When you start a chapter, especially early chapters in your book, you’ll often face a very specific writing challenge: Fitting everything in the first paragraph. The problem, you’ll find, is that you have too many things to say, and you can’t cram them all in at once. Say you’re writing a book titled How to [...]

Back in 2009, as I was interviewing people for the book I published last week, Merchants of Virtue, I discovered that designing and developing a new book has a lot in common with designing and developing a new chair. In one of my interviews, I talked with Tom Niergarth, head of New Product Commercialization at [...]

In Stairway to Earth, I recommend that authors create a positioning journal. The journal is a place to pour out your thoughts, to muse, brainstorm, dream, and scheme.  And it is essential in the book-development process—well before you write the proposal—so you’re clear on where you’re going. What do you address in a journal? The [...]

I periodically get bored while writing—bored, that is, while I’m actually composing. I can be disciplined when I have to be. So if my yawning and disinterest persist, I force myself to commit words to the screen, however uninspiring, laying down one outline point after another. Some caffeine always helps, of course. Over the years [...]

In my upcoming book, Stairway to Earth, I urge authors to write not only a proposal for publishers. I also urge them to write a pitch. If you’re going to submit a proposal to a publisher yourself—or your agent is going to do it for you—you’ll need to pitch your idea in a cover letter [...]

Have you ever noticed how, when people talk about “writer’s block,” they seem to be referring to a single thing. But if you listen closely you realize they are talking about many things? “Writer’s block” is like “the flu.” It is a catchall phrase. It is also like the flu in that the only way [...]

A few notorious books published as nonfiction in the last few years have brought to light a little known fact: Publishers don’t fact-check their books. They take their authors’ words for the truth. The latest brouhaha came in the spring over Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson and his coauthor allegedly stretched and fabricated [...]

I’ve spent many years on both sides of the editorial fence, as writer and editor. And the editor, whatever else his or her skills, has a big advantage in working with a manuscript because he or she comes at text without mental baggage. The writer carries steamer trunks’ worth of baggage – and tends to [...]

When I wrote an article in 1998 for CFO magazine about Herman Miller, Inc., I interviewed CFO Brian Walker and his top people. At the time, I didn’t record my interviews. I figured it was too much of a hassle to deal with the tape machine. Too much work to listen to the tapes. Too [...]

In the Wall Street Journal magazine, superagent Andrew Wylie recently wrote, “Fifty percent of American writers’ sales should be outside the U.S.” (See Wylie’s article by clicking here.) This notion would sound familiar to business people. For many years, business leaders have been saying their companies should reap 50 percent of their revenues from abroad. [...]