3 questions your book blurb must answer for a reader to buy
Your blurb is another stage in selling the book. No more, no less.
The back cover or book description copy, called a blurb, is sales copy. It comes after your title, after your cover, and is the next step to get your potential reader to buy. If the reader likes the blurb, they will buy, so make sure you answer the questions in their head.
With my years of blogs, I have a book. Not yet you don’t.
Recently, I found an author with a book they had made from the blogs they had written over the years.
The blogs are a treasure trove of stories, insights and lessons they had learned. You could dive in anywhere and come up with something valuable.
But a collection of blogs pushed together is not a book.
3 examples of making sentences clearer and smoother
Three examples of making sentences read better. They are taken from a line edit of a book I worked on recently. The main aims are clarity and smooth reading.
Don’t crunch gears between chapters – Read your reader’s mind
… and those are the lessons from chapter 7. (Reader: Wow, interesting!)
(Flip page…)
Welcome to chapter 8, which about something completely unconnected to chapter 7. (Reader: Are there some pages missing in this copy or something?)
It is common to have some crunching of gears when moving from one chapter to another in a book. It can’t be helped. Or can it?
Does systems and complexity need new words?
New words can be useful, but they can also mislead, confuse and turn people away.
Complexity and systems thinking is a different way to look at the world. It is easy to argue that to express new ideas, we need new words. However, we require novel words that don’t carry baggage with previous meanings that confuse and hold them back. Expression of novel concepts is more precise when we mint a unique new word to carry the meaning.
As a complexity or systems thinker, what kind of blind man are you?
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Version 1
A group of blind men came upon an elephant. One touched the side of the beast and thought it might be a wall. One felt a tusk and supposed he must have a spear in his hand. Another man grasped the tail, guessing it was a piece of rope. Yet another man brushed the elephant’s knee and surmised that he had touched a tree. However, none of the men said a word and went on their way.
4 questions to make your complexity or systems book compelling
If you are thinking about writing a book, make it relevant to readers with 4 questions.
1) What’s my unique position? List experiences, models, methods, stories and insights.
2) Think about the different audiences:
The easiest trick to get your prose to read better
This week, I watched a live broadcast with two authors. She was just releasing an audiobook she had read herself. She said she had tripped over some sentences. He replied, “Writing to be read is different to writing to be read out loud.”
He was trying to make her feel better. But what he said has some truth to it. Some.
Are you doing the biggest thing that holds complexity and systems back?
Some practitioners seem to think that saying “… and I didn’t tell them we were using systems thinking” is a good thing. It’s not.
If we don’t tell people what we are doing, how will the ideas and practices spread?
3 structures using stories that keep readers turning the pages of your complexity and systems book
Stories are a powerful tool for hooking a reader and keeping them reading. You can also use stories to structure your book.
3 book structures using story