****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Josh Bernoff 0:00

Hi, I'm Josh Bernoff, author of "Build a Better Business Book" and eight other books. And I'm happy to be here on A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:24

Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth Kinney but friends call me Shark. I'm a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show in your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:36

How would you go about writing a better business book? Would it be a short or long? Chocked full of data or more stories? Pictures or none? Like you probably do I have a lot of business books on my shelves. I love to read but I will admit, many of them are not great books. Sometimes the author's babble and ramble on. Many are boring. Many of them make me sleep here than reading a college textbook. We probably share several of those same books on our shelves. So how should we go about writing and building a better business book?

Kenneth Kinney 1:07

Josh Bernoff is the author of "Build a Better Business Book" and eight other books.

Kenneth Kinney 1:12

We're glad to welcome Josh back all the way from Episode 116. That one is definitely worth a listen too.

Kenneth Kinney 1:17

And on this episode, we will discuss writing a better business book, business books, his stories, why you should write a book book, proposals that sell, writing and moving the next great book, the publishing models and their future, why does it take so long to publish a traditional book, are bookstores important, ghost writers audio books, the PQRST elements of book promotion, Morgan Freeman, chatGPT for authors, B&N vs Hudson, where lobster is a religion, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:46

So let's tune into a business authors kind of author with a shark's kind of shark on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

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Kenneth Kinney 1:57

Josh, thank you so much for joining us again today on A Shark's Perspective. Welcome back to the show. Tell us if you will, again, a little bit about your background and your career.

Josh Bernoff 2:06

Okay. So probably the most notable thing in my career was that I was an analyst at Forrester Research for 20 years. And for the eight years since then, I have been focused on the needs of authors. I work with nonfiction authors, to help them to be successful with books. And that's very much what I do all day long now.

Kenneth Kinney 2:28

Yeah, well go back. Everybody listened to Episode 116. When, which was a couple 100 episodes ago, but it was really good book as well. Writing without Bs, and I won't say the other words, because I'm trying to curse. I'm not giving that up for Lent or something in the future. But But anyway, so congrats on your newest book, I had actually gone back and I listened to it. And I laughed. But this was two or three years ago, I think actually when we spoke but you said that you were working on a book and you were amazed you weren't sure about the title yet. But you had found that there wasn't a book on how to write a business book. And this is a fantastic book, build a better business book, How To Play and write and promote a book that mannerist. You've co authored and authored several amazing books like groundswell, and writing without BS, what was the groundswell if you will over the last few years to get this one published and get it going? What What was the inspiration other than just you knew there wasn't a book about writing a better book?

Josh Bernoff 3:28

Well, I, I've done 50 book projects over my career. And when I say I've done I've been an editor, I've been a coach, I've been a co author, I've been been, you know, a solo author, a ghostwriter. And I keep finding that people who are very successful at business and marketing, they keep making the same mistakes and having the same questions about what it takes to write a business book. And it's a very complex topic. So I put everything I know, into here. This is build a better business book. It's available right now. Official pub date is in about a week, but I know they're shipping from Amazon. And you can also get it from my publisher amplify. And I just wanted to, to put everything that people need to know in one place. And I wanted to focus on the thing that people miss most, which is that business books are stories, even though it's a nonfiction book stories are central to what makes a business book successful. Yeah, we're

Kenneth Kinney 4:32

gonna get into that because I love this book. This was frustrating to me, because I'm in the process. As I mentioned earlier, I've worked on books, I've helped people finish books, I've authored parts of books, but now I'm finishing my own and this guide, you can spend a lot of time on Google or clubhouse or talk to people but really, this was like an encyclopedia and that's what I loved about it. And I love all the people that you know, you brought out some heavy hitters. I mean Dave Franklin, it way back when introduce us to each other but you've got blurbs and endorsements from de from Seth Godin, Dan Pink Jay Baer, Dorie Clark, Chris Brogan, you know, all the all the little folks that nobody's heard of. But you, you weren't playing around. But I also remember from way back when what it was like speaking with you, because I get a little bit nervous that because I'm worried you're going to correct me, or at least completely judge every grammar mistake I make, or speak or the weasel words I use on the show, which was one of my favorite phrases. And there will be plenty since it's me, so be gentle. But let's let's dive back into that first topic. And I love that you addressed this early on in his great book, chapter one. But it's one of the most important pieces that I think authors overlook authors and speakers overlook as too much is that business books or stories, talk a little bit about that, and how we can go about remedying that?

