In this post, Jon discusses the inclusive nature of his new book, The Power of Conflict, what he hopes readers get out of the experience, and more!

Name: Jon Taffer
Literary agent: Byrd Leavell, UTA
Book title: The Power of Conflict: Speak Your Mind and Get the Results You Want
Publisher: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Release date: May 3, 2022
Genre/category: Business & Self-Help
Previous titles: Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself and Raise the Bar
Elevator pitch for the book: In an era of increasing division and discord, this book offers a guide on how to use conflict as a constructive tool—how to listen empathetically and engage respectfully while upholding your principles.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Bar Rescue taught me how constructive and often life-changing conflict can be. Over the past half-dozen years political discourse has become so divisive and toxic, a type of conflict that lacks dignity and serves no purpose. Look at society and social media today, and you’ll find people who either bully their viewpoints or are too scared to express them.

Ideas are growth, especially if they advance solutions. My whole motivation for writing The Power of Conflict was to create a constructive book that empowered people not to fear engagement.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication, and did the idea change during the process?

The book started with the title and premise. I worked on it for a little over two years, and it found a publisher very quickly. The core idea itself didn’t change during the process, but I learned a lot of information which shaped it and made it more powerful.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process?

This book is written for everyone, and because of that it was important to make it as inclusive as possible. I didn’t want anyone to dismiss it because it pushed any overtly political opinions. The book does contain some historical anecdotes that show the need for conflict—if America didn’t engage in World War II, for example, we might all be under fascist rule today.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Through eight seasons of my TV show Bar Rescue, I’ve been engaged in conflict all the time, but it was more spontaneous and almost subliminal. Most conflict is in the moment. Analyzing it, picking it apart, is a fascinating exercise.

One of the surprising things I learned, from speaking with neurosurgeons and other doctors, is the effect of holding your feelings in. Being submissive as a method for avoiding conflict can actually have physically unhealthy consequences.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I have two main goals: To empower those who fear conflict to stand up for their principles with confidence and comfort, and to help change the approach of those who engage in undignified and purposeless conflict that just alienates people who have different views.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Relatability isn’t just about selling books; it’s critical for connecting with people. In the world of political books, it’s all about targeting one side or the other. The core message of this book is one impacting all of humanity: When we engage in constructive conflict, with open ears and an open mind, we all walk away respecting the other side. When books are inclusive for all, their ideas have a wider impact.

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In the years immediately following the launch of the Kindle in 2007, it looked to many like the physical book could indeed suffer the same fate as the vinyl LP, as e-book sales surged. But it soon became clear that the e-book surge was going to be short-lived: By 2012, the rapid growth of e-books had come to an abrupt halt. For some kinds of books, especially genre fiction like romance, mystery, and sci-fi, e-books were by then accounting for a sizable proportion of sales—as much as 40–50 percent. But in other genres, like nonfiction and children’s books, e-books represented a much smaller percentage of sales, and that percentage was either leveling off or declining. If the digital revolution in publishing was about e-books, then it seemed that this was, at best, a stalled revolution. In any case, it certainly didn’t look like a re-run of what had happened in the music industry.

However, the digital revolution in publishing was never only, or even primarily, about e-books: E-books were just one aspect of a much more complex and varied series of transformations that were disrupting the publishing world. In Book Wars, I take the reader on a journey through the decades of disruption that began around 2000 and continues unabated today, a period that has witnessed an enormous proliferation of new ventures and initiatives which, taken together, have radically altered the landscape of contemporary publishing. The world of books today looks very different from the way it looked 30 or 40 years ago. Among the many changes, three stand out as particularly significant.

Order your copy of Book Wars by John B. Thompson

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1. Amazon Online Retail

First was the rise of Amazon and the transformation of the retail side of the book business. Amazon was a child of the digital revolution—it wouldn’t have existed without digitization and the internet. In an astonishingly short time period, Amazon grew from its humble origins as a small tech startup in a Seattle garage to become the most powerful organization the world of books had ever known. Today, Amazon accounts for around 45 percent of all print book sales in the US and more than 75 percent of all e-book sales, and for many publishers, around half—in some cases, more—of their sales are accounted for by a single customer, Amazon. Never before in the 500-year history of book publishing has there been a retailer with this kind of market share, and with market share comes power, including the power to negotiate favorable terms with suppliers and to command the attention of readers. It’s hard to over-state the significance of this development: Its consequences are profound, not only for publishers and for other booksellers who struggle to compete with Amazon but also for the whole ecology of the publishing world, including the ways in which books are made visible to readers and discovered by them.

