A powerful piece on the PBS site; worth reading.
December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
2010: The Year Self-Publishing Became Respectable
December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Hello again!
I traveled to Israel (and spent 3 days in Cairo) for the entire month of December. It’s great to be back in California, although I always love visiting Israel.
- Image via Wikipedia
Speaking to many old friends and new acquaintances in the world of engineering and high-tech, my conviction that writing a book is the number-one way for professionals and startups to promote themselves has been confirmed and strengthened. People invest so much in printed marketing collateral that just winds up being thrown away. Books hang around, and continue to deliver your message for a long time.
So many startups have complex stories to tell, stories that require more than some pretty pictures and a few bullet points. Books provide an opportunity to wax eloquent on the complexities and make them understandable.
Of course, the same applies to individual professionals. What do you want your prospects to know? A book is a vehicle for conveying it in a comprehensible way.
November 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
You can “just start writing,” but you won’t wind up with a book
You want a house. You have a lot. You’ve got a general idea of what the house should look like. So you think, “Time to act! I’ll just jump in.” You head off for the lumber yard. “Let’s see, I’ll probably need some 2×4′s. Oh yeah, and some cement. Some nails–I’ll get 50 pounds, and come back if I need more”…
A house? You think this track leads to your dream house? No way.
Why?
- Image by New York Public Library via Flickr
Very simply, because you have no idea what goes first, and what goes next. Never mind permitting and all the stuff that has to happen before construction. How about a foundation?
You get the idea.
Your book is the same.
Just start writing, and you’ll have… a bunch of writing. But it won’t be a book.
A book has structure. Create the structure first. Then write. That’s the quickest way to produce a book.
September 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Back in the saddle again
I took off the period from the Memorial of Trumpets (what most Jews call Rosh HaShana) through Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, at least in terms of blogging. I didn’t stop working entirely, but I did focus on just a couple of things, and on taking full advantage of joining with my people in reflection on the past year and the coming year, and on making things right with fellow humans.
In the Yom Kippur prayerbook, it says that in observing the day we can find forgiveness for offenses against God, but that for offenses between people, we must go to them. That’s a very practical and loving point of view, and I appreciate it.
- Image via Wikipedia
And that goes for both asking and giving forgiveness.
Hmm…what if I cast a broader net here? OK. If I have offended you, my reader, in any way, I ask your forgiveness. And I invite you to write or call me and tell me about it, so that I can also seek not only forgiveness, but a place of reconciliation. I mean it. My cell number is 650-336-3937.
I’ve grown more and more aware of the significance of emotions in my life and in my communications. When I was a math grad student, good writing was elegant, and elegance meant succinctness. Expressing a thought in the fewest possible words and symbols was the peak of elegance. Unfortunately, I carried that over into my writing. My greatest challenge is to being juicy, and not just concise.
It’s odd, because I’m a very emotional person. I just didn’t accord emotions–mine or those of others–the weight they deserve in human discourse. Now I can say that I feel bad about that. Sorry, even. And determined to do better. (See? Feelings! 
)
Feelings enter naturally into fiction and memoirs. But less naturally into the books being written by my typical clients, who are typically trying to explain their “special sauce” to prospective clients. And that fact makes them all the more important. Emotions are what engage the reader, not facts. Facts are important, but feelings communicate.
September 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
After the book
Read this from Bob Stein, of the Institute for the Future of the Book:
the future of the app
08.02.2010, 10:37 AM
posted by bob stein
Assuming that whatever replaces the book in the futurist landscape to come will not be called “a book,” people often ask me why I named our group The Institute for the Future of the Book. My answer has consistently been a variant of the following: while it’s true that whatever replaces the book as a crucial mechanism for moving ideas around time and space is not likely to be called “a book,” since we don’t have that word yet, “book” works better than “institute for the future of discourse” or “institute for thinking about what comes after the book.” I end my answer by suggesting that one day we’ll realize that a word describing a new-fangled object, or perhaps a word referring to a range of behaviors has come to signify the dominant media form which has in fact supplanted the book.