Josh Bernoff 6:00

Well, I want to first of all talk about how I learned that. I wrote my first book proposal when I was still an analyst at Forrester Research, we sent it to the agent, Ike Williams is a very successful agent. And he said, I can't sell this. I said, What's wrong with it. And he said, business books are stories that are about people and stories. There's no people, and there's no stories in here. Because I'd written it like a research report. And I thought, okay, I could do that. And so when I came back, the book that we did end up eventually writing groundswell had all sorts of user stories in there. So when I say business books, or stories, there's a few elements of that. First of all, you want to think about the audience and the problem you're solving. So in general, the book is about these people have this problem, and they need to solve it, whether it's investors trying to make money or, you know, content marketers attempting to differentiate themselves or whatever. The you need to collect stories, need to collect case studies, stories of Europe of your own experience, stories of your clients experience stories that you read, from other people interviews that you source, because that's what makes the book come alive. And in fact, there are more than 20 author stories in my own book. And the other thing is that the book itself is a story, it starts with, oh, my gosh, there's a problem, then we're gonna describe the elements of the problem, then we're gonna describe how you get past that, and what the solution looks like. And then we're gonna describe the elements of the solution. While that's a narrative. And in fact, every chapter tends to have a narrative, which is, this person had a problem. It's a typical problem. Here's how you solve that problem. Here's the backup for why that that solution is valid. Here's some steps that you can do to follow that, that is a narrative. And that's what people will follow throughout the entire book. Well, if

Kenneth Kinney 8:03

they're not writing to fix a problem, what do you think they're doing? I mean, is there either GM conceded? What is what is the issue? Because it seems like a lot of them get kind of lost? And it's just about themselves?

Josh Bernoff 8:17

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's certainly one thing people do is to just talk about themselves. And if you're, if you're writing an autobiography, then sure that's okay. But most books succeed, because they are business books succeed, because they are useful. And that means it's very much about the other people that you're helping. And you can talk about, you know, at one time I had this issue, and this is how I help the person. But it should be mostly about the problem and what the solution to the problem is. Because people just get disgusted with email, you know, when are you going to get to the point that the other thing about stories is that they have a rhythm to them a beginning, a middle and an end? And in the absence of that structure, people ramble on and that's how you get the business book where you're like, oh, geez, Chapter three sounds just like chapter two sounds just like chapter four. I get when people give up.

Kenneth Kinney 9:11

Sure. In the next chapter, you address why someone should write a book and there's a passage that I really liked. I hope you'll let me read real quick. When people think about books, they tend to think of little rectangular packages of bound paper pages, they think of shelves full of books and colorful dust jackets and bookstores, or they may think of icons on their Kindle or iPad each a promise of a neat package of insight. But after speaking with many, many authors, I know that these are not the ways that published authors think about their books. Yes, it feels good to hold an ice bound copy of all your insights in your hand and know I created this. I shared what I knew. It's all here. I love that because that really speaks to what you were just talking about. But why do you think someone should write a book?

Josh Bernoff 9:54

Well, that unless your audiences feeling pain, and you can relieve that pain, then don't bother. So the main reason is that your audience has a pain and you're trying to relieve it. And usually that's because you know, something, nobody else knows, you know, people are spending too much money on advertising. So I'm going to explain how content marketing works. Or, you know, people don't understand that when you're doing artificial intelligence, that the data structures are central, or whatever it happens to be. But the book focuses everything down. And from that point, everything sort of springs back out, it becomes what you're known for. It becomes what your speeches come from, it becomes the structure of your consulting, it becomes a whole platform for the knowledge that people have. And the discipline that's required to boil that down into a book. And a narrative is really what it takes to get your thinking to the level where it's most useful to people.

Kenneth Kinney 11:01

Well, later on in chapter four, you talked about the models, and I think, if anybody's unfamiliar with the models, this is a great chapter. Self Publish hybrid and traditional. It's one of the questions I get asked, every time somebody asked me about the book that I'm writing, what are you doing? Are you doing which which of the models but to me, it seems like that we're a Barnes and Noble chapter 11. It seems like a Jenga game. Before we blow up everything with traditional, I'm going to ask you a few. Because we have these options with with hybrid and, and self publish. And obviously, that's, that keeps you out of the stores often. I know there's there's ways to get back in the stores like Barnes and Noble, but looking at your crystal ball five years from now is a the next Josh Bernoff book gonna be self publish or even hybrid for that matter. And no, say that we're not we don't have a Barnes and Noble anymore, because Amazon's put them out of business as well. Where do you start to think about the models in the future?