2. Self-Publishing Boom

A second enormous change has been the explosion of self-publishing. Of course, self-publishing is not new: It can be traced back to the so-called vanity presses that emerged in the early and mid-twentieth century. But the new age of self-publishing that was ushered in by the digital revolution is very different from the old vanity presses. The key idea that underpins this new age is the idea that authors who want to self-publish their work should not have to pay for the privilege, and the organizations that facilitate self-publishing should not be making money by charging fees to authors. On the contrary, self-publishing organizations or platforms should be there to help authors publish their work, and these platforms would pay authors if and when their work sells, taking a commission on sales to cover their costs. It was this simple but fundamental idea, turning on its head the relationship between author and self-publishing organization, that underpinned the explosion in self-publishing that occurred from the early 2000s on, starting with pioneering organizations like Lulu and Smashwords and continuing through the establishment of Amazon’s self-publishing platforms, CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing, and including many other platforms and services. The world of self-publishing is now an enormously complicated world in its own right—a parallel universe that exists alongside the world of traditional publishing and that has grown enormously in recent years. Quite apart from the sheer volume of self-publishing output, the growth of this sector has altered the traditional power structures of the publishing world. The established publishers and agents who have long acted as gatekeepers in the publishing world, deciding which authors and projects should be published and on what terms, could now be bypassed by following entirely new pathways to publication that had been opened up by the digital revolution. Of course, publishing a book is one thing, getting people to notice and buy it is quite another, and traditional publishers continue to have much more marketing and sales clout than most self-published authors. But there are many indie authors who have managed to earn appreciable amounts of money from their writing, even if the commercially successful indie authors still represent a tiny fraction of the total. Apart from the financial rewards, the growth of self-publishing has massively increased the range of options available to writers, creating a more varied publishing environment in which authors can move back and forth between traditional publishing and self-publishing, depending on what they want to achieve and the options available to them at the time.

[John B. Thompson: On Researching Changes in the Book Publishing Industry.]

3. Reader-Centric Business Model

The third change is in many ways the most fundamental: the digital revolution transformed the broader information and communication environment within which publishing existed, thereby creating both the necessity and the opportunity for publishers to adapt to a new and rapidly changing world of information and communication flows. For centuries, publishers had thought of themselves primarily as B2B businesses: They produced books and sold them to intermediaries in the book supply chain—to retailers and wholesalers. Publishers didn’t have a direct relationship with readers and they didn’t know much about them: The job of dealing with readers was left to the booksellers. But this traditional model of the publishing business was radically disrupted by the digital revolution. As competition from Amazon led to more and more bookstore closures, publishers realized that they could no longer count on physical bookstore to do what intermediaries in the traditional book supply chain had always done: make books visible and available to readers. They realized that they had to jettison the old model of the publisher as a bookseller-focused business and become more reader-centric: in other words, they had to re-orient their businesses in such a way that readers were not an afterthought but rather a central focus of their concern. And just as the digital revolution forced this shift upon publishers, it also made available to them a variety of new tools with which they could build direct channels of communication with readers and do so at scale. It is this fundamental shift in publishers’ self-understanding that is likely to be one of the most significant consequences of the digital revolution in publishing, one that will continue to play itself out in the years to come. 

The post Three Crucial Changes to the Book Publishing Industry appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In his new book, Book Wars, John B. Thompson documents the whirlwind changes of the book publishing industry in recent decades, from the advent of Amazon to the boom of self-publishing. He shares about his experiences researching the book in this author profile.

Name: John B. Thompson

Book title: Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing

Publisher: Polity

Expected release date: 7 May 2021

Genre/category: Nonfiction

Elevator pitch for the book: This book tells the story of how the digital revolution has transformed the world of book publishing, from the surge of e-books and the rise of Amazon to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks. It provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of digital disruption at the heart of one of our most important creative industries.

Previous titles by the author: Books in the Digital Age (2005) and Merchants of Culture (2010, 2012).

Order your copy of Book Wars by John B. Thompson.

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What prompted you to write this book?

