Author: Scott Berkun

Should you self publish your first book?

Posted on in ask berkun, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

From Monday’s question pile reader Gutenberg Neto, who has one of the best names ever for questions about publishing, asked:

After releasing books both with a publisher and also independently, do you feel like one of the approaches is overall better than the other one? These days, with so many distribution platforms available, it’s easier than ever for anyone to self-release a book.

But for a first-time author do you think that it’s still valid to look for a publisher, or releasing independently is the best option even if the writer has no previous experience and audience to leverage initial sales? Thanks!

My experience self-publishing Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds was excellent and I wrote about the experience in detail here. There are many pros and cons and much depends on the author and the book.

Publishing a book, regardless of how you do it, is best thought of as a entrepreneurial experience. You have an idea for a product (in this case a book): how much of the work of making and selling the product are you comfortable doing on your own?

From this view a publisher is a business partner. They provide funding, expertise, co-ordination and guidance. They have in-house editors, designers and proofreaders who will help you. For those things you will pay them a fair share of the possible income the book generates. This is a good deal if you don’t want to find those experts on your own, or have no interest in co-ordinating the entire project yourself.

If you can find a good publisher to work with, and plan to write many books, it is absolutely valuable to work with a publisher at least once. You will learn from experts and have a safe framework to learn from, a framework you can choose to ignore if you self-publish in the future.

On other hand, if you’re someone that’s a natural self starter, love to learn, and are good at finding and leading talented people who have expertise you don’t, self-publishing makes sense. You’ll have more control over the book and get more of the rewards. But you’ll also have significantly more work to do.

Common mistakes authors make when working with publishers:

  • Believing the publisher will do all the marketing for you. Many authors assume the burden of marketing is on the publisher but that has never been true (unless you are Stephen King or J.K. Rowling). The author is always at the center of marketing and PR for books. It will be up to you to find speaking engagements, to be available for interviews, and to use your networks and connections to promote the book. Good publishers assist you, but the burden is always on the author. If your book is deemed more important than others you will get more support, but the author is always central to marketing.
  • Assuming you are a rock star. It’s exciting to have a publisher make you an offer, but remember, to them your book will never be as important to them as it is to you. To them your book is likely #56 of 100 (or more) they will put out this year, whereas to you it might be the only book you will ever write. Publishers rightfully prioritize among all of their books each month to decide which will get more of their marketing and PR attention.
  • A published book won’t magically get you a following. Earning an audience takes time and effort. The book itself only helps grow your reputation if people find out about it and read it, which requires marketing. A book can help you grow a following,  since it gives you something to talk about and share, but a book doesn’t do the marketing work itself. Publishers often prefer authors who already have large followings, as it provides a “platform” for marketing the book.
  • Dismissing your editor.  Editors lead the project that is your book. They attend meetings you can’t and and fight on your behalf for resources inside the publisher. Good editors give you tough love, feedback you need to hear that improves the book. Mediocre editors don’t do much at all. Of course your book might be a low priority project on the desk of a great editor, which is why the editor’s interest in your project is critical too. I’d rather have a great editor at a mediocre publisher, than a mediocre editor at a great publisher.

Common mistakes with self-publishing:

  • Authors are naturally arrogant and assume they know everything. When self-publishing it’s easy to assume you are right about everything since there is no one arguing with you, even when you’re dead wrong. There is deep expertise in the tasks of choosing the theme, title, outline, cover, and style of a book. At a publisher there would be a specialist in each of these roles working with you. If you fail to avail yourself of experts the quality of the book will suffer.
  • It’s easy to be cheap and it will show. From the cover design, to the interior, to the index, many authors don’t understand the impact of making the cheapest choices. It shows. Books are extremely competitive. It’s a hostile and unforgiving landscape. The details matter.
  • You must be your own marketer. At minimum  publishers announce your book to the world through their mailing lists, websites and catalogs. If you self-publish you are entirely on your own. If you are serious about sales you need a marketing plan and a commitment to invest even more time marketing the book than you would if working with a publisher. Marketing is hard: it’s an entirely different kind of challenge than writing a book. And marketing a book starts long before the book releases.
  • It’s natural to write a book only you want to read. Few authors do market research or solicit feedback from smart colleagues to define the market for the book. Writing a book proposal, something required to work with a publisher, forces authors to think long and hard about what the book is and who will buy it. Simply because you want to write it doesn’t mean anyone will want to read it. Working with a publisher ensures dozens of questions are asked about who the book is for and that the answers make sense.

There are too many variables to give a single answer. If you can find an editor and publisher you’re happy with, and they believe in the specific book you want to write and how you want to write it, all other things equal I’d say go with a publisher for your first book. It will let you focus on writing a great book, and if the first book does well you’ll have more flexibility in what you do the second time.

More than anything, my advice is this: write the book and publish it. Don’t let this decision be the one that holds you back for year after year. If you can’t decide, self publish. No one can ever stop you from self publishing. And there is always the possibility you can release the book again with a publisher later. The real challenge is the book itself and don’t let this decision stand in it’s way.

Related:

Book Review: Designing Together

Posted on in Book reviews, designby Scott Berkun

DesigningTogether.CoverI was honored to write the forward for Dan Brown’s new book, Designing Together, because I thought it was excellent. It’s the first book I’ve seen that solves a primary reason why designers fail: we stink at working with each other or other people. Brown’s book is the best, and possibly only, resource I’ve seen for saving design teams everywhere from themselves.

Brown writes in the opening pages: Successful design projects require effective collaboration and healthy conflict. 

Everyone agrees with this, yet almost no one experiences it. Why? And why is so little attention paid by designers and team leaders to this fundamental problem?  There’s finally a book everyone can use as a stepping stone to solving this perennial and tragic problem in how creative teams work.

If you want to make great things, get excellent work and constructive feedback from your coworkers and finally achieve everything your talents make you capable of, that quest starts with Designing Together.

