When we became parents, my wife and I decided that we had to actually decide what it would mean for us to be parents… Or else it would just happen to us. We read our Bibles, we talked to each other, and we learned from our experiences… The result was this. It hangs on our wall and we talk about it with our children (and ourselves) all the time…
Read MoreAll of these questions are key. And they all have their start with the author…. As a reader, I’m always asking this of any book that makes its way to my attention spectrum: Who wrote this? Are they a professional? Have they practiced this idea in other mediums? Where do they work? Have they experienced some failures on the way to getting where they are?
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Without intending to do so I’ve created a reading time machine to 6, 8, and 10 years ago. I loved thinking about and making this list and it turned out to be the best way to represent the decade without recency bias or too much bunching together. I commend each of these books to you as important, interesting, and original!
Read MoreI've compiled the below list of the tools I think should be in every publisher, writer, editor, and author toolbox. I'm assuming you already have a laptop, the Internet, and an inspiring place to work. These should all be next on your list.
Read MoreThe effective endorser list of people on a book has two main reasons for existing: (1) to have experts in a field lend a credible voice to a work and (2) to get those same experts/influencers excited about your book ahead of time. Ideally it’s not just a list of famous/semi-famous people willing to write something.
Read MoreThe book is a five-year journey focusing on character, specific types of talent, problem solving, timing, and hard work. It’s a behind-the-scenes scrapbook of the breaking of a 108 year “curse.” If you don’t care about baseball, you probably won’t care too much about this book—but it’s remarkably light on baseball strategy and heavy on purposeful team-building.
Read MoreI recently came across an instance (and since then, a few more instances) of a school district announcing plans to change their school librarians' focus away from books/reading and changing them into "Innovation Specialists." Uhhhhhh. What?! ...This trainwreck of an idea is still unfolding....
Read MoreThis success question can be asked in different ways like: What benchmarks do we need to reach to be able to do more books? And what are your metrics for success? But I think there are four main categories where books can be placed in their lives as for-sale items...
Read MoreThe answer to “What do you want?” is most often not what we think we want. Here’s the gist of the book: “To recognize the limits of knowledge is not to embrace ignorance. We don’t need less than knowledge; we need more. We need to recognize the power of habit” (6).
Read MoreWhen we read certain books at certain times in our lives they smack us right in the face. Had I read some of these books a few years earlier or later, they would have objectively been just as good, but perhaps they wouldn’t have had the impact on me that they did then.
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