During the last couple of decades, there’s been a lot of discussion about the impact of the digital revolution on creative industries like music, movies, and newspapers, but no one had tried to provide a clear analysis of what happened when the digital revolution began to disrupt the oldest of our media industries—the book publishing industry. There was a lot of vague speculation about “the end of the book” but no one was studying what was actually happening in the world of books. I had begun to do this in my book on the transformation of Anglo-American trade publishing, Merchants of Culture, but this book dealt with the changing structures of trade publishing over a longer time period, from roughly the 1960s to 2010. So I wanted to write a sequel to Merchants of Culture which was focused specifically on the impact of the digital revolution on the world of books.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It took quite a long time because I didn’t want to write yet another book that speculated vaguely about the death of print or the end of the book: I wanted to do some serious research on what was actually happening both within the publishing industry and on the margins of the field, so that I could base my account on an analysis of hard data and real-world developments. I began working on the project in 2012 and from 2013 to 2019 I did fieldwork in the US and the UK—in New York, Silicon Valley, London, and elsewhere. I did around 180 interviews with a wide range of individuals who are (or were) centrally involved in developments related to the digital transition in publishing, from the CEOs and senior managers of publishing houses and tech companies to the entrepreneurs who were pioneering startups of various kinds. Since I was working on a subject matter that was constantly changing, I had to be prepared for the possibility that some developments which seemed important at the outset would become less important over time, while other developments could emerge at any point. For example, while audiobooks have been around for some time, they have become much more important in recent years, facilitated by the widespread adoption of smartphones and the development of subscription services like Audible, so I needed to expand the scope of my research to make sure I was able to take account of this important development. Apart from the time-consuming activity of doing fieldwork, I also had to integrate my research and writing activities with my teaching and administrative duties as a university professor. I worked on the writing of the book from 2015 on, though the most intensive writing took place in 2019-2020, after the fieldwork had been completed. So it was, roughly speaking, eight years from the beginning of the project in 2012 to the completion of the book in 2020.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

There were not many surprises in the publishing process itself, but there were some special challenges. The most significant of these involved the visual representation of data. I sometimes use data to show the impact of the digital revolution in the book world—for example, to show what has actually happened with e-book sales, and how different genres of books have performed very differently. These days, we’ve become accustomed to creating graphs and charts in Excel where lines and bars can be differentiated by color—and with the entire spectrum available, it’s easy to create complex graphs and charts which are easy to read. But redesigning these graphs and charts so that they can be printed in a book using only black and shades of gray is not easy: This was one area where the publishing process became a learning experience and required some creative re-envisioning of my original material. I’ll let the reader to decide how successful our solutions were.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

There were many surprises over the course of the eight years: When you’re doing research of this kind, you simply don’t know what you’re going to find when you immerse yourself in the fieldwork. To give one example: The explosion of self-publishing is one of the most important consequences of the digital revolution, and I spent a lot of time trying to map out the world of self-publishing and understand how it works. This is uncharted territory: Self-publishing is a hidden continent that is largely invisible to the normal data-gathering agencies of the publishing industry. Uncovering this world and understanding how it works was a process of constant discovery, full of surprises. In 2016, I met up with “Data Guy” at a café in San Francisco; Data Guy is a software engineer and indie author who wrote under a pseudonym. He was making waves in the publishing world because he had developed an innovative method for estimating the sales of self-published e-books by scraping data from Amazon’s bestseller lists. His findings were truly startling: Here was compelling evidence that the world of self-publishing was generating many more bestselling e-books than most people—and especially most people in the world of traditional publishing—had assumed. His findings also demonstrated how dangerous it was to try to understand what was happening in the world of books by focusing only on the books published by traditional publishers.

[Read More: 25 Publishing FAQs for Writers.]

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers will gain a deeper understanding of the enormous changes that are taking place in the world of publishing today. The digital revolution has made the world of books and of publishing a much more complicated place, with many more players and many more options for both readers and writers. I hope my book will give readers and writers an overview of these changes, a cognitive map that will help them to make sense of and orientate themselves in this brave new world in which we are now living.

If you could share one piece of advice with other authors, what would it be?

Inform yourself! Most writers are focused on their creative work as writers, and they may know relatively little about the world of publishing upon which their creative work—and, in some cases, their livelihood—depends. This is perfectly understandable: Writing is hard enough as it is, and it seems sensible to outsource the work of publishing to agents, editors, and other publishing professionals. But publishing professionals have their own interests which may or may not coincide entirely with the interests of writers, and the better informed you are about the world of publishing and how it’s changing, the better equipped you’re going to be to make decisions about where and how to publish your books and, just as importantly, about how to make them visible in a world where the forms and spaces of visibility are changing. 

John B. Thompson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. His previous books include Merchants of Culture.

The post John B. Thompson: On Researching Changes in the Book Publishing Industry appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Dan Bullock is a language and communications specialist/trainer at the United Nations Secretariat training diplomats and global UN staff. He also serves as faculty teaching business communication, public relations, and business intelligence within the Division of Programs in Business at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. Dan was the Director of Corporate Communications at a leading NYC Public Relations firm and his corporate clients have included TD Bank and Pfizer.

Rod Sánchez is an award-winning Visual Communication Designer, Artist, and Filmmaker. He is a Lead User Experience/User Interface Designer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and his experience includes designing and illustrating book covers for Penguin Random House and Scholastic. He received design awards from: The New England Book Show and The Create Awards. Rod has directed and designed campaigns for: Disney, Nickelodeon, and Baruch College – CUNY.

In this post, Raúl Sánchez, Dan Bullock, and Rod Sánchez share how they wrote How to Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere, why collaboration took their understanding of communication to new levels, and much more!

