‘It starts off as me working out what I think, and then it becomes something I’m going to share with other people… The point at which I allow myself to start imagining a reader is really important.’ Writing isn’t just a tool for communication, and your book isn’t just a…
They told Christian Busch that it would be ‘academic suicide’ to do his PhD on the science of luck. But it turns out that luck isn’t a random force at all: the results may be unpredictable, but the process of becoming luckier is a simple matter of creating more connections…
What DO commissioning editors look for in business book proposals? Eloise Cook is the publisher responsible for Pearson’s business list, and in this conversation she reveals what makes a proposal worth pursuing (and also what makes her quietly file it under B for Bin). We also talk about the future…
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ It might not sound like the most positive of mantras, but that simple question lies behind Sonya Barlow’s astonishing success: one of 2020’s Most Influential Women in Tech, a top 50 BAME entrepreneur, LinkedIn’s Changemaker 2021 for Gender Diversity and Inclusion and Marie Claire’s…
What’s the magic by which the Word document you’ve been working on for so many weeks and months is transformed into a book? Jo Bottrill, head of Newgen UK, is a book production expert who’s worked with thousands of authors to perform exactly that magic, and in this conversation he…
“Talk to anybody who will listen about your idea. That’s the way that you improve it.” Michael Buckworth is an anomaly: a lawyer who’s also an entrepreneur. He founded the only UK law firm working exclusively with startups, and he’s the author of Built on Rock: The busy entrepreneur’s legal…
‘I came to writing really late. I was told I couldn’t write… I had no first degree. I came to learning at 40 plus with an idea that I couldn’t write, but I still loved learning. So it’s been a total joy. It’s like, wow, you can do that too,…
‘It’s not that you’re wrong. You’re just no longer right. And that’s a big difference.’ Michael Leckie has built his career on asking good questions at the right time, and in his book The Heart of Transformation he talks about ‘operationalizing curiosity’ as one of the capabilities that drive successful…
“We sometimes forget the value, or the power, or the impact of words because, ‘Hey, we’re speaking the whole time, or we’re writing the whole time… it’s only me, how powerful can it be?’ So we say things that are the wrong things to say, or we miss our opportunities.…
When you’re writing a business book – or indeed any business writing – WHAT you’re saying is the most important thing, of course. But HOW you say it can make all the difference as to how people read it. I asked a group of editors what really pushed their buttons,…