Josh Bernoff 12:04

Well, the first thing to recognize is that for business books, bookstores are not that important. And if people are wondering about that, think about the last time you bought a business book, where did you buy it, you probably bought it on Amazon, you didn't go into a store and rifle through a bunch of books. I. So the, the main advantage of traditional publishing, is their ability to get things into bookstores. And that becomes much less potent for business books. And you asked me about my next book. This, it's interesting. So this book is published as a hybrid published book, because I didn't want to deal with trying to pitch it to publishers, and having them tell me that it had to be changed this way or that. And in fact, I have a partnership with my publisher amplify that is much better and more powerful than anything you could get with a traditional publisher. Because they and I have a really a combined goal here of making the book successful. Now I have two ideas for books coming up. And this is a pretty good example of what the two different models would be. I, I wrote some little fictional sort of Black Mirror type vignettes, that are intended to scare the crap out of people about technology. And I thought, you know, that was fun, maybe I could put together like 50 of those and put them in a book, that would definitely be a self published book, because I don't really imagine that I could get a publisher interested. And there's no way I'd want to deal with the overhead of trying to pitch that. On the other hand, I have a very big idea. I'm not even at liberty to talk about it. But this would be the kind of book that would change the way everybody thought about business. And that I go to a traditional publisher, because I want the visibility. And I'd want the clout that comes from it saying Simon and Schuster, or portfolio on on the side of the book, and writing without bullshit got published with with Harper business. And I was pleased because the one thing you get with a traditional publisher, in addition to the distribution is you get an advance they pay you. Yeah. So you know, that was a that was a really positive thing for me at the beginning of my freelance career.

Kenneth Kinney 14:33

It must be tough, though, for a book publisher, to give that I'm sure you're easy to work with. But it must be tough to come if I know it's you. Or an AJ Harper or some of these killers that have written, you know, a book like this for them to come in and say, Josh, you need to rewrite this book a different way that that to me would be really tough.

Josh Bernoff 14:54

It's really all over the map. I mean, I've turned in books, and gotten hardly any feed back from traditional publishers, one of the authors that I, I worked with, I convinced him to go to traditional, he was like, nobody's gonna pick this book up. I said, No, no, this is awesome. We got an agent, we got him a traditional deal. And everybody was happy. And then he called me like six months later and said, Oh, my God, they're changing everything around. And I'm like, This is what happens, they start messing around with it, and they're not happy with, with your idea.

Kenneth Kinney 15:28

With chapter five, you talk about book proposals that sell how much of a book proposal should be about the content of the book, versus the promotion of it. And this goes with something I've kind of experienced recently, as well, publishers seem to be in a lot of conversations I've had looking more for you to help them move the next great book, rather than necessarily write the next great book. And maybe that's just me. But that's a big part of it today.

Josh Bernoff 15:56

Well, first of all, people should understand that a book proposal is necessary. If you're going to pitch traditional publishers and agents, it's not necessary, if you're going to deal with a hybrid publisher, which is a publisher, you pay to publish your book, or it's certainly not necessary for self publishing. But if you are going to pitch traditional publishers, a lot of what you're doing is convincing them that this book will sell. And there's two parts of that. One is you have to describe the differentiation of the book, the big idea, you have to describe how it fits in with competing books, you have to have a sample chapter that shows that you're a good writer. But equally important, all of that is your promotion plan. And I would say in many cases, it's more important. So that's your, you're now thinking about a book that's going to get published a year and a half from now, and saying, all right, I'm going to appear on 27 podcasts, or I'm going to pay a publicist $40,000 to, to get me in all sorts of places, or, you know, my friend is a producer for Good Morning America, or whatever it happens to be. I know, for example, at Wiley, which publishes more business books than anybody else, the typical thing they say is, you need to prove to us that you on your own can sell 10 to 20,000 copies of the book. And that's the other publishers are not quite as stark as that. But that's the same basic idea. You need to show them that you can sell the book. And at that point, you're like, Well, if I could do this myself, Do I really need a publisher? Right, but but that's what that that's what has to be in there?