*****

Authors: Raúl Sánchez and Dan Bullock
Illustrator: Rod Sánchez
Literary agent: Rita Rosenkranz
Title: How to Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere: Your Passport to Connecting Globally
Publisher: Career Press (Red Wheel/Weiser)
Release date: February 2021
Genre: Prescriptive Business/Nonfiction
Elevator pitch for the book: How can you become a global communicator that successfully navigates the cultural economy today? Whether you are emailing a global network or leading an international negotiation, the answer resides in the communication patterns between us.

IndieBound | Amazon

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What prompted you to write this book?

Imagine seeing the earth from a perspective out in space, with clouds of difference melting away to reveal a singular, interconnected world. This vision fueled the creation of the book. By embracing a global mindset, we can expand our communication skills in ways that will profoundly shape the world marketplace. 

The book is about how to become a global communicator across key performance areas, including effective emailing, public speaking, and negotiation. World cultures are now merging from traditional spheres of communication into one dynamic landscape—and the role of the global communicator has taken center stage. Nowadays, global professionals aren’t just looking for ways to work more effectively with one another, but also ways to relate more deeply with one another—a shift that completely changed our teaching approach to intercultural communication.

(10 Keys to Becoming a Successful Writer.)

In our years teaching a diverse range of international professionals at New York University and the United Nations Secretariat (UN Headquarters), we found that the key to becoming a global communicator is tapping into the communication patterns between us. If cultures can be defined as “patterns of thinking and doing,” then in our globalized era, these patterns have begun to intersect and overlap now more than ever. These patterns provide an easy-to-implement path to global communication. The world will continue to grow more integrated through global business practices and an intercultural perspective will continue to define success at the individual, national, and multinational level.

More and more research shows that developing a global mindset is one of the single most important ingredients for the success of multinational companies, as well as for a better future of global understanding and, ultimately, innovation. Global communicators are the ones who will shape the future.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication?

The idea for this book crystalized during communication workshops we delivered in recent years at NYU and the United Nations, namely when teaching cultural communication to American and international students and professionals in the “global classroom.” This shared space continues to enrich the multiplex process of communication competence—and reveals the implicit commonalities we all share as human beings.

The unique mix of American and international professionals working together to bridge gaps in communication completely changed our approach to communication. We realized that all global professionals, whether domestic or visiting a particular region, desired to find intercultural solutions that emerged from our interdependence on one another. As trainers, we were pushed to arrive at singular models of global communication that do not just work in one particular country, but effectively work across world cultures—a singular set of communication patterns that work across the globe. After many thoughtful conversations, creative writings, illustrations, and inspirational workshop experiences, we arrived at the book.

The path to publication opened at the Writer’s Digest Writers Conference in New York. We created a sampler consisting of written chapter pages and artwork and pitched the idea to our wonderful agent Rita Rosenkrantz at the Agent Speed Dating Event (Editor: Referred to as the Pitch Slam).

Now, when you are ready with your refined idea, a proposal, and/or a draft of a book, we encourage you to avoid just sending a bunch of emailed query letters only to wait in your apartment hoping and praying (as many do at some point in our writing lives). Instead, go to a writer’s conference, like Writer’s Digest and pitch it to agents at a Speed Dating session. Get reactions, get feedback, get responses, and expand your network along the way. 

We are forever grateful for Rita’s belief in us at the outset. That powerful conversation then led to a follow-up phone call which then translated into months of ironing out a full proposal with sample chapters, with Rita giving us valuable feedback every step of the way.

The publisher approached us in 2019, and the first draft was due at the end of the year. It was a whirlwind! We were on a tidal wave of inspiration as we wrote it. Almost as if the book has been waiting in the annexes ready for the fire to pour forth to hopefully shed light across the world. We were also spurred by current events depicting a divided world and the desire to create a book that would bring people together. The book, however, was an idea several years in the making. 

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The publishing process for nonfiction titles often follows this lineup: book proposal, publishing contract, then a 6-month timeline to write the book—which means if you put a line in the proposal such as “manuscript delivery within 6 months of signed contract” you’d better make sure you can deliver. The solution? Writing as much of the book during the pitching process and creating a detailed blueprint or outline—which we are grateful we did.

Many writers see the outline as limiting creativity and spontaneity. We respectfully disagree, especially with a collaborative project. An outline is a blueprint—a canvas, which you can paint on with a clear guide of where your landscape is going.

(7 Steps to Creating a Flexible Outline for Any Story.)

Additionally, planning can also allow you to leave room for the unplanned—writing is also a process of discovery. When we write, we discover what we want to write about. On the page, we discover ourselves. Therefore, give yourself time in the process for exploration as well.