The forward itself serves as my review. Here it is:

The cliché of Forewords for books is they have a seemingly famous person express how wonderful the book you’re about to read is. But the secret we authors don’t want you to know is often the Foreword is written by a friend who either lost a bar bet or is trading for the destruction of unsavory photos in the author’s possession.This explains why most Forewords are dreadfully dull and unworthy of the book they’re in. I can promise you I’ve only met Dan once and owe him nothing.

I’m writing this Foreword simply because this book is exceptional. It captures the central flaw in the talents of most designers: how to create with other people. And it achieves this without falling victim to the clichés and platitudes that render most books of this kind useless.

Back when I was a student, my vision was a lifetime of making world- changing designs. But in these dreams I always had a starring role, with minions scurrying about, taking every order and doing all the work I didn’t (or couldn’t) do. How naive the dreams of young designers are. No great thing in the history of design and engineering was, or ever will be, made this way.

It always takes a team of craftsmen, working in harmony, to make something great. Working with others has always been ignored in design culture. And the result is that the student fantasy lives on far too long in the careers of creatives, squandering their talent and their happiness, too.

If you pick any great design from today, or in history, and dig into the details of how it was made, you’ll find a team of talented people working well together. Each contributing and building on each other’s work.They didn’t always like each other, but they learned how to put the quality of the results ahead of petty differences. Their ability to do this isn’t magic. Nor is it based on their creative talents. Instead it’s a set of simple attitudes and skills this book clearly explains. While I’ve learned many of these practices along my career, I’d never seen them as clearly named, explained, and taught as they are here.

If you want to escape work that buries you in stress, disrespect from coworkers, or meetings that resemble Custer’s Last Stand, you’ll find solutions in the following pages. I’m jealous of the moments of clarity awaiting you in the chapters ahead.

Go buy Designing Together now.

How to Find Your Niche In Life

Posted on in ask berkun, Philosophyby Scott Berkun

From my Monday question pile Jennifer asked:

How do you find your niche in life?

This seems like a simple question but the more I considered it the less I liked it. It’s a question filled with assumptions. Is there just one niche for every person? Can you make your own niche rather than find one? Is this even the right metaphor? Niches are places carved into stone for stone figures to spend all eternity. Unless you want to spend all of your waking hours in the same place until you die, a niche isn’t the best way to go.

But the word find is good because it’s a verb. Consider the question: How would you find your car keys? How does anyone find anything? The answer of course is you have to look. People who are better at finding are better at looking, or are willing to look in more places and do a more thorough job in each place they look. Or consider: How do you find what clothes to wear? You probably go to your closet, but how to things get in your closet? You have to go out into the world and try things on to decide what to bring home.

The advantage of trying to find your place in life, as opposed to car keys, is that like clothes there isn’t just one good outcome. And to follow my mixed metaphors further, while you can’t make car keys or clothes, you can possibly make your own career, or blog, or lifestyle (Actually, unlike me, you might be able to make your own clothes too).

The easy conclusion then is people struggling to find something need to improve their looking skills. They need to do more experiments with their lives and more passionately invest in those experiments. Far too many people dream about a different situation but take little action, and the actions they do take are by half, with one foot always on the ground. They never realize it’s their lack of commitment that causes the emptiness that disappoints them. But of course there are no guarantees: it’s always possible you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. The rub of being a seeker is the acceptance that not everything can be found.

Related things people wish to find include:

  • How do I find what to do with my life?
  • What should I do for a living?
  • Where should I live?
  • Who should I spend my time with?

All of these questions have the same solution: you try something, you pay attention to how you feel about it, and then you try something else until you are fulfilled enough that you’re not asking these questions all the time (or you reset your expectations).

In a post I wrote called How I Found My Passion I told my story of how I ended up as a writer. In that post I mentioned four piles to think about:

  • Things you like / love
  • Things you are good at
  • Things you can be paid to do
  • Things that are important

It’s rare that one activity qualifies for all four, but your niche is likely found in activities that qualify for more than one. And even if you find your niche, always remember it’s ok if you outgrow it – just repeat the process and find, or make, a new one.

 

My process for blogging

Posted on in ask berkun, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

From my Monday question pile, my friend Angela asked:

As an active blogger and communicator, I’m curious your setup. Obviously love your content, but I’m interested in your process. I assume you’re a one man show, so I also assume you’ve got your process locked down because you’re soooo smooth, man! :) xoxo

My answer is a ramble. I tried to write this in an easy to follow way but had to scrap it because it was a lie. It turns out an honest description of how I blog is not easy to follow. Moreso, for blogging alone I’m not convinced I’m a good example for emulation. I have good basic self-discipline for writing and that’s what explains my productivity more than anything else. Part of why I enjoy blogging is freedom. I deliberately don’t approach it with the same procedural rigor other bloggers do.

For more useful advice: when I worked for WordPress.com I studied their data on which blogs were successful and studied how popular blogs worked. I wrote up two summaries of what I learned and that’s the advice I still point bloggers to: How To Get More Traffic and How To Get More Comments.  It’s good, simple practical advice.

For any regular readers it’s clear I don’t have a strict process. I don’t publish on a schedule (although I’d get more traffic if I did) and I don’t post about specific topics on specific days. It’s chaotic and I don’t advise bloggers copy this, but it works for me so far.

If you forced me to shape it into a process it’d look like this:

  1. Wake up – be glad I’m not dead
  2. Write something (could be in my private journal, a draft blog post, part of a book…)
  3. Work until I run out of steam, or it’s finished
  4. When stuck, go to the gym (do something physical)
  5. Write again later in the day
  6. Do other life things
  7. Sleep

I realize this list has dubious merit. My central habit that makes it all work is the discipline of writing. It’s an internal discipline that isn’t generated by following a list of rules or magic steps. I write something nearly every day simply because I want to be a writer and writers write. There is no other way. My income comes from book royalties and speaking fees so I don’t stress about blogging schedules and such in the way many pro bloggers do.

