'I thought it was going to be a 20% update and I think the content has changed by about 80%.'
This might sound familiar to anyone who's sat down to update their book. But this conversation isn't just for you if you're considering a second edition: Karen Williams is talking about her bestselling Book Marketing Made Simple, and this conversation is packed with insights and ideas for marketing your business book from day 1.
From tactical tools to timeless principles, discover best practice in modern marketing - including thoughts on AI - and the enduring joy of writing buddies and post-its.
'We need, at the moment, mavericks. We need people of independent thought, courageous, wanting to do things differently, but we need to do that in service of others.'
Mavericks write their own rules. Modern mavericks write their own rules of success.
Ed Haddon, author of The Modern Maverick, helps people think more deeply and more courageously about what success means to them. What really matters - in their private lives and in the world around them, as well as in their professional lives? As an elite athlete, corporate rebel, and the founder of the first B Corp-certified coaching practice in the UK, he's walking the talk, and might just inspire you to change your own life...
In a sense writing a business book – any book, really – is quintessentially about finding and using your voice. You're talking across time and space to a reader for a conversation that lasts for hours; admittedly a bit of a one-sided conversation, but it's not possible to talk to someone for tens of thousands of words without them having a sense of your voice in their head.
So how can you use that voice most effectively? Here's some advice from some of the best writers in the business books business to give you some ideas...
Listen in, and discover how to take your voice from meh to aMAZing!
When Lucy Ryan's research revealed that midlife women were walking out of corporates in droves at the same age that the men around them were stepping into senior leadership positions, she knew it would make a great PhD topic. There was a massive data gap, and a clear benefit to organizations in understanding why one of their most valuable talent pools was quietly disappearing. Yet as she searched for a supervisor, time and time again she was told the research was 'unpublishable'.
Luckily Lucy is made of sterner stuff, and her research has given us not only a new understanding of why midlife women are revolting against the constraints and biases of corporate life [hint: it's not because they 'lack ambition'], but what changes leaders can make to retain their invaluable talent and experience.
In this conversation we talk through her findings, and also the tricky process of translating a PhD dissertation into a practical, inspiring book for every leader. Be prepared to be enraged, but also hugely entertained.
'There's all this academic, peer-reviewed, time-tested academic evidence as to how we should invest, and yet we have a whole industry that is trying to get us to do more or less the very opposite.'
Today more than ever, if you want a comfortable retirement, it's up to you to put the thinking and the work in. And the sooner the better. Financial journalist Robin Powell has made it his mission to counter the misinformation and cut through the jargon, and the result is How to Fund the Life you Want (co-authored with Jonathan Hollow).
He talks to me about his own journey to financial literacy, via journalism, and how he went about turning his findings into a practical and readable book that could really make a difference to someone's life. We even touch on what happens when co-authors disagree!
"In everything we write, we choose a voice."
Poets and novelists talk a lot about their writing 'voice', but nonfiction writers, and especially business book writers, can write a full manuscript without giving it a thought. Which is a shame, because as Anne Janzer - copywriter, ghostwriter and business book writer - knows more than most, being intentional about your voice is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal if you want to write a book that doesn't just tell the reader a bunch of facts, but engages them in a way that might just change their life.
As well as learning more about how to choose and develop your writing voice, you'll also discover how to go about one of the best ways EVER for creating content, building engagement and crafting a marketing hook: carrying out original research.
If you're going to write a business book and you want to do it well, you shouldn't miss this.
"When we're talking about Do Deal, we're really talking about the verb of how you deal with people... as an ongoing kind of living thing."
Richard Hoare didn't set out to become an expert on negotiation. In fact his first attempt at negotiation, when he was offered a poorly paid first job in the music industry involved, he admits, no negotiation at all. But after a career at the top of legal services in the music industry he's learned a thing or two, and recognized the need for a short, straightforward book that set out the principles of successful negotiation in a way that anyone could grasp and use.
Spoiler alert: It's not about getting your own way, it's about uncovering value and nurturing relationships. And because it was written with a co-author, the book involved some negotiation along the way itself.
In this week's conversation Richard shares his tactics for writing collaboratively, and indeed writing at all alongside a busy work schedule, together with some practical and profound insights on the art of the (better) deal.
'I'm not going to live to be 10,000 years old, so I'd rather just write material that someone's actually going to use. So top-down writing works for me because it's a very economical way to write."
Dr Rachel Lawes is the world's leading expert in semiotics and its application in the realm of marketing. (If you have no idea what that means, don't worry: I asked her for the 'explain-it-like-I'm-five' introduction and she did it brilliantly.)
But as well as taking in psychology, human behaviour, cultural dynamics, and the examination of societal constructs, we talk in gritty detail about her writing process. Rachel's straightforward and 'economical' top-down approach, together with her obvious delight in taking on a book-sized project ('The best bit about writing is reading... Your only job is to read your heart out for four months and write about what it makes you think about the world. What a treat.'), makes for an even-more-than-usually practical and inspiring episode.