Also, the joy of working with an independent press, such as Career Press, is their flexibility and openness during the process. The illustrator, Rod Sánchez, who is Raul’s twin brother, created the interior page artwork for the book. We were thrilled when Career Press invited Rod to design the cover of the book. Even more so, the publisher gave full artistic freedom in Rod’s creation of the cover and was receptive to the three of us visually communicating a unifying message that would serve as a first contact with potential readers.

Teaming up with an independent publisher can open new opportunities for collaboration than you may have previously imagined.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

As a collaborative project between two writers and an illustrator, the book was a new creative and rewarding experience for the three of us. One night was especially pivotal. As a group, we met late one evening over dinner to talk about the book. Each time we met to talk as a team, we always encountered a wonderful inspiration. When your team has the same goal in mind, collaboration is always a pleasant surprise and a unique synergy pushes you to the goal line.

That night, we were talking about patterns of stars which eventually sparked the question of how Eastern and Western cultures view the same star clusters and recognize similar constellations, although giving those constellations different names. One idea led to another and we took a deep dive into the idea of patterns—pattern recognition is a human trait, a trait that transcends culture. We not only formalized the unifying premise of the book, but also deepened our approach to effective cultural communication.

Furthermore, for a business book to contain guiding illustrations that sparked deeper connections was key to deepening the creative process. The illustrator, Rod Sánchez, created multiple illustrations for the book that go beyond what many business communication books are doing, especially when writing for a multicultural audience.

(8 Reasons Every Book Needs a Business Plan to Find Success.)

For example, the element of “balance” in the negotiation chapter, emerged from one of Rod’s illustrations. We were writing about global negotiation approaches and then Rod led the way to an extended metaphor by depicting a global goddess holding aloft a scale of universal balance, which highlighted the focus of negotiation as collaboration in a globalized world. This concept of “balance” worked perfectly as an extended metaphor for harmony in “win-win” versus “win-lose” negotiation strategies. All of Rod’s illustrations elevated the text by opening the mind and heart, while highlighting the practical components of the work.

As stated in this book, many research studies suggest that it is more powerful and effective to deliver material through more than one sense. Therefore, the illustrations serve as a vital communicative aspect of the book: delivering a multi-dimensional representation of the content, enriching the strategies presented, and enhancing the self-empowering creative exercises throughout the text. We are grateful for the illumination Rod’s art brought to the work. What most people don’t realize is that visuals and metaphor are powerful tools in business writing, particularly with global readers, as ways to connect intangible topics to the senses for communication success.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Our hope is for professionals to discover that becoming a global communicator is about more than increasing our earning potential and productivity. Ultimately, becoming a global communicator is about a dedication to building meaningful human relationships.

To truly integrate world cultures, as global leaders, we must integrate a vigilant commitment to understanding global cultures and their many attributes, psychologies, values, and traditions. With understanding comes connection, and with the dedication to relationships comes the true connection of trust with which we can build influence.

In this way, our goal is that the book is not an ending, but a beginning. A door to a cognitive shift, similar to what astronauts call the Overview effect—the profound shift in perspective that an astronaut experiences when looking at the Earth from space. The book, with key illustrations, is part instructional text and part empowering workbook, containing practical and proven strategies that can be put to immediate use, along with exercises designed to impart valuable self-discovery. The pivotal step is using these tools to build powerful relationships and bridge understanding between people.

In a practical sense, we aim to link perception to specific behavioral skills—the skill set of a global communicator. Overall, our goal is to be a catalyst for a better future of effective communication and successful intercultural interaction.

If you could share one piece of advice with other authors, what would it be?

The source of all art is collaboration. Whether you collaborate with the creative force itself or with the minds of others—the exchange of ideas is what springs art into existence. The creative force, like a spiritual current, wants to be collaborated with. The minds of others, over time and across the world, are waiting for your spark to spread their flames onward.

(21 Authors Share One Piece of Advice for Writers.)

This book was a collaborative journey, woven by the tapestry of all three of us and the inspiration of many great thinkers from history up to the present. Just as artist communities like Greenwich Village were home to artists and poets in the 1970s, modern workspaces are realizing the importance of collaborative brainstorming and inspiration, both online and offline, in the business world every day. Collaboration is innovation, and innovation, across time and societies is a latticework of sparks passed from one human being to the next all around the planet.

So, our advice is not to wait to craft that perfect piece in the comfort of your own home. Tell your stories-in-progress, show your sketches, and exchange ideas with others. Open yourself up, not just to the world, but to the currents of creativity flowing in it. Be ready to be sparked by something every day. You can do this even by exposing yourself to new books, people, cultures, and media. Once you enter the latticework of global exchanges, the sparks flowing between us enrich us and our future generations for the better.