Schedules: Sometimes I finish a post in one go. Most often I get to rough draft quality but can’t go further. But in all cases I show up the next day and either start something new, or progress something old. If I’m working on a book most of my creative energy will go towards progressing that before I’d think to blog. But sometimes the pleasure of writing something quick and publishing it instantly is just what I need to break up the long cycles of working on a book.

Roughly I post something new once or twice a week. Some weeks I do more, other weeks it’s less. But on average it’s a post or two a week. I’m more interested in creation than curation, but I see the value of both. On the curative side I often write book reviews and have had phases of posts that are mostly links or reports from events or places I’ve visited.

Posting new posts in the morning (PST) and early in the week seem to generate the most traffic. Twitter is a huge asset and drives a large part of the traffic my posts receive. I still have thousands of RSS subscribers but we’ll see if that matters anymore once Google Reader is gone. I often use the schedule feature of WordPress to plan when a post will launch days in advance. The Publicize feature, which I worked on while at WordPress.com, ensures even scheduled posts will be seen by my twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers.

Drafts: I have a large number of drafts in WordPress: 400+ (and a total of ~1500 published posts). Some are just a one sentence thought, or a link I want to comment on. Others are half written and a few are mostly done. I believe it’s healthy to be inefficient with writing. It’s ok not to finish many of the things I start provided I finish many too. I like having an inventory of posts in various states of completion. It means I can pick and choose based on the mood I’m in on that day and how much energy I have. I don’t see high draft counts as a waste, it’s an asset. I’m free to experiment and try crazy things with no fear. It’s my scrapbook and all creators need safe places to experiment.

Topics: I avoid writing about trends. By avoiding trends and picking timeless themes I don’t have the pressure to post this hour or this day, or to worry about who else said what already. And I know that the time I spend writing will still likely be relevant in a year or a decade, which won’t be true if I’m writing about something only relevant to the world for a week. I suspect this generates less traffic per post in the short term compared to people who chase trends, but probably more traffic in the long term (scottberkun.com has a strong long tail of old posts that generate significant traffic). Sometimes I do pick a hot topic as the hook to write about a deeper issue, but even then I know I can reuse the same post a year later when a new, but equally relevant hook, comes along.

Audience: Many of you readers found me because of one of my books. I try to make at least 50% of my posts related to the topics from those books: creativity, management, speaking and philosophy. The other 50% follows what I’m passionate, angry or curious about. This balance is reflected in my 50 best posts of all time. The mix has worked and I plan to continue (please advise if you don’t like the mix). There’s short term value in specializing more, but I plan to write until I die and I see the long term value in earning reader trust for my ability to write and think well on anything. That’s my ambition as a writer: that people want to read me at least as much for their interest in the mind doing the writing as they are in the particular topic.

Ideas: I always carry a moleskine or notepad wherever I go and I write down interesting things I hear. It’s a primary habit for finding ideas: listening, looking, experiencing and capturing. Opinion are easy to find if you’re curious and paying attention. Sometimes I just start a draft post in WordPress instead of the moleskine. I don’t care about losing these moleskines and the ideas I wrote down, but the habit of listening and writing in them is critical.

As a supplement to my habits, some readers do email or tweet links to articles they know I’d be interested in, or want me to comment on. This helps and I’m grateful to be popular enough that people care to know what I think about something.

Writing: To see how I actually write, I made this timelapsed video of me writing a 1000 word post. It explains most of the important things discussions of writing process never express well as we learn more by watching things first hand than nearly any other way.

Was this ramble of a post useful? I hope so. If you have other questions about process, leave a comment.

 

Q&A Monday: ask me your questions

Posted on in ask berkunby Scott Berkun

Here’s an experiment: what question do you want me to answer? Something you want advice on? A topic you always wanted my opinion on? Or perhaps a challenge?

Leave a comment and I’ll pick a question to answer every day this week, assuming the experiment works and you fine folks leave me some questions.

Changing your life is not a (mid-life) crisis

Posted on in Philosophyby Scott Berkun

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Thoreau

Whenever someone over the age of 25 suggests a profound change, one of their friends will say, mockingly “you’re having a mid-life crisis!” It’s the only response adults know to offer.

We have no label for adults who continue to grow, who work to better understand themselves, and who periodically chooses to re-align their life with their dreams. Lifelong learner is close, but even this focuses on learning rather than changing. And most of us, as friends, don’t know how to respond when someone tries to step out of the box we’ve passively held them in, a box much like the one we hold ourselves in all the time.

To see a friend change is scary because it challenges the assumptions we have about ourselves. To watch a friend find a new career, partner or city forces us to question why we’re not doing the same, questions we spend most days trying not to ask. The instinctive response we have is parental: “stop being foolish, get over this phase, and get back in the (miserable) box.”

There is little more trivializing in life than calling someone’s pursuit of fulfillment a phase. It presumes the status quo is best, even when inspection reveals that status quo provides only illusions of quality. The ‘status quo’ is familiar and even when filled with mediocrity or misery we naturally, biologically, prefer it to the unknown, even if we suspect that unknown just might yield fulfillment. Perhaps someone who changes their mind on life choices by the hour deserves mockery from friends, but they also deserve respect for expressing the universal feeling that there might be a better way to go about living.

Making a tough choice is precisely when we need the most help from friends and family, but choice divides people. Many see us for who we are but only a fraction see us for who we can be. When I quit my career at 31 to try to become a writer, I heard “you’re having a mid-life crisis” over and over again and was hurt by it. I wasn’t in crisis. I’d calmly considered my life and my choices. I had a dream for my life and I wanted to put as much energy into it as I could, but I discovered there was no system to rely on like the systems that led me through school and career. I wanted a mid-life growth phase, to use the terms that were offered to me.

But few people bothered to inquire what I wanted from my life, how this choice might improve my odds, or what they could do to help. I sought support from books (which helped me plan how to quit), but most offered shallow promises. You can’t expect a map if your plan is to go off the map. My best comfort came from the honest uncertainty described in Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life? which described a candid landscape of all the possible outcomes of wanting to live a dream.

