Essential reading (and reference) for modern authors, regardless of experience.
To succeed in the brave new worlds of self- and e-publishing, according to Kawasaki and Welch’s indispensable guide, one must be an author/publisher with an entrepreneurial bent.
It’s hard to believe in our advanced stage of Kindles and iPads, but in 2011, Kawasaki’s publisher, Penguin, encountered difficulties trying to electronically distribute his New York Times best-seller for a promotional effort. After reading a book called Be the Monkey, which explains the advantages of self publishing, Kawasaki and Welch developed “APE,” a concept they unveil as The Chicago Manual of Style for authors interested in controlling their own fate and getting their words to the reading public. The authors demonstrate how the days of “vanity publishing” are gone; from plotting and pricing to pitching and press releases, determined authors are now doing it for themselves. Before breaking down the self-publishing revolution, or “democratization,” the authors examine traditional publishing, including “fantasy” versus “reality” scenarios. By illustrating the archaic processes of the old model and revealing the precarious hierarchy of redundant players—such as agents, who should be very nervous about this book—the authors herald the paradigm shift that has led to the renaissance of entrepreneurial writers. The result is a clean, concise “model for the future” of publishing’s “new electronic realities.” The authors shatter the myth that e-books currently outsell printed ones, and their book has the foresight to provide information on numerous “tools,” computer programs, online author-service providers and reviewing websites, including a four-page list of “things nobody tells you.” With hundreds of hyperlinks accessible to print readers through the book’s website, the diligent duo covers how to avoid “looking self-published,” how to upload your work without glitches or “gaffes,” and the game-changing nature of print on demand, which will make being out of print “more of an oxymoron.” Encouraging writers to pitch their self-pubbed work to clout-carrying ventures, such as Amazon Encore and Kindle Direct, seems to play against the book’s buck-the-system attitude, but it does reflect the text’s inspiring tone.
Essential reading (and reference) for modern authors, regardless of experience.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988523104
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Nononina Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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