Also, there is no such thing as writer’s block. There is only the importance of drinking in more life. If you feel at any time that your well seems dried up, then all that means is that you have to drink in more of the universe. And the universe is infinite. The wellspring of inspiration never runs out. 

*****

Finding the time, energy, and motivation to get the writing done—day after day—stumps even the most seasoned writer on occasion. Life as a writer can be difficult to sustain, especially if you don’t have the direction, organization, and support you need. Get a glimpse into the life of a professional writer and set realistic writing goals for yourself with this online workshop.

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Blending fact and fiction isn’t a new idea in business books and management literature. Many authors before me have used fictional narratives as vehicles for management allegory. What makes my book unique is its multifaceted approach to story-telling, graphic illustration, and practical advice. Match in the Root Cellar takes a holistic approach to educating and engaging its readers. The result is that readers across a wide range of learning styles will find something that draws them in.

Blending narrative, graphics and practical advice

Match in the Root Cellar is a two-part book. The first part uses Carolyn’s story to illustrate—both narratively and graphically—the challenges of working within a default culture. The second part is a straightforward field guide that provides actionable steps to transforming a default culture into an intentional culture of peak performance. Some people look at problems within their organizations as holes that can be filled with expensive strategy and methodology. Poor customer satisfaction? Buy the latest Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Poor job performance? Implement a Lean transformation. Yet, these seldom fix the problems they were intended to solve. This is because people are focused on solving symptoms of a default or incongruent culture. I wanted to create a quick, easy to reference field guide for leaders to treat the root causes of their organizations ailments.

Planning and iteration

People today are flooded with information. An endless stream of emails, text message, and phone calls fills our daily lives. In today’s digital era, visual management is critical to engaging stakeholders. Strong visuals serve as memory anchors, helping us create meaning in the chaos of information overload. This is why the first thing readers will notice in my book is the graphic depiction of key characters in Carolyn’s story. The pictures weren’t added out of creative whimsy, they were carefully designed over the course of many iterations.

For instance, when I showed my wife the first draft of Carolyn, she took one look and said, “No female executive would dress like that.” We went through several versions of Carolyn before we found the right one. It was important that we got the look and feel of each character right. I wanted the characters to resonate with people reading the book. I wanted readers to take the journey with them, to see their physical and emotional transformations.

Similarly, in the field guide, it was important to both describe and visually represent the three ways of being and the seven disciplines to practice in order to achieve a peak performance culture. For instance, being persistent is one of the three ways of being. I not only describe what that means and the implications of it, I also visually depict it. This ensures the manual is equally engaging and useful for those who learn best with words and those who learn best with pictures.

Order a copy of Chris McGoff’s Match in the Root Cellar: How You Can Spark a Peak Performance Culture.

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Setting the context

Through my experience, I’ve come to understand the simple reality of culture: It is as old as fire, as pervasive as wind and as inescapable as gravity. It’s a part of the human experience, and it will always be around you. It can be hard to see the culture of your own organization. As the saying goes, “I don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t a fish.”

Carolyn’s story provides a useful framework for people to recognize and examine the issues they might be experiencing within their organizations. This powerful new perspective allows people to recognize their culture and the behaviors that define it.

Above all, my intention was to use Carolyn’s story to get people to realize that culture isn’t some amorphous monster somewhere in the ether, it’s as real as steel and it is something you must intentionally generate and shape every day. This is a book for leaders who want to move away from a default culture and learn how to change the tide of culture in their workplace, right now.

Putting it all together

Ultimately, people need to see culture as a difficulty to manage rather than a problem to solve. There is no quick fix and there are no shortcuts. Shaping and sustaining a peak performance culture requires a disciplined commitment. The good news is that change generates momentum. Leaders can use this momentum to take their organizations out of their default cultures and open up extraordinary possibilities for themselves as leaders and for their organizations.

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“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life when I was in college,” the bestselling author of Moneyball, The Big Short, and The Blind Side, said speaking at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 2. “When I got out, I didn’t have any plan … It didn’t occur to me that I would have to.”

(Michael Lewis on Generating Ideas and Writing Immersive Nonfiction.)

An art history major at Princeton who was in search of a job, Lewis found himself somewhat dubiously moored in a port wholly foreign to the listless Liberal Arts student: Wall Street. Tapped as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, Lewis witnessed the the bull rush of the stock market boom that defined the decade and fueled his first book, Liar’s Poker.

His latest, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, explores the human nature of decision-making through the work of a pair of Israeli psychologists, but its development is the result of a familiar charmed fortuitousness that followed Lewis’ career. Here are three insights on writing that Lewis shared with the substantial crowd.

1. Know Your Audience

Attracted to the craft following his senior thesis at Princeton, Lewis said he began writing by first pitching magazine pieces.