Most people I talked to presumed staying in the same career my entire life suited me, simply because that presumption allowed them to hide in their own unexamined life choices. “Why would you throw this away?” I heard, as if making a right turn in a car destroyed not only the car but the road too. It was a surprise to discover where support for my choices came from as it wasn’t always from the friends and family I’d have guessed. When you share your deepest dream it’s surprising who understands and who is mystified or even disappointed. Part of the adventure of a big change is resorting your allies, as you can’t predict who among those you know will be most connected with the person you’re becoming. And the biggest surprise of all is the new important friends you make along the way, happy consequences of a scary choice made with conviction.

Buying a Ferrari or having a desperate affair with the babysitter (or gardener) are cliches of trying to recapture youth, as they find their present devoid of meaning or joy. These acts are often done by people who have no idea what is really bothering them, and like scrambling in a closet for clothes when late for work, the cliches are the easiest and most impulsive things to try. They only understand later that the desire for the Ferrari or an affair were likely symptoms of a problem denied and not the problem or solution itself. If they’re lucky the resulting true crisis those decisions causes forces them to dig deeper into what’s missing from their lives and pursue change.

I imagine for myself a lifetime of changes initiated by me. I know I’m too curious, and life is too short, to follow the conventional footsteps that everyone is quick to defend despite how miserable they seem in the following. We use the phrase “life long learner” but it’s corny and shallow, suggesting people who quietly take courses or read books after college as if the essence of life were merely a hobby. We need a term for life long growers, people who continue to examine and explore their own potentials and passions, making new and bigger bets as they change throughout life. With or without a label I’ve learned more through my so called mid-life crisis about myself, my friends and the possibilities of life, than I could any other way and I plan to make similar changes throughout my hopefully long and fulfilling life.

 

The Year Without Pants: early praise and reviews

Posted on in Year Without Pantsby Scott Berkun

YWP COVER FINAL

It’s been an amazing journey writing a book about my year working for WordPress.com. Now in the last three months before release in September it’s great to see some early praise come in for The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.

“The Year Without Pants is one the most original and important books about what work is really like, and what it takes to do it well, that has ever been written.”
—Robert Sutton, professor, Stanford University, and author, New York Times bestsellers The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss

“WordPress.com has discovered a better way to work, and The Year Without Pants allows the reader to learn from the organization’s fun and entertaining story.”
—Tony Hsieh, author, New York Times best seller Delivering Happiness, and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc.

“The underlying concept—an ‘expert’ putting himself on the line as an employee—is just fantastic. And then the book gets better from there! I wish I had the balls to do this.”
—Guy Kawasaki, author, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, and former chief evangelist, Apple

“If you want to think differently about entrepreneurship, management, or life in general, read this book.”
—Tim Ferriss, author, New York Times best seller The 4-Hour Workweek

“With humor and heart, Scott has written a letter from the future about a new kind of workplace that wasn’t possible before the internet. His insights will make you laugh, think, and ask all the right questions about your own company’s culture.”
—Gina Trapani, founding editor, Lifehacker

“Some say the world of work is changing, but they’re wrong. The world has already changed! Read The Year Without Pants to catch up.”
—Chris Guillebeau, author, New York Times best seller The $100 Startup

“Most talk of the future of work is just speculation, but Berkun has actually worked there. The Year Without Pants is a brilliant, honest, and funny insider’s story of life at a great company.”
—Eric Ries, author, New York Times best seller The Lean Startup

“The Year Without Pants is a highly unusual business book, full of ideas and lessons for a business of any size, but a truly insightful and entertaining read as well. Scott Berkun’s  willingness to take us behind the scenes of WordPress.com uncovers some of the tenets of a great company: transparency, team work, hard work, talent, and fun, to name a few. We hear about new ways of working and startups, but we rarely get to see up close the magic that can occur when we truly tend, day in and day out, to building something bigger than ourselves.”
—Charlene Li, author, Open Leadership, founder, Altimeter Group

“ Once you’ve seen how WordPress.com does things, you’ll find yourself asking why your company works the way it does.”
—Tom Standage, editor, The Economist

“Berkun smashes the stereotypes and teaches a course on happiness, team culture and innovation”
—Alla Gringaus, web technology fellow, Time, Inc.

“The future of work is distributed. Automattic wrote the script. Time for rest of us to read it.”

– Om Malik, founder, GigaOM

You’ll be surprised, shocked, delighted, thrilled and inspired by how WordPress.com gets work done. I was!

 – Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

When is YWP out: Book is out early September

You can Pre-order: On amazon.com or Barnes and Nobles and other retailers

Mailing list: Get notified when it’s out plus exclusive content

How To Write a Second Draft

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

As I’ve been working on The Year Without Pants, I wrote recently about how to revise a first draft, including what I call The Big Read: where you sit down and read through the entire draft in as few sittings as possible.

The result of that big read is a manuscript that looks something like this:

edit - wide

This set of pages had more notes than average, but every page has commentary from me. I avoid rewriting as I read, focusing instead on giving myself as much advice and input for the actual rewrite, which happens later. There are many different kinds of suggested changes I note for myself:

  • Trivial typos, phrase changes, and line edits. If I catch something quickly I’ll suggest a change, but otherwise I’ll mark it with a question mark or circle.
  • Sentences or paragraphs that are redundant. If it reads redundant to me, it definitely will to a reader. I edit harshly. Having a complete first draft makes this easy, since I know no single paragraph matters as much to readers as it might to me.
  • Questions I need to answer to justify keeping a passage. As a reader I note things that don’t make sense, need better explanation, or sections with style problems such as unfunny jokes, distracting self-aggrandizement or even arguments that I myself question.
  • Notes on things repeated across chapters (probably should be killed). In a book length draft there is always unintended repitition where I make the same point twice or more without acknowledging it. This is bad. It’s like talking to someone with no short term memory.
  • Within chapter flow suggestions. Is the opening strong? the closing? Does each story and point flow? Can I reorder paragraphs to make it stronger?
  • Across book flow suggestions (should a chapter be earlier? later? killed?) – these are the scariest changes to consider. Moving large blocks of text around ripples through a book, forcing many other passages that need to be changed. This is why the big read is important: it’s the only way for me to keep most of the book in mind during the second draft. If I worked on a 2nd draft over several weeks, I’d have a harder time remembering where everything is and how it was written and have more fear of big changes.

