'The absence of healthy conflict is a large part of why people will leave jobs, because it's not where the growth happens.'

How do you feel about hard conversations at work? 

Our approaches to conflict are often less than smart. Whether your tendency is towards avoidance or aggression, unless you're actively rejecting 'enforced harmony' for an environment in which people are able to disagree well, you're not getting the best out of your individuals or your organization. (Plus, given that most people are so bad at it, mastering hard conversations is the ultimate leadership edge.)

Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst, co-authors of Smart Conflict: How to Have Hard Conversations at Work, are experts at diagnosing the wide range of conflict styles and helping leaders make better decisions about how they adjust their approach for the situation and the person in front of them.

But could they walk the talk when it came to the ultimate stress test: writing a book together for the first time? Spoiler alert: yes. But what they discovered in the process will be gold to anyone considering a co-authored project. 

Fresh (if you can call it that) from the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2025, I'm here this week with a candid look at what we and other publishers were talking about over those three hectic days - global sales, routes to market, Amazon and its new algorithm, AI, digital library platforms, translation rights and the evolution of metadata - and what all of that means for authors. 

Plus why I HAD to go and have a good time each night - publishing runs on ideas, caffeine and relationships, and the Frankfurt Book Fair delivers all of these in spades. 

'At some point, the right to be you ends and your obligation to others begins.'

'Just be yourself.' It's the most uncontroversial advice in the world, right? 

Wrong, says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. He's a man who likes to pick fights with universally accepted truths, because of course they're almost always more nuanced than we like to think. 

In his new book Don't Be Yourself, he points out that unfiltered authenticity is a privilege reserved for the powerful, and it's not just selfish and a terrible career move for the rest of us but also limits our potential - because we grow by exploring our future possible selves, not just repeating who we've always been.

He's also a man with a nuanced opinion of writing: simultaneously 'the best way of... actually organizing your thoughts' and 'a lonely, slow, and occasionally masochistic pursuit, like knitting, except with more existential dread and less wool.'

I think we can all relate to this. 

 'At the lowest end of what a business book could be is, yes, it's a calling card... [But] what if your book was transformational?'

Parul Bavishi - editor, former literary scout, co-founder of the London Writers' Salon and host of the Writers' Hour podcast - knows something about the realities of writing and the power of creative community.

Writing can be a lonely business, but in the LWS's regular 'Writers' Hour' Parul has seen the extraordinary power of 'body doubling' - simply watching others write can be all the encouragement and support a writer needs to get unstuck. And there are even more potent aspects of community such as accountability and critique that can take your writing to the next level.

We also talk about the genius that is the five-minute outline, the agony that is finishing and shipping a book, and how to ensure that your nonfiction book clearly sets out (and fulfils) a promise of transformation to the reader. Because if you're going to put all that time and emotional labour into writing a book, you might as well make it one that changes people's lives.