Kenneth Kinney 17:38

Well, what and another thing you address in here about the models and about this is about promoting the book and getting it going as well is, if you will address why think the traditional publishers need 12 to 15 months, or is it like 1415 months to publish a book because you know, when you get a great idea, a lot of people will go to self or hybrid just because they don't want to wait that long.

Josh Bernoff 18:00

That's absolutely the case. If you're if you want to move fast, then traditional publishing is not for you. And the reason that that's set up that way is because the you got to remember who their customers are people like who's the customer of a publisher? It's a reader right? Now, it's a bookstore. Correct. That's who pays publishers is bookstores, certainly the author's not the customer, and you get treated as a supplier, you know, you're you're important and so as the printer. But, but that means that they put that book on their fall list, right? So if you're pitching it in, let's say, you know, January of 2024, they're gonna put it on their, their fall list for 2025. And so then their salespeople need to understand the book, and they need to go out and prepare for it. And so that whole long process of pitching the bookstores is the reason why they move so slowly. And because bookstores are less important to to business books, it's you know, it's really the tail wagging the dog, you don't really want to be on that schedule. But if you want to get that $100,000 advance from a traditional publisher, that's one of the things that you're gonna have to put up with.

Kenneth Kinney 19:29

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath. Later on you address and I love this co authors and ghost writers, you as somebody who's done this and collaborated on so many different books. I thought it was brilliant, as well as talking about how to work with a ghost writer, but there was also a section in there, how to pay a ghost rider to kind of elaborate give us an overview of how to approach work with pay a ghost writer because I don't think this is as easy as people think as well.

Josh Bernoff 19:58

Oh, well. I've now ghost written three books. Two of them are published and have my name on the cover, as with Josh Bernoff, one of them with your friend Dave Franklin. And the third one, I didn't get billing, and that hasn't been published yet that will be coming out in a few months. And in that case, the author comes to the ghostwriter, or to an agency that finds a ghostwriter and says, I would like a book about this. And I have to tell you, when I started doing that, I thought, Okay, well, there must be a standard way to do this. Absolutely not. There's like 29,000 different ways to do it. So is the author going to tell you what to write. That's what happened in my book with a Franklin they had very clear idea of what they wanted. And I wrote to their specification. In the book that I wrote about artificial intelligence. I was frustrated because there was no source material. And I ended up having to do all the research myself, identify the interviews, conduct, the interviews come up with the ideas, obviously, it had to match up to what the author wanted. But it was just like writing a book on my own idea, except that it was on somebody else's idea. The book that I ghost wrote most recently came from basically, slide where and pitches that this company did a management consulting company. And I found out there's a big difference between the sales pitch, and something that would actually make sense in a in a book chapter. Now, you talked about paying a ghostwriter. I think part of that deal is that people should get paid as they go along. So the ghostwriter is going to want me maybe a third or a half of the fee, which is likely to be in the 50 to $100,000 range. They're gonna want a third or half of that upfront, and then to get paid on delivery of certain milestones. And what I've found is that usually, when the process bogs down, it's because the people hiring the ghostwriter, the authors of the book, are not available, aren't there to work with, and you can't make any progress without their help. So it's like, why did this take so long? It's because I needed you to be able to write I can't just sit here and, and make stuff up.

Kenneth Kinney 22:24

Yeah, I think sometimes people think of it almost like it's just randomly funding somebody on Fiverr. And which is the wrong way. But we've kind of gotten to that point where they get a nebulous person, they don't know by name. And that's not the way to approach it.

Josh Bernoff 22:39

Now. You know, it's interesting, I have a friend who's a ghostwriter. But he was just starting, and he got a contract to write this book for, like, $24,000. And I'm like, oh, man, that's really low to write a whole book. And it was a disaster. Because because the author really was all over the map in terms of what they wanted, and I and he couldn't get anywhere in the end, they had to drop the whole thing. And I think that that's part of the deal is that unless you take it seriously enough to pay more than that, you're, you're you're going to be like spinning in circles. And you know, a book that's written quickly for $20,000 is going to be crap. And it's going to have the your name on it, you just hired someone to write crap, and put your name on it. That's not going to help anybody.

Kenneth Kinney 23:31

Yeah, well, later on you, you dedicated chapter to audio books, can you elaborate on where you see yourself with audiobooks where you see the future of the medium going, and so on.