Second drafts also incorporate feedback from other people. This is a challenge: everyone gives feedback differently and none match what I do for my own drafts. For the Year Without Pants I had feedback from 10 different people to consider:

  • 5 co-workers from WordPress.com
  • 4 old friends who are good at tearing drafts apart
  • My editor at Jossey-Bass

My solution was to compile the feedback into a single file I could skim through at any time during the 2nd draft process. I’d keep the manuscript open in one window, the notes from everyone else open in other windows and my hand edited print out of the first manuscript by my side. Then I could jump between them if needed to compare their thoughts.

The actual Rewriting is far easier than Draft writing

While it’s not easy, the actual writing of a second draft feels much easier than a first. My creative powers can be applied to improving, rather than inventing. I can never predict which chapters will give the most trouble, but there are always 2 or 3 that I do heavy work on, rewriting or reorganizing large portions. Most chapters are simply me following my own notes from the read, filling in the blanks and answering the questions I asked.

I always have the goal of making the book shorter as it goes through revisions. Even if I add new sections or revise old ones I want the majority of my actions to be ones of concision. The book should get tighter and tighter as I work, with my effort clarifying the writing, making the book easier to read.

When the 2nd draft is done, it gets handed to a copyeditor who helps polish up my grammar. Check out my post on What Copyeditors do, with examples from my books.

 

Book Review: Good Prose – The Art of Non Fiction

Posted on in Book reviews, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

good prose coverI gave a talk at WordCamp Seattle recently about writing. One point I made was the limitations for improving writing skills merely by listening or reading. For the same reasons reading about playing guitar or juggling knives is insufficient to learn how to be a great guitar player or fully limbed knife juggler, mere reading is consumption, not practice. Skill development only comes from practice. Over the years I’ve read many books on writing anyway, they do help more if you are practicing the craft, but rarely read any of them now.

This one, Good Prose, however I had to read. Tracy Kidder is a pioneer of modern narrative writing, especially about technology and entrepreneurship, for his Pulitzer prize winning book Soul of A New Machine. I read it in college as many in my generation did, and it planted seeds for how to write and think about many things. When I heard he’d published a book about writing in collaboration with his long time editor Richard Todd, I had to check it out. And as time would have it, I was working on revising the Year Without Pants just when it came out. The timing could not have been more better.

[Actual review begins here]

Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction is unusual for its lack of pretense about why you are reading it. It’s not a manual and it’s not a lesson. It’s two masters who have been studying and practicing the craft of journalistic narratives for decades attempting to document what they do and what they know. The essays in the book wind around deep subjects like narrative, honesty, structure and style, frequently referencing stories from Kidder’s book projects as examples for challenges faced and overcome.

Most of Kidder’s work is reportage, long form journalism and the book follows that line. What’s notable for all writers are the hints and nods the book makes to the fact that all writing has a narrative, and all writing is reporting. Even if you blog about your adventures in the kitchen, or post short summaries of your day on Facebook, you are engaging with many of the challenges Kidder and Todd explore in the book.

The biggest surprise for me as an author was how long Kidder’s writing projects take. Research is often years and he explains 8 or 10 complete drafts are not uncommon. As a fan of his work these facts are a reminder there are no shortcuts. Better writing is the result of more work and commitment.

The payoffs for the book are greater for people who write deeply, books and longer narratives, but anyone interested in writing craft will find this book a pleasure. It helps if you’re familiar with Kidder’s work, but that’s far from a requirement.

Here are some choice quotes from Good Prose:

No other art form is so infinitely mutable. Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

For instance, one sure way to lose the reader is trying to get down everything you know about a person. What the imaginative reader wants is telling details.

Writers want to be engaging, and it is easy to try to purchase charm at the expense of honesty, but the ultimate charm lies in getting the face more right than pretty

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns—when the book or article appears—his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and “the public’s right to know”; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.

Much overstuffed prose reflects a desire to bully, to impress, or to hide.

It has taken, on average, about three years for me to research and write a book, long enough for each to seem like an occupation in itself.

Every piece of writing, even classic works, can be ridiculed.

Whatever art any book achieves may or may not be rewarded in the marketplace, but art isn’t generally achieved with the market in mind. Every book has to be in part its own reward. In happy moments one realizes that the best work is done when one’s eye is simply on the work, not on its consequences, or on oneself. It is something done for its own sake. It is, in Lewis Hyde’s term, a gift.

I always wince when a reviewer says, “This book needed an editor.” Often it had an editor, but the writer prevailed.

Get Good Prose: The Art of Non-Fiction on Amazon.

How Pulp Fiction was written (and rejected)

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

From Cinephillia and Beyond, this comment from Roger Avary, who co-wrote Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction with Tarantino:

We just took all the best scenes we had ever written, and we packed them up, and we went to Amsterdam. Quentin rented this apartment, and we laid them out on the floor and basically just started moving them around… Our one requirement was that every scene should be able to stand on its own and be able to be performed in an acting class. A couple of actors should be able to do it together and it should be contained that way. No establishing shots… No wasted space, no traveling here and there, just no fat. It had to be the best material we had written to that point. We laid it out and we started changing names and piecing it together… It underwent a number of passes and pretty soon it was what you see.

When we finished that script it was taken to… TriStar and a producer named Mike Medavoy. We turned it in and they said ‘this is the worst screenplay that this film company has ever been handed. This is awful. It’s not funny. It makes no sense. This guy’s dead, he’s alive. What’s going on?’ They put it into immediate turnaround…

The full interview is here.

