reader, have a right to the truth. And the people you’re reading about have a right to privacy. The author walks the narrow path between those rights. But it becomes even more challenging if the right to privacy is…
Newsletter 31. Looking back on your career, in praise of college writing centers, the disruption of a Canadian bookseller, plus three people to follow, three brand new books to read, and a plug for the imperfect manuscript. My emotional résumé I’ve been helping a friend with her résumé. The hard part is shoehorning valuable experiences…
It’s happened yet again. A book I’m working on is in “title hell.” What is title hell? It is the condition in which the important decision-makers on a book cannot agree on an appropriate title. And it is hell, because when you are in this condition, you tend to go around and around in maddening…
I recently got this note from a reader who wants to write a book to help others (slightly edited here for space): Dear Dr. Wobs: I’ve been writing a document I call “My Life With a [specific medical device]”, which I’d like to make available at no cost to other people living with one or…
Newsletter week 30. Why bother writing a book? Also, Paul Krugman on why AI and immigrants won’t kill the job market, the EU regulates AI, Indigo on the block, plus three people to follow and three books to read. In praise of books Everyone who has ever written a book has, at some point, asked…
The hybrid publisher Wonderwell is ceasing operations and becoming an imprint of a competitor: Greenleaf Book Group. I’ll let you know what happened, why, and what it means for the publishing industry and for you, if you’re considering publishing with a hybrid. Start with this: this is not going to be an objective post, because…
In her article “Everyone’s a sellout now,” Vox’s Rebecca Jennings laments the poor, sad situation of authors who’ve found that only by selling out and promoting themselves can they generate books sales. Some notable excerpts: The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from nine-to-five middle…