Josh Bernoff 23:42

While the audiobook part of business books is exploding, it's really there are many, many people who are listening to books, while they're commuting while they are exercising while they're doing other things. And so, every business book should have an audio book. Now, I actually am a proponent for the author, narrating the business book, the audio book for the business book, not everybody has got the skill to do that. And that takes hours. I mean, I'm for this book, this is we're looking at like, three full days of recording for me.

Kenneth Kinney 24:25

But and then just as many for editing,

Josh Bernoff 24:28

well, I, you you work for a producer, and they do the editing to put it together. You're not just sitting in front of a microphone, it's part of a whole production process. But I also think that, that you can do justice to the book in a way that an actor hired actor can. So I know what I want to emphasize. I know which things are important. I know which things I'm going to read quickly and which I'm going to read slowly based on how much I want You have to pay attention to them. So that people are willing to put up with imperfections in the narration, because you're not a professional actor. But they'd rather hear from the author if they can. And so that's a fun, it's a fun thing to do.

Kenneth Kinney 25:20

Well, it's odd because I, it took me a while to kind of come around to business books on audio, I was already a fan of, of, you know, fiction books before. But business books really I struggled with, even though I listen to podcasts, it was just, sometimes some of the authors were boring. However, I'm working heavily right now to get Morgan Freeman to author mine. So maybe really, no, I have zero chance. And he doesn't know who I am. But I'm still trying. He was that I could live with. But let's, let's talk then about chapter 21. What are the five key elements of book promotion?

Josh Bernoff 25:59

Yeah, I'd say the number one problem that people have with business books, is a lack of promotion, they put all this energy into creating the book and publishing the book. And then it goes out there. And it's like, that people will find it. That's Baloney, they won't find it unless you help them. And so you need to do everything you can to get the word out. And the five elements that I talked about, you can remember by the initialism, p, q, r s, t. So P is positioning. And that's pretty simple. That's just who is the audience? And what kind of a book it is, is it? So this is a business strategy book for marketers, or this is a memoir that's aimed at people in the technology business, or this is on a how to book for Generation Z investors. So that's the positioning, the queue is the question you're answering. So that's, you know, how can I make get more done in less time? Or how can I make sure that my business book is successful? That's every book has a question that it answers. So those are two things about the book that are sort of the foundation for the marketing, the are the s and the T are about your promotion, are is reach? How are you going to get the word out to way more people than are hearing about it now. And that involves things like doing contributed articles, and by lines for other sites. You know, appearing on podcasts, like I'm doing with you, basically, connecting up with people who have a big audience, S is spread. And that is how are you going to get people to share it. So you give people things that they can share with others, like infographics or bits of video, or, you know, webinar or links or whatever. But you want to make it possible for people who liked the book, to tell other people about it. And the T is timing. And that's the other thing that's a little weird about this, everybody is used to marketing being on a schedule. But this is a launch. And that means you want everything in a narrow period of time. So in the period of two, three weeks before the book, publication date, and maybe a month after the book, publication date, you want all the marketing you can possibly get to hit in that time period. And the reason for that is because the person in the target audience is like, Oh, I just heard Josh on this podcast. Interesting. And then they forget. And then they're like, oh, wait a minute. There's a article by him in the in the Harvard Business Review Online? Oh, yeah, I was gonna get that book. And then they forget. And then they're like, oh, wait a minute, here's a blog post is that got shared by a friend of mine on LinkedIn, okay, I keep hearing about this, this thing must be the big thing. And so they buy it. So you have to have the frequency of hitting them over and over again. And that is only going to happen if the timing means that everything is in that same narrow period of time.

Kenneth Kinney 29:16

I love that. And it made me think because you do reference Phil and Jones in here as well. And I remember about a year ago, I think I saw him talking about this. He also said this was a year or two after he wrote exactly what to say. He said treat every week like its launch week or something like that. And he was talking about how he had done, you know, a year after his book. He had done three podcasts this week. So I mean, I think I agree with the seasonality, especially in regards to timing and getting it to launch right but just the ongoing promotion reminds me as well, that there's to this point about the key elements. I mean, if you think you've done everything once you've written the book, forget about there's that's just the start. There's so much more Go. So one of the things I thought was interesting, and I was I was just thinking about this today. And I know this could be a book later on, because obviously you've talked about this and other books, but talk a little bit about the dreaded thing that I hate to bring up. But I have to all the time now is chat GPT. Where do you think chat GPT is going to play a part with business books as we go forward? Because I'm seeing way too many lazy people I know who are telling me they're using it as a resource to write a whole chapter.