(Who Is Your Target Reader?)

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “I didn’t know anybody who wrote for a living. It was a quixotic enterprise.”

Lewis said he thumbed through the Writer’s Market (WD Books) for the addresses of editors and publications he could pitch, eventually landing in travel magazines.

“For some reason, I got into my head that the easiest thing I might be able to break into was in-flight magazines,” he said. “I was volunteering at a soup kitchen on the Bowery [in New York] and I thought the street people were so interesting. I wrote a piece about New York homeless people, and I sent it to all of the in-flight magazines in America.

“I remember I got this letter back from Delta Airlines and it said, ‘You know, we kind of like the piece, but you do understand what we are in the business of doing. We’re trying to get people to go places, not flee them.’ So it took me a while to figure out the market.”

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Research, interview, and explore the subjects that interest you. Then write about what you’ve learned in Writing Nonfiction 101: Fundamentals. Writing nonfiction is a great way for beginner and experienced writers to break into the publishing industry.

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2. Be Lucky

Lewis credits a significant portion of his success to sheer luck.

“There is an incredible serendipity in my career,” Lewis said. “The fact that I wanted to be a writer and I got this job in the very best place on Earth to write about Wall Street in the 1980s. I was given the leisure by my parents to fart around for two or three years after college. If they hadn’t done that, I doubt I would have become a writer.”

(Research Tips for Writing Nonfiction.)

Penning columns about Wall Street under the nom de plume of his mother’s maiden name, Lewis began stacking up clips when he got a phone call from Ned Chase—famous book editor at Simon and Schuster and father of actor Chevy Chase—who had uncovered Lewis’ identity and advised him to write a book, which became Liar’s Poker.

Perhaps even more auspicious was how the author discovered the central narrative for his book, The Blind Side. Pitching a story to The New York Times Magazine about the teacher who changed his life, which happened to be his high school baseball coach, Lewis traveled to Memphis to interview his old teammate, Sean Tuohy.

While talking with Tuohy, Lewis encountered Michael Oher, a homeless teen and gifted athlete who would become the focus of a book about the rise of the left tackle in professional football.

“It is typical of how I find stories in that you’ll see that it’s just chance. I chance into stories,” he said.

3. Don’t Fear the Alien

Coincidentally, shortly after meeting Oher, the success of Moneyball had made Lewis acquaintances with several NFL executives, who were interested to see a version of Moneyball written about football.

(6 Tools for Writing Nonfiction That Breathes.)

Because of the league’s salary cap and free agency, the author discovered that among the highest paid positions on the team was that of left tackle, an insurance policy to protect the blind side of the quarterback.

By this time, Oher’s natural talent at the position had been discovered by college coach Nick Saban. So Lewis saw the elements of a story: an undervalued teen with highly valued talents fostered by the care of a mother.

“Once I realized that, I had a story. And this always happens, I had it for six months before I had the nerve to say, I’m going to write it,” he said. “I often think there is someone better to write this. There’s always some part of me that thinks it’s alien to me, so I really shouldn’t be the one to do it.

“But the truth is the fact that it’s alien to you is why you should do it. Because it enables you to get across to other people to whom it’s alien the stuff about it that’s interesting.”

The post 3 Pieces of Writing Advice From Michael Lewis appeared first on Writer's Digest.

What is the book’s genre/category?

Business/leadership.

Please describe what the story/book is about.

WORK LIKE A SPY introduces readers to techniques and skills used by CIA officers that can also be used in a business setting.

Where do you write from?

Outside Washington, D.C.

Briefly, what led up to this book?

I floundered a bit after quitting my job at the CIA, not quite certain what I could do to follow what had been a pretty amazing career. I decided to give writing a try, almost on a whim, and discovered that I loved it. My first book, CLOAKS AND VEILS, is a thriller. I was a bit reluctant to tackle nonfiction, to be honest, only because I had no desire to write a “tell-all”.

What was the time frame for writing this book?

I spent about nine months writing the book — I tend to write very slow, but very clean first drafts, so subsequent passes are more about tidying up than anything else.

How did you find your agent (and who is your agent)?

I was referred to my agent, Jessica Regel of Foundry Literary + Media, by one of her colleagues, who I met at a writers’ conference.

What were your 1-2 biggest learning experience(s) or surprise(s) throughout the publishing process?

Like just about everyone who has ever published a book, I was shocked when I first learned how slow the publishing process is. More recently I’ve been very surprised to discover just how different it is to promote a newly released work of non-fiction than it is to promote fiction — there seem to be far more promotional opportunities for non-fiction.

Looking back, what did you do right that helped you break in?

For me, the critical first step was getting an agent. I knew nothing at all about the publishing industry at the time, and even now, years later, I know only enough to know that I don’t want to navigate the waters alone. I’m quite content to focus on writing the next book.