The Meaninglessness of Google Glass

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

“The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” – J. B. Priestley

[Update 1/16/15: Google announced yesterday they were suspending the product, for now]

I don’t care about Google Glass. When I say this I mean I’m neutral about the impact it will have on me or culture at large. Google Glass does not solve a single problem that bothers me. My life will not improve because I can more easily take photos or do web searches, as those things are almost too easy to do today given how often I see people doing them.

Every important attribute of my life will remain unaffected whether I have a Google Glass or not. I will not love my family more or less. I won’t have more or less friends. My dreams won’t be more or less likely to come true. And the amount of time I spend doing things I love, or being with people I care about will remain the same.

The consumer fallacy the tech-sector surrounds us with is that the progress we need comes in upgrades, upgrades made by corporations designed for profit. While I don’t regret the clean water that comes to my house or the WiFi I’m using to publish this missive, technological progress has diminishing returns for many dimensions of modern life. If you tripled the water pressure to my home or quadrupled the WiFi speed, as impressive as those leaps sound, it would have zero impact on my ability to drink water, or write and read posts. But technological progress is easier to measure than any other kind (spiritual, personal, social, metaphysical) so we measure it, and obsess about it, and allow it to distract us from more worthy improvements to modern life.

I enjoy doing one thing at a time. I become more efficient and proficient the more time I can spend doing one thing, not less (See Attention And Sex). I have little interest in machines and devices that compress more simultaneous activities and experiences into a single moment. My ability to enjoy life fades the more distracted I am. And it fades the more time I spend with people who are distracted. I like putting my phone in my pocket and having to choose to take it out, keeping myself aware of the personal and social interruptions it creates. I use my phone often, but I’m just as happy not to use it at all if I’m doing something important, or spending time with important people, two activities I want as much of as possible before I die.

I don’t care about Google Glass in the same way I don’t care about a pencil with stronger graphite, or a car with more powerful air conditioning. It’s a kind of progress that has almost no meaning for my quality of my life.

Would you hire me? Resume from 1994

Posted on in Businessby Scott Berkun

In going through old boxes I found this resume from 1994. And a wave of bad memories returned. I had a miserable time finding a job after graduation.

Most of my friends had offers months earlier, but I ended up stuck for a summer in the 2nd level of hell known as Pittsburgh in July, staying alone in my girlfriends apartment (while she was in Australia). I desperately did not want to return home to my parents. I had dozens of interviews, from at the career center, to on the phone, to fly outs to various companies. It was a benefit of graduating from a good school like CMU that I had so many, but there were no offers.

I didn’t want to be a programmer (and wasn’t strong enough anyway) and job openings for anything else entry level in the tech sector in 1994 was hard to find, as it was still climbing out of a recession.  In 1994 there was no web and no startup community. No Facebook and no Twitter. Unlike today, there were no mobile platforms or web apps to try and make to prove my own worth by building something myself.

After months of struggling I lowered my expectations and made customized resumes for each job I applied for, bending my little pile of experience in whatever way best fit the job I was applying for. This one must have been one for a usability engineering position, which did in fact turn out to be the first job offer I got (from Microsoft, Sept 1994).

I’m posting for posterity and recent graduates having a hard time. Everyone starts somewhere. Applying for jobs is an absurd and unfair process, then and now.

berkun resume 1994

When In Doubt, Make a List

Posted on in Making things happen, Managementby Scott Berkun

The most helpful action when feeling overwhelmed is to make a list. Lists do many good things for our psychology, memory and camaraderie if working with others. Any kind of list will do, but writing them by hand is often best. In all cases, it’s worth remembering the adage: Make a List. When in doubt, just start one. Sit down, shut up and start writing. Perhaps you need a list of questions, a list of problems or a to-do list. Maybe you need a list of lists! The sooner you get started the sooner you’ll realize how many lists you need.

Many projects, despite how complex they seem, simply need someone to stand up, go to the whiteboard, and make a list of what’s wrong, what’s missing, what remains to be done, or what the major problems are. We often allow ourselves to believe that we’re so sophisticated that if we’re having trouble, it must require a complex method to save us, but that’s often not true. A well written list is often the fastest way out of many problematic situations in work or in life (remember, everything in life is a project) .

Without a list:

  • You rely on memory, which is weak, compared to seeing and reading
  • It’s therefore harder to think clearly without lists
  • You can’t compare relative importance of different items
  • Work can’t be assigned or tracked
  • It’s harder to invite different people’s insights into what’s on your mind 

1. The first task is write a flat, unordered list

Writing things down is powerful. When thoughts are written down you can move them around, compare them, combine them, or divide them as your thinking progresses. There is psychological relief in manifesting something in your head into the world. You can walk away and it’s still there even if you aren’t thinking about it or forget it.

Lists force you to come up with a language to describe tasks, which is helpful when you are working with others:

  • Land on Moon
  • Build Space Rocket
  • Build Lander Module
  • Invent triple warp drive
  • Make spaceship crash proof
  • Design tasty food to eat in space
  • Craft space uniforms that make everyone look hot

No matter how big the list is, everyone feels better once the list exists. Hey! You made something! Change of mood starts with small things.

2. Now Thinking Begins

Once there is a list, pivotal questions can be asked: what should be done first? what’s hardest to do? Which thing isn’t understood well enough to know what to do with it?

The list can also be put into order by priority (or cost, or time to finish, or a dozen attributes):

  1. Build Space Rocket
  2. Build Lander Module
  3. Land on Moon
  4. Invent triple warp drive
  5. Make spaceship crash proof
  6. Design tasty food to eat in space
  7. Craft space uniforms that make everyone look hot

It can take hours to debate which things are more important than other things, but once you have a prioritized list you get magic powers: simply by always working from the top down you are guaranteed to always be working on the most important thing, no matter how much work you get done, or how long your list becomes. This means you can stop worrying about the bottom of your list, or how long the list is.

3. Priority 1 and 2

With an ordered list, you can divide between things that must be done (Priority 1) and things that are good, but you can survive without (Priority 2). It can take much thinking to divide a list this way, but once you do, you have clarity. You give yourself the power to say NO to many things, creating space for the priority 1 things to be done well. You know you should not be working on Priority 2 items until all of the Priority 1 items are finished.