I’ve always assumed that day would be years or even decades off. But recently, while listening to the Flux Quartet play Morton Feldman’s First Quartet on a gently swaying barge in the east river, i suddenly recognized our first candidate — “app.” It’s not the pretty or expressive word I was hoping for, but it feels right.
The aha moment went like this . . . . while zoning in and out of the Feldman piece I started to think about the iPad that I’d been using for the past six weeks — not only for most of my reading, but for playing expressive games like my current favorite, SoundDrop, answering email, surfing the web, watching videos, and listening to music. The iPad has become the center of my media universe, much more than my computer, iPod, or iPhone have ever been. My text used to come in an object we called a book; movies came on tapes, laserdisc, and DVDs, music on records and CDs and games on cartridges and CDs. Now they are all appearing as apps of one sort or another on my iPad.
The distinction between media types was a lot more important during the analog era of the mid-twentieth cenury. In 1950 no one would confuse a novel with a movie or a song with a TV show. But today we have e-books with video sequences, and movies published with extensive text-based supplements. Is Lady Gaga a music star or video star? More
What do you think? And if you’re in the neighborhood on September 13, come to my Meetup here in Mountain View, CA, to discuss it.
August 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
To write a book, adopt GTD
David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach to time and task management is simply unequaled. It is simple, understandable, and do-able. If you are trying to fit your book-writing into your schedule, you owe it to yourself to check him out. Lots of free resources, too. Here’s a piece from his latest email:
- Image via Wikipedia
LET THE LISTS FALL WHERE THEY MAY
Probably the most universal how-to question for GTD neophytes is this: How do I keep track of all the things that you’re recommending I keep out of my head? What’s the best tool? The answer is pretty simple: however you most effectively can create and review lists.
You will need a good filing system, an inbox and a ubiquitous capture tool, a box for stuff to read, and maybe a tickler file; but for the most part, all you need are lists. But you’ll need several. And they need to be complete. And you’ll need a place to keep them.
For many newbies, the multiple lists they may see in any of our systems can overwhelm them at first glance. More
August 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Turn card over
My father was born in Ostrolenko, Poland. That fact authorizes me to tell Polish jokes.
How do you keep a Polack busy? (“Polack” means simply “Polish man.” There is nothing derogatory about the word.)
Give him a card that has printed, on both sides, “Turn card over.”
I am that Polack.
My geekishness is often expressed as a fascination with things that are of absolutely no interest to most of the population–especially things that exhibit a measure of complexity. I am attracted to complexity, per se. I love its richness; I have a feeling that, just around the corner, I will find the answer to some important question.
Usually I don’t.
But that doesn’t deter me; complexity continues to fascinate me.
Here’s one way it manifests: I love to explore programs that claim to manage your information and show it to you in different ways. Here are a few examples:
- Personal Brain, from TheBrain.com. I actually use this as my diary, journal, and general repository of knowledge.
- Evernote, from Evernote.com. I use this, too; it syncs with my iPhone, and lets me capture and store a huge variety of text, graphics, and more. And it attempts to read any text in the graphics; so if I snap a picture of a business card with my iPhone, Evernote will OCR (optical character recognition) the text, so that I can find the name of the person using its powerful search facility.
- Voodoopad. A wiki on your (Mac) desktop. Amazingly powerful and simple. I haven’t integrated it into my workflow, but hope springs eternal.
- Tinderbox. The ultimate time sink. (Mac only.) Incredibly robust and powerful outliner, graphical mapper, database, and so much more.
I am forever searching for the system that will allow me to store anything, link anything to anything else, extract email addresses for mailing, keep track of people and events, web clippings, etc. You get the idea.
Each tool excels at some things, and sucks (I hate the word, but cannot resist it any longer) at others.
And when I downloaded the latest version of VoodooPad today, I realized: Turn card over. I’m doing it again.
I haven’t found a 12-step program for people who are determined to find The One System yet, but if it doesn’t show up soon, I’ll have to start one.