On that note, what would you have done differently if you could do it again?

I would have started earlier!

Did you have a platform in place? On this topic, what are you doing the build a platform and gain readership?

No, and I still don’t. Because of my background working for the CIA, I suppose, I’m an extremely private person, so I steer clear of most social media. This may very well cost me book sales, but I’m hoping that I can make up for that by continuing to write better and better books each time.

Website(s)?

www.jccarleson.com

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The post Author Interview: J.C. Carleson, Author of WORK LIKE A SPY: BUSINESS TIPS FROM A FORMER CIA OFFICER appeared first on Writer's Digest.

What is Copywriting?

It’s important to know what copywriting is, especially if you are considering becoming a copywriter. Copywriting can be defined as the act of writing that influences a reader or listener to take action, such as the purchase of a product. Therefore, a copywriter is the person who writes copy (also known as creative) for the purpose of advertising or marketing a product, business, person, opinion or idea.

Break into Copywriting: What You’ll Learn

Now that you know what copywriting is, you’re probably wondering what exactly this four-week online copywriting course is about and what you’ll learn. The course is broken down by week. Each week, you’ll explore questions such as, Where is Copywriting Used?, What Makes a Good Copywriter?, and Where Does a Copywriter Work?.

In addition to reading weekly lectures, you’ll also complete weekly assignments and receive individual feedback from your instructor. By the end of the course you’ll know how to:

• Create an Ad
• Generate a Creative Brief
• Write Headlines and Taglines
• Craft different types of copy
• Understand when and how to use a Call to Action
• Use techniques to persuade an audience
• Find work as a copywriter, either full-time or freelance

Improve Your Copywriting Skills

Are you ready to acquire skills that help you write a better query letter, market yourself online, or improve the dialogue you write for your characters? Enroll in Breaking into Copywriting today and enter the business of copywriting!

Register for this online copywriting course now!

The post Break into the Business of Copywriting! appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Order a copy of Helen Grant’s The Vanishing of Katharina Linden today.

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The conversation got me thinking. Creativity and business sense don’t have to be at odds. Before I became an author, I spent over a decade working in consumer marketing, and many of the things which I learnt from my days in business have been as much use to me as a writer as the many books I have enjoyed and inspiring experiences I have had. This is what working in business taught me about writing.

1. CHOOSE YOUR TARGET

It’s tough starting out as a writer. The agent who eventually took me on receives about 15,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year and only takes on a handful of new authors. The odds are against you, so don’t make things any worse by submitting material in the wrong format or sending it to an agent or publisher who doesn’t deal with that kind of work. You wouldn’t market babyfood to seniors—so don’t send a romance novel to someone who only takes on crime. Pick your target.

2. INVEST—BUT INVEST WISELY

Some of my friends are surprised that I had to fund things like my own author website—I guess they thought my publisher would pay for “all that.” In fact, since I began writing I have personally invested in travel (for research and for initial meetings with my publisher), website design, launch events, promotional materials and book trailers. Because I am paying for these things myself, I cost them very carefully, look for the most cost effective suppliers, and always ask myself whether they are going to pay back in terms of increased sales or awareness. If not, why do them?

3. BE DISCIPLINED

When I worked in marketing, I had to be at my desk before 9 a.m. and I was often there long after 5 p.m. Now I write from 8 a.m. until 12.30 p.m. or 3 p.m., depending on what time my kids’ school day ends. The great Victorian writer Anthony Trollope, who got up at 5.30 a.m. every day to write before going to work for the post office, said: “There are those … who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till—inspiration moves him … I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler’s wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler’s wax much more than the inspiration.” Trollope wrote 47 novels, of which most are still in print over a century later.

4. BE GREAT TO WORK WITH

It’s no different from working in an office; your colleagues would like you to be cheerful, productive, meet your deadlines or flag problems up before the deadline has been missed. I’ve worked with office prima donnas and also with people who can’t be relied on to do their bit on time for a project that affects a lot of departments. It’s dispiriting. Don’t give anyone a reason to think that they would be happier if they didn’t have to work with you any more.

5. TAKE CRITICISM GRACEFULLY

When I was a junior marketing assistant, I once worked with a boss who would call me into her office to discuss a report it had taken me a whole week to produce, and have her red pen out ready to scribble all over it before she had even read the title page. She just assumed that whatever I produced would not be the way she wanted it. Being a junior, I couldn’t show anger at this. I have never had any agent, editor or copyeditor be as harshly critical as that manager was. By comparison, it’s quite easy to accept constructive criticism of my writing by a friendly editor; after all, the aim is to produce a better book at the end. Perhaps if I ever run into that manager again, I should thank her…

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