  1. Build Space Rocket
  2. Build Lander Module
  3. Land on Moon
    —————————————–
  4. Invent triple warp drive
  5. Make spaceship crash proof
  6. Design tasty food to eat in space
  7. Craft pretty uniforms that make everyone look hot

4. The Big Lesson

When in doubt, make a list. You’ll feel better, I promise.

[Inspired by Linda S.]

References

Are you important? (Emotions vs. Actions)

Posted on in Philosophyby Scott Berkun

When people say “you know you are important to me” the best answer is “I don’t know.” Think about it before you answer. There’s great social pressure to say “yes, of course I know that” when asked by a parent, spouse, boss or old friend,  but that pressure confuses your abstract feelings about a person with an evaluation of how they behave towards you. Feelings and actions are different things, and the fact someone feels you are important to them doesn’t guarantee they treat you well, or that they should be important to you.

As important as feelings are, if they don’t influence behavior feelings have little meaning for anyone but the person having them. If I love you, but treat you horribly, or ignore you, or behave selfishly and never consider your needs in any of my actions, I’m betraying those feelings (whether I realize it or not). It’s therefore not about whether I love you or care about you, but how my behavior towards you reflects those feelings. That’s the basis for healthy relationships: a connection between feelings and behavior, or emotions and actions. All too often our actions and emotions are disconnected from each other. Either through fear, disfunction, or ignorance, our emotions never make it out of our hearts and into actions that have meaning for the people we care about most. Integrity is the proximity of your beliefs to your actions, and we need more integrity in this world.

There are similar truths in the workplace.  To be told a project is important, but not to get the resources you need to do it well is a kind of lie. It’s a disconnect between the word “important” and any action that would embody importance. The person with the disconnect might not realize they are betraying themselves, but they are. Either you’re not important enough to deserve the resources and they’re deceiving you by using that word, or they are incompetent in not giving you the resources your importance merits.

It’s a low bar to ask “you know you’re important to me, right?” The better question is “does my behavior express to you how important you are?”

Blog Community Panel: Summary (WordCamp Seattle)

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

Thanks to everyone who attended our panel session at WordCamp Seattle, and to our panelists:

panel

It’s hard to capture the vibrancy of a discussion in a blog post, but this is a short summary of some the topics from my notes.

Some of the terms / facts I learned as moderator:

  • “cold start” – the challenge of getting your first comment, people are afraid to be first
  • “Cheers effect” – you need a small group of interesting regulars
  • Quality content first – you can’t get community until you have visitors. You won’t have visitors until you have (good) content.
  • “sockpuppeting” – the ethically questionable practice of posting comments as other people
  • 10am is often the peak of commenting activity (Steve mentioned it: need source)
  • 60% of time by readers is spent below the fold (ditto)

Questions to ask:

  • Why do you want a community? Do you have a larger ambition (say profit)? How does that fit or conflict with the goals the people who you hope will join your community? You need to personally reach out to people who might match your goals and invite their participation.
  • How do you reward people who comment? What natural, intrinsic rewards can you provide?
  • Brand and names matter: you want to pick a name for your site that is inviting and attractive, but not so bland as to be generic.

Here is a brief list of the links and references mentioned during the panel:

 

How to Meet Your Hero

Posted on in reader's choiceby Scott Berkun

Here’s a question from the mailbag:

I’m going to a conference for the first time, in part to meet an author that inspired me who’s speaking there. Do you have any advice on what to do and, mainly, what NOT to do when I meet him?

I know that I’d love to talk with him about a lot of things, but I don’t wanna bother him. To be honest, I’m a little anxious. How can I help make this more natural, without killing the authenticity? Am I already killing it by thinking about it and asking for your guidance?

I don’t know that anyone has traveled and paid for an event just to meet me, but I have had the good fortune to meet people who are fans of my work. It always feels good to meet the people who like what I do and it’s easy to be nice to them, since their purchases make my career possible.  Often they’re truly fun and friendly to hang around.

But I have had some awkward experiences too where people expect a little too much from me, forgetting that the dynamic isn’t symmetric: they’ve known my work intimately for months or years, but I’ve just met them for the first time and it’s impossible for me to catch up in just an hour, much less a few minutes.

Here’s what I advise:

  • Set your expectations low. People who make great books, movies or games are just people of course, but in our minds as fans we build up an image that is impossible to live up to (Some of the marketing artists and makers do fuels this of course). A book or song can be perfect, but people never are. It’s worth looking over the 12 reasons you should never meet your hero as many people tell disappointing tales of meeting their lifelong idol. I myself have met some of my heroes, and I’m convinced if you set your expectations right, it can be a thrill. The trap is many people expect far too much and end up unnecessarily disappointed.
  • Be patient and simple. Most speakers at events are accessible directly after they give their presentation. A crowd forms near the stage and fans take turns asking questions or getting autographs. Have one thing you want to ask or say, and plan for that to be the totality of the experience. A simple “I’m a big fan of your work and it has inspired me. Thanks for doing what you do” goes a long way. No one tires of hearing this. If you want a picture or an autograph, that’s great. Or if a burning question has been on your mind, ask away. Let that be your one request. But after that, let someone else have their moment. If your hero isn’t speaking but merely attending, politely introduce yourself when you see them in a hallway and then make your request (don’t wait for a perfect opportunity, since at a big event you might not even see them more than once).
  • In social situations, leave them a way out. At smaller events, or if you’re lucky to spend significant time with them, always make sure they have a way to escape and that you haven’t cornered them into spending an evening with you hovering over their shoulder like a gregarious hummingbird all night long. If you do want more time with them, collaborate with another fan or two so the offer comes from a friendly group and not a solo stranger. If your hero wants to spend all night talking to you or share a meal, or have you join his/her social circle that evening, that’s great, but be polite about not assuming you’re their new personal companion.
  • Contact them online, before the event, if you want a dialog. Email has the tremendous benefit that recipients can respond at the time they wish. There’s much less social pressure in email, whereas at an event, there is tremendous social and time pressure on famous people. Email them before the event with a very well thought out comment or question, and/or a strong thanks for their work and how it inspired you. Mention you’ll be at the event and hope to meet them. Odds are very good you’ll get a reply if your email is thoughtful, well written and not too long. Pick one clear question to ask if you have one, rather than a litany of little ones.  I get a lot of email, but the odds of getting a reply rise dramatically for the ones that are well-written, thoughtful and ask clear questions (that they know I haven’t answered elsewhere). Many blog posts here on scottberkun.com come from reader questions, which I love to get.
  • Bring a copy of their book, album or whatever they make. It’s impossible for me not to notice someone in the audience who is holding a copy of one of my books. I can’t help but want to talk to them, as they’re visually putting up a flag that they’re a fan and probably want an autograph. I might feel differently if everyone in the audience showed up one day with a copy of my books (that might be a little terrifying but I’d like to find out of course). I don’t know of any musician or writer who doesn’t respond with the same undeniable joy when they see a stranger with the book or CD that took years to make in their hands. 

