A refreshingly transparent guide to writing that plays on would-be authors’ desire to sell books.
In their follow-up to The Book in a Box Method (2015), Max (How to Naturally Increase Testosterone, 2014, etc.) and Obront break down the intimidating prospect of writing a nonfiction book into a series of manageable minitasks.
Max promises in the introduction, “I will teach you everything you need to know to make sure you write a great book—one that impacts readers lives and cements your legacy.” It might sound grandiose, but Max is confident that his experience writing and marketing bestselling books (for himself and for others) has taught him the secrets to publishing success. The process begins not with writing the first sentence but with outlining the book’s trajectory: setting the proper expectations for yourself, silencing your doubts, and positioning your book (i.e., figuring out “the place your book occupies in the mind of your reader and how that reader perceives your book as fulfilling their needs”). While there are some traditional writing tips here, what separates this from other writing guides is that the authors focus on boosting sales. In one case study, simply revising the book description (the finer points of which they provide) doubled a book’s sales within an hour. While some of these strategies may appear to be shortcuts or Band-Aids, many (like making sure your prose is simple and direct enough for a 12-year-old to read) aren’t easy so much as they are smart and simple. Max, the controversial writer of “fratire” memoirs, serves as the primary author, and the prose is inflected with his distinctive, conversational, and often blunt voice: “Let’s be clear: A good title won’t make your book do well, but a bad title will almost certainly prevent it from doing so.” His approach may be frank, and the tone is assuredly self-congratulatory, but even skeptical readers will find mantras to take back with them to their writing. While this is certainly not the only book an aspiring author should read, Max and Obront provide a vast amount of practical information that few other guides offer due to its explicitly commercial or promotional nature. Nonfiction authors, particularly those going the self-publishing route, will learn much from this business-minded manual.
A refreshingly transparent guide to writing that plays on would-be authors’ desire to sell books.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1406-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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