Unknown Speaker 30:33

Okay, that's a terrible chapter. Yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 30:36

exactly.

Josh Bernoff 30:38

You know, if you read stuff, the chat GPT writes, it's nice and even and boring. And it has no soul. One of the things that I tried to do was I, I tried to get chat GPT to write some jokes. If so bad at humor, it has no idea how to make a joke. And for me, whip is part of writing a central part of writing. And that means the way you tell people stories, the way you hit people in the face with ideas, the order you put things in, none of that is possible to do with Chet GPT. Now, that having been said, it's actually a useful tool. So you can say, Alright, here's some source material that I wrote, tell me, what are the main ideas in here? And you look at what it comes up with? And you say, Oh, those aren't the ones that I wanted to emphasize, you go back and change things? Or how what percentage of this is written in the passive voice? Or, you know, what? What do you know that other people have said that similar to this, and of course, you gotta be careful, because of course, sometimes these artificially intelligent systems make stuff up. So you can't trust it. I did an exercise recently, where one of the things I help people with his book titles. And I would put a description of a book into Chet GPT, and say, Come up with five book titles for this. And he came up with some dumb ideas, but he came up with some good ideas, too. And I thought well as a tool, but the point is, though, that you wouldn't say, give me the right title for this, and then take the answer. Now, you'd be like, what could you come up with? And you're like, No, that sucks. That sucks. Wait a minute. That's a really interesting idea. And just like you can trust Microsoft Word to correct your spelling, but you should check it. You can get chat GPT to help you with stuff in the book. Just don't expect it to write things for you. Because I don't want to read that crap. Yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 32:51

great point. Well, Josh, last time we recorded you were living in Boston, you since moved. But I was asking you about your favorite kind of shark and why it's a question I ask people is to make them laugh. And I remember your answer. The great white because like every book, it should be that you should start out with a scare the hell out of your chapter. So I thought that was a great reference to way back when. But we're gonna play again, if it's okay, it's a special time in the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Josh Bernoff 33:25

Ah, I will do my best. Now. I'm scared. But let's let's go.

Kenneth Kinney 33:30

Alright, number one. Your time living in Boston or now? To your time living in Maine.

Josh Bernoff 33:37

Oh, which is better? Yeah. I was connected to so many people in Boston. It was great to be part of things. But I'm now surrounded by all this nature. My wife has a big space for her studio here. I love living in Maine. So this is a great place for me to be at this point in my life.

Kenneth Kinney 33:56

I know plenty of people that don't like living in Boston. I've never in my life met somebody who didn't like living in me. I don't know. You know, it's a little too cold for my for me, but everybody loves it. So it's getting warmer. Yeah, that's true is true. Alright, number two, Barnes and Noble or Hudson news.

Josh Bernoff 34:16

Oh, God, forget Hudson news. So Hudson news. People need to understand some things about that. Every book that you see in Hudson news is there because the publisher or the author paid for it to be there. So you're now looking at somebody else's idea of what books you should see. Whereas Barnes and Noble, at least you're seeing a variety now. If you really want the answer the right answer is give me a fantastic used bookstore the smell of the used book, a man I went to I went to use bookstore in Scotland on my vacation that's built inside of a church. reconditioned church called leaky is in Inverness, and, man, I'll take that anytime over a regular bookstore.

Kenneth Kinney 35:00

No kidding. Well, I travel a lot speaking. So to me, I do end up shopping way too much in Hudson news and but I do love Barnes and Noble. It's the last bastion of hope against Amazon. And at least I can get a Starbucks when I'm in there. Alright, number three, which you enjoy more writing, or reading.

Josh Bernoff 35:23

You know, I actually enjoy writing more, I learned something really important when I became a freelancer, which is that there's nothing that makes me happier than working with text. Writing makes me really happy. And editing makes me happy too, because I read things. And I'm like, this has promised but I know exactly what's wrong with that. And I know just what it takes to fix it. I feel like I'm taking advantage of the real talent that I've developed over all these decades. So and I like to read the best books that I read, combine to give me a feeling of fulfillment and jealousy. When I read Malcolm Gladwell, I'm like, You're so freakin good. It just makes me jealous. So. So now I'd rather write than, than almost anything else.