 

Book Review: Microinteractions

Posted on in Book reviews, designby Scott Berkun

microinteractions_comp1-228x300They say the devil is in the details, but the angels are in there too. That is, if you have a clue about what you’re doing. People who want to design things have large egos and presume that they’re skilled enough to work on large, grand ideas. But so rarely do designs in this world get the small things right, and if the small things, the little pieces that get used the most, are broken, what is the point of being large?

Dan Saffer’s book Microinteractions is the best book I’ve read about design in ages. I’ve been working in design for 20 years and often have younger designers ask me for advice, or how to achieve their grand design dreams. Most books about design are similarly grand and presume that everyone knows the basics well enough to do the little things well. The world proves this not to be true. Spend an afternoon strolling around town with a gaggle of caffeinated interaction designers and you’ll hear an endless commentary on the details the designers of the world have gotten wrong.

The book itself is a wonderfully self-consistent: it’s short, concise, well designed and brilliant. The fun and salient examples nail Saffer’s points, and his writing is sharp, incisive and with just enough comedic curmudgeonry to keep you smiling most of the way through. The book’s ambitions, like any good design project, are clear. Saffer’s focus is on the small sequences of interactions he calls, surprise, microinteractions. Ever been frustrated by entering your password? Leaving a comment on a blog? You’ve been let down by a microinteraction design. Perhaps the majority of design frustrations in the technological world are micro, not macro.

This is the book many designers will begrudgingly pick up, thinking it’s beneath them, but by the time they get to page 25 they’ll be thinking “oh, this is fun” and then by page 50 they’ll realize “oh dear, I make that mistake, or have peers that do” and when they’re finished they’ll know “I now have a language to describe these important problems that have bothered people for ages but were hard to describe, and I have the knowledge now to fix them properly”. What more can you ask for from a book about designing things?

We live in a world where the clueless have disturbing amounts of influence. There are no licenses required to use words like design, simplicity and quality, and it should be no surprise we’re often victimized by the engineered junk companies pass off as products. If we want that to change we have to start in the small. Until a designer, or an organization, can consistently get the details right, what hope is there to get the grand things right either?

Please buy this book. I say that selfishly as I want better design in the world. But I also say it generously: so many design books are fluffy affairs, lost in abstraction and ego. Saffer has hit the bullseye of problems the design world desperately needs to solve, and written a book every designer needs to read.

A free chapter is here (PDF) and the book has its own website.

 

The Idiot Ratio

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

Every organization has a ratio of idiots to non-idiots. This is the idiot ratio.

This is a harsh, shallow, unfair way of looking at people, but everyone, no matter how offended they are by the premise, can come up with a number in their mind quickly. It’s an easy way to measure the talent pool in any organization. If for every 10 people you work with 3 are incompetent, your ratio is 3:10. Maybe you work somewhere that hires well, and it’s 9:10.

How to use it:  when two people meet to compare their workplaces, both parties think through the people they have to work with regularly and assess how many are incompetent or ineffective. The resulting ratio, 1 in 5, or 1 in 20, is the idiot ratio. Or more optimistically, the talent ratio. With the ratio two people can quickly compare their assessments of their teams.

As mean as this ratio sounds, it might be more honest than when executives say “we have the smartest people in the world”, which is likely self-serving politeness. There is no executive that would ever openly say “our talent sucks” or “we are mostly idiots” even if they believed that.

Limitations:

  • Of course low performers aren’t necessarily idiots. Idiocy is about the person, incompetence is about the job. Calling it the Incompetence Ratio would be more accurate, as the person might be a bad fit for the job but possibly good fits for other jobs, but that’s a less fun phrase to say.
  • Intelligence doesn’t guarantee chemistry. A collaborative team of good people can run circles around a dysfunctional team of geniuses. (See Teams and Stars)
  • You might be the idiot. If you are, your ratio won’t be accurate unless you are humble enough to count yourself.

[This idea is from Rachelle Uberecken, a Senior Software Developer at a place with a pleasantly low idiot ratio]

If you think everyone you work with is an idiot, then the idiot might be you.

Why Do Communities Thrive or Die? Questions wanted

Posted on in Seattle, Software/Web developmentby Scott Berkun

WordCamp_2013_Logo[The panel is over: notes from it are here]

Next This week I’m moderating a panel on building online communities as part of WordCamp Seattle, at 1pm Saturday June 8th. I have four experts, either with vibrant communities or with wisdom about how to grow and maintain them. I’m looking for questions and challenges for them during the session.

The panelists are:

Most blogs struggle to get comments on posts, much less build an active user base that lead their own discussions. What insights would you want to hear from people who have made it work?

Even if you’re not attending WordCamp Seattle, what would questions would you ask? What situations have you experienced as a blogger that you want an expert’s opinion on? Please leave a comment. I’ll make sure there’s a writeup afterwards so you can read the answers even if you couldn’t attend.