Ask me how this relates to writing books.
August 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Big
This is not my message, although I found a lot to love about Ayn Rand. It’s the message of Nick Newcomen, who believes we’d all be better off if we adopted Rand’s philosophy. (Read about how he did this here.)
I was trying out Google Reader’s new “Play” facility, which seems to pick a bunch of random stuff that may be of interest to you–and I have no idea by what criteria–and show it to you in a really friendly interface that lets you “star” things you like to look at later, or put a smiley face on some things to share with friends. This page showed up.
It made me think of the phrase, “writ large,” which, according to idioms.thefreedictionary.com, is slightly formal, and means “expressed in a bigger or more obvious way. She believed that cultures are just personalities writ large. The genius of the story is that it’s about ordinary life writ large.
Mr. Newcomen went a long way, literally, to send this suggestion to the world. I’m not sure how much of an effect it’s having, but there are several aspects of it that should give other message-bearers, such as aspiring authors, something to think about:
- The message is brief and unambiguous. It wouldn’t have worked as well for “Fyodor Dostoyevsky.”
- It’s an unambiguous command; there is no mistaking its meaning.
- It is dramatic, without damaging the environment.
- Whatever you may think of Ayn Rand, there is no doubt that Mr. Newcomen is well-intentioned.
Now, Mr. Newcomen may make a few bucks if people buy Ayn Rand books through the links on the page. I hope he does. It will take lots of book sales at Amzon’s commission rates to cover the expenses of his trip. But it’s a safe bet that this was not planned as a commercial venture.
I am left impressed with the man’s earnestness, gentleness, and intelligence. If he also offered me a newsletter or other way to stay in touch with him, and sign up for it.
These are good outcomes to which a non-fiction book writer, wanting to promote her or his services, might aspire as well.
August 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Randy Ingermanson on the future of publishing
I love Randy’s writing. He is my favorite writing teacher for fiction. He invented something he called, “The Snowflake Method
,” and even has software to back it up. It matches my structured approach to non-fiction.
I found his recent thoughts on the future of publishing on his blog. I agree with all of them, and many pertain to non-fiction as well as to fiction. Here’s a teaser and a link:
The Future of Publishing
The world of publishing is currently going through massive turmoil. Some people believe that the rise of e-books is going to be the biggest single change in publishing since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type.
I’m not a prophet nor a seer nor clairvoyant. But I do have my eyes open, and in this column, I give you my best predictions for the coming years. They may be right. They may be wrong. Either way, one thing seems certain: Huge changes are coming.
I offer these predictions to suggest ways you might plan for your future. I’m using them to plan for mine.
Prediction #1: E-books Will Surpass P-books Soon
I define a “p-book” to be a book printed on paper. Click here for more
August 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Presented at SF Coach meeting last night
I spoke to the San Francisco Coach Federation monthly meeting last night, at the beautiful Handlery Hotel on Geary in San Francisco. It was a well-organized meeting, and well-attended–I think there were more than 25 in the room. I shared how I came up with my BookProgram method for writing good books quickly.
SF Coach meeting at Handlery in SF
There were lots of excellent questions. People seemed to “get” the idea that structure must precede content, and that content is actually the easy part of writing a book. I spoke about “the diamond is your friend,” mangling a baseball metaphor, but to good effect.
Several people said they’d like to talk about their book with me, so I sent them–and I send you–to http://joelorr.setster.com to make an appointment with me for a free strategy call. (By the way, if you’re tired of having to exchange 4 emails in order to set a phone appointment, I recommend checking Setster.com out. It publishes your calendar, sync’d from Outlook, Gmail, or whatever, showing just blocked periods for your appointments. People can choose from your available slots; you get an email and a text message, and can approve or deny the appointment.)
If you’d like to hear what I said, just click here, fill in the form, and I’ll give you immediate access to the recording. (Click on “continue shopping” after the cart thanks you, and you’ll go directly to the page with the recording.)
Would you like me to speak to your group? Click here to make an appointment to discuss it with me.