Kenneth Kinney 36:18

All right, well, I get another reading question for you here. Number four. Would you personally rather read a business book? That's a short form book like 120 pages? We talked about Phil Jones Exactly. What's a good example, John Gordon's many narratives and works, or a longer form book, you know what, like ones that you've written that better 6070 80,000 words plus?

Josh Bernoff 36:45

Well, in general, shorter is better. And am definitely a lot of these longer books would be a lot better if people would just just stick to the main ideas, and get it done quickly. And, and the typical length of a really good business book has gone down, it used to be 65 70,000 words, which translates to 250 pages. And now we're looking at 40 45,000 words as being typical. Now, I have to admit, you know, this is this is well over 70,000 words. So what went wrong? Well, the problem is, as it says, right here, a comprehensive guide for authors. So I felt like it had to have everything in it to be a comprehensive guide. And that means if you want to look up stuff about doing an index, or how to deal with page layout, or, or how to monetize the book, once it's published, I wanted there to be something in there to help you.

Kenneth Kinney 37:48

Yeah, if this book had been 2030 40,000 words, it wouldn't have done the reader justice,

Josh Bernoff 37:54

that there are books on writing business books, which are short, like 30 40,000 words, and they're good, but then the person gets to the end, and they're like, Okay, so how do I get a publisher? Like, okay, well, that book is not going to solve that problem for you.

Kenneth Kinney 38:11

Alright, number five, and the most important question that you're going to be asked today, and last time, it was biscuits, or cornbread, but we're going to switch this with lobster in Maine, or lobster in Massachusetts. It's a subtle difference. But

Josh Bernoff 38:28

well, you know, lobster in Massachusetts is an event but lobster in Maine is a religion. So clearly, if you're gonna want to want to have a religious experience, and surround yourself with a maritime way of doing things, then you got to have an inmate.

Kenneth Kinney 38:46

Great point. So Josh, where can people find out more about you get a copy of this awesome book and more.

Josh Bernoff 38:53

Okay, so just a few things. First of all, if you go to bernoff.com, that's my blog. You will see the book right on there, and you can buy it and you'll be buying it directly from the publisher, which is faster than it will be if you go through Amazon. If you want the ebook, you should like a Kindle book. Yeah, I gotta buy that through Amazon. And if you want the audio book that's coming very soon, you're gonna have to come back in about a week. There was a little delay because my lost my voice due to COVID. So I gotta finish recording that. And if people are just interested in hearing about the content to begin with, I have a webinar coming up with amplify. So that information is also on my, my site. If you search for webinar, build a better business book, you'll see the links to get to that you'll be able to, to go in and sign up and hear more about about what I'm trying to get across here.

Kenneth Kinney 40:00

Well, I completely empathize with you. I had strep and lost my voice for almost a month. So I'm worthy of a Josh. Again, thank you very much for coming back and being with us today on a shark's perspective.

Josh Bernoff 40:13

Oh, it's great to be here. And I hope that people in your audience can benefit from this. Thanks for having me.

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Kenneth Kinney 40:25

So that was my conversation with Josh Bernoff, the author of "Build a Better Business Book" and eight other books. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 40:35

First, what a great point about stories we throw around storytelling as a topic a lot, but don't always employ the practice well, right to fix a problem, tell a story. don't ramble. Don't make it just about you. Don't write a boring book. Incorporate your stories. And if you're trying to get that audio book recorded, like me by Morgan Freeman, well, hopefully he'll return my calls and pleas for help soon.

Kenneth Kinney 40:58

Second, why should you write a book Josh says basically, it's when you can explain the specific pain that your audience has paraphrasing here, but you should be the known answer for that solution that no one else has written about extremely well, or from that specific narrative. Find the niche and write your solution.

Kenneth Kinney 41:15

Third, whatever model you go with for your book, remember that you've got to be a great marketer as well as a great author. As Josh said, not enough authors have a good promotion strategy. Writing a great book is only half the battle. After all, if a tree fell in the woods and sacrifice itself up to be the paper for your book, then would anyone hear it or know about it? Don't let your book be a quiet secret.

Kenneth Kinney 41:36

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 41:40

Thank you again for the privilege of your time. And I'm so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 41:45

And I hope that your story someday is one that gets published. And if you're going to buy a book today, then support your local bookstores. Please, they are worth it. And join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

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