Get the kettle on and grab a notepad and pencil...
When your work is about experience - helping people access a different physical and emotional state so that they can reconnect with their embodied, instinctual wisdom - you do it most effectively when you're in the room together. How can you possibly translate that somatic, relational, experiential work into words on a page?
That was the challenge facing Nicholas Janni, and he rose to it so impressively that Leader as Healer was named Business Book of the Year 2023 at the recent BBA awards. In this week's episode he speaks to me about the challenge of that translation process, and the somatic experience of flow in writing itself.
"What's important about creativity is not novelty, but difference. I want something different from what is happening now, and difference is much easier to discover because difference means different from now."
There's a lot of mystique around creativity, but for practical people - people like scientists and engineers - being able to have good new ideas reliably is vitally important in a fast-changing world. Luckily, there's a process for that, and Dennis Sherwood has put it into an award-winning book.
In this generous and thoughtful conversation, we talk about that process for discovering difference (which makes, incidentally, a GREAT exploratory writing prompt), and we debate the order of writing and thinking. Fittingly, we land in different places here: what do YOU think?
"It's not thinking on your feet, it's listening on your feet. Yes and, what are you saying? How can I build on that? How can I move in the direction that we are going to go together?"
If the thought of trying to be funny at work brings you out in a rash, don't panic: I have it on good authority from Neil Mullarkey that there's no need to dress up as a chicken or do karaoke. And he should know. Co-founder of Europe's top improv troupe, the Comedy Store Players, Neil has spent many years sharing the principles of improv with business leaders to improve their confidence, communication, and creativity.
Neil's new book In the Moment is a call to embrace the importance of listening and co-creating in the moment, a key principle of improv. It's not about being funny per se, but rather about fostering collaboration, navigating ambiguity, and embracing vulnerability. In this context, humour enhances human connections, builds rapport, and fosters creativity - the elements, in fact, that we need most in our workplaces today.
Catherine Garrod led Sky to become the most inclusive employer in the UK. Her message is clear: if you're not consciously including everyone, you're unconsciously excluding someone. And the rewards of conscious inclusion are extraordinary, from employee and customer satisfaction to future-proofing organizations in our ever-evolving world.
When it came to publishing her book, Catherine was determined to walk her talk, ensuring both language and design were as accessible as possible. She also reveals how she managed the delicate dance between perfectionism and deadlines, and learned how important it is an author to keep your sights on the reader and the difference you want to make.
No, not the Michelangelo biography by Irving Stone, but the highs and lows of the maddening, marvellous process of writing a business book. In this best bits episode I pick out the pearls from the last few conversations, and this time the common theme is the pain and pleasure of writing a book, the unrelenting difficulty of it, and the extraordinary joy and meaning it provides. Often all in the same moment.
Whether you're agonising over your manuscript or feeling ecstatic about the progress you're making you'll relate to all of this, and if you're lacking motivation, you'll find it here in spades.
With insights from:
Imagine what Michelangelo could have achieved if he'd listened to this...
'Everything at its core has to be one of those three things: a great insight, a great story, or a great practical approach.'
Adam Bryant, creator of the New York Times's Corner Office column, has interviewed a LOT of top leaders, but not in the way they expected. He ask them about leadership, rather than strategy, and their own leadership in particular: questions that allow them to articulate answers they haven't seen before.
In this fascinating conversation we explore how he's built on this journalistic approach to write a series of books, and how writing in public builds credibility, expands networks, and creates a perpetual motion machine for authorship.
If you're interested in leadership and writing, and if you love a good metaphor riot, this is unmissable.
'What you leave behind is what you write... no one talks about the article that changed their life, and they're not read for decades after they've been written. [Books are] foundational.'
Working at the intersection of research and application, Professor Alex Hill has learned that it's not enough to have the 'Ta Dah' moment - you then need to have a good answer to the 'So What?' question. In this thoughtful conversation we talk about the principles of organizations that endure, the importance of naming ideas (and how to help people NOT misinterpret them), and the life-changing significance of finding out what it is you want to leave behind.
'A book is a job title that stays with you for life. I will forever be author of The Solutionists... This is your long tail. This is how you remain having influence in the world over time.'
If you ever feel like the problems of the world are overwhelming and that you are powerless against the injustice, apathy, greed and prejudice out there, this is the conversation you need to listen to. Solitaire Townsend is a solutionist par excellence, and she empowers other people to become solutionists too, no matter how insignificant they think their own actions might be.
And part of having an impact on the world, it turns out, is stepping up to write a book that will exponentially increase your influence. Don't get angry: get writing.
Publishing as an industry has more than its fair share of extraordinary people, but there are few to rival Richard Charkin. Over his 50-year career he's worked in almost every area of publishing from children's book to scientific journals, and has not just witnessed but been instrumental in steering the industry from its gentleman's club background to the hi-tech, diverse, commercially competitive sector it is today.
But after decades of senior leadership in major publishing houses, he's just taken on his greatest challenges: launching a start-up publishing company and writing a book himself. I asked him how that's going, and why he decided against an index...
'I thought I was sitting down to write a book. I was not sitting down to write a book. I was sitting down to create idea stewardship. And that's a much bigger exercise.'
Melissa Romo is passionate about the opportunity that remote working presents - inclusion, access to talent, quality of life, etc etc. But as a remote worker herself, as well as the leader of a distributed team, she also knows it's not all 'roses and tulips'. Missing from all the discussion of remote work she was hearing was the emotional fallout she recognized in herself and others: guilt, paranoia, loneliness depression and boredom. If we don't solve for those, all the fancy collaboration systems in the world won't help us do our best work and be our best selves.
The result is Your Resource is Human, a deeply researched and highly practical handbook for making remote work work at the relational level. In this conversation, she tells me what it took, and what it means, to shape and share those ideas.
Really recognize who your audience is... [and] parcel up the pieces, the topics, the themes according to their needs. Not according to what I know, but what they need to know.'
Susan Doering's career progression mirrored that of many women: a successful early career, derailed by childcare commitments and domestic expectations, followed by a period of 'happenstance' - doing jobs as she was asked, discovering her own skills, and starting to build her confidence and qualifications along the way, until she'd created a place in the world where she could excel and where she loved what she was doing.
And then she wrote the book she wished she'd had herself, to help other women achieve the same.
Along the way she discovered how to shift away from academic writing, how to structure ideas, and how to learn to love the long, long process of marketing a book...
'I have worked with a coach in the past who used to tell me things that have been very helpful, like it is your responsibility to the book to try and communicate its concepts out there, if you believe it is that helpful, you need to be sharing it with people. These are the things that I repeat to myself every day as I prepare to post one thing on Instagram.'
Writing a book means marketing a book, and marketing a book means becoming visible as an author. And that isn't always easy, even when you have a huge following.
Eloise Skinner knows what it takes to write books (But Are You Alive? is her third), but she also knows that the writing alone isn't enough. To share her hard-won insights into what gives life meaning, which she's discovered through an extraordinary professional and personal life - including her work as a lawyer, as a psychotherapist and existential therapist and her time in an urban monastic community - she had to get comfortable being uncomfortable. In this thoughtful conversation, she tells me what that involves, and how she gets over herself to get her message out there.
'A lot of writers tend to shy away from the gritty parts of [entrepreneurship], the pain parts, the price part. I thought, Why not, I'm going to go for it. So I did.'
If you're an entrepreneur, you'll know about the price that you pay each day to sustain your enterprise: sometimes gladly, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes without even realising it. And you'll also know about the pain that's often involved. But did you realize that there are different types of pain, and that they demand different things of you?
In this deeply personal and practical conversation, Steven Adjei offers a thoughtful way of assessing and responding to these various different kinds of entrepreneurial pain. We also discuss the too-often unheard lessons from African entrepreneurs, how to enrich the prose of a business book with poetry and music, and the vital importance of balancing compassion and competence.
When you run a small business - especially a retail business - it can feel very much as if a tiger has not just come to tea, but moved in. It's always hungry, often unpredictable, and it makes you feel a little, well, nervous.
Luckily, Catherine Erdly is an expert in taming tigers, and in this week's conversation she shares with me some of the ways in which she helps small retail businesses do the same (and why that matters for everyone).
We also talk about why the tiger is such a powerful metaphor, and how to write about difficult topics in an accessible way.
It's GRRRRREAT!
In a world where so many opt to lean back - to disengage, scroll the feed, consume and comment rather than create, plug into the playlist rather than connect - here's a rousing call to lean in to the work that matters. As a colleague, a leader, a writer and a reader, what does it mean to lean in, and how do we keep ourselves from leaning in so far that we end up falling over?
Hear from:
An unmissable, unforgettable best bits episode.
'You need a higher level of challenge and truth telling if you have set the bar high for yourself and your organization.'
Liam Black has become known as the 'gloves-off mentor' for his no-nonsense, straight-talking way of supporting social entrepreneurs and purpose-driven leaders. When the work you do matters so much to people's lives, it can be hard to see situations objectively, or to keep any kind of work/life balance.
But capturing that voice in a book isn't easy. In this characteristically direct conversation, Liam shares the awfulness of writing - those wet Wednesday afternoons when the words die on the page - and the joy when the magic happens, the vulnerability of putting your book out into the world and the way it creates new connections when it's there.
Probably the most truthful conversation about writing you'll hear all week.
'We've all been missing a trick, because sport has been showing us day in, day out, not just how to improve, perform and achieve, but how to do so on a sustained basis, in a way that ensures that we can consistently deliver results when it matters.'
Catherine Baker qualified as a tennis coach before she qualified as a lawyer, and throughout her career has been fascinated by the interconnectedness of sporting and professional excellence. In her new book Staying the Distance, though, she argues that by drawing lessons for business only from the high performance we see, we're missing out on the reality that underpins that performance: what elite athletes do when noone's watching, the routines and rest that allow them to sustain that performance.
It turns out this is also true for writing...