I teach historical martial arts for a living. 25 years ago, one of my students asked me to write a training manual about medieval Italian longswords, so I did… it took me four years and changed everything. Teaching in person is my favourite thing, but writing books about my art is a close second. I’m always on the lookout for ways to write better and faster and sell more books. Being an effective writer means I make enough money from my books that I can spend my time researching, writing, training, and teaching historical martial arts and have plenty of time to spend with my wife and kids.
I wrote
From Your Head to Their Hands: How to write, publish, and market training manuals for historical martial arts
This book is absolutely clear about what makes good writing, and it really helped me avoid needless sesquipedalianism and circumlocutory prose. Sorry. It helped me avoid using long words and to write directly and to the point.
Zinsser uses lots of examples of good writing, but the whole book is a great example of practicing what you preach. I have a tendency towards fancy words and fancy grammar, which is not good for my readers when I’m trying to teach them something. This book cured me of that more than any other resource.
On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet.
Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more…
I hated marketing, and I was scared it would turn me into a shrill and shallow person. But I realised I needed to learn to sell my work if I was ever going to make a decent amount of money with it—enough to justify the time I was spending on writing, editing, and publishing.
This book gave me the basic tools I needed to get over my internal resistance and start helping my readers better by letting them know about books they actually wanted.
Do you want to sell more books and reach more readers? Do you want to discover how to build an author career for the long-term as well as spike your book sales right now?
If you don’t know much about marketing, don’t worry. We all start with nothing.
I’m Joanna Penn and back in 2008, I had no book sales, no audience, no website, no social media, no podcast, no email list. No nothing.
Now I’m a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers and non-fiction. My books have sold over 600,000 copies in 162 countries, and…
Most money books are full of get-rich-quick schemes and bad advice. This one goes to the root of why we make good or bad financial decisions.
I have a tendency to overlook the business side of writing, and this book helped me see why that might be and do something about it. Everyone has strong feelings about money: this book helped me get mine under control and in perspective, which enables me to write better and publish the books I want to publish.
Doing well with money isn't necessarily about what you know. It's about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.
Money-investing, personal finance, and business decisions-is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don't make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.
In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan…
I kind of hate this book, mostly because I wish I’d written it.
It’s a very comprehensive look at what a sedentary life can do to your body and how you can do clerical work (like writing books or wasting time on social media) without killing yourself. I was a standing desk user long before I got this book, and as a career martial artist, I’m quite familiar with how the body works and why it needs to move.
I hate to admit it, but Dr Starrett is way better qualified than I am to write this, and despite my previous experiences, I learned a lot about how to stay healthy while spending hours at my desk. Dammit!
Sitting can wreak havoc on your health, and not just in the form of minor aches and pains. Recent studies show that too much sitting contributes to a host of diseases—from obesity and diabetes to cancer and depression. The typical seated office worker suffers from more musculoskeletal injuries than those workers who do daily manual labor. It turns out that sitting is as much an occupational risk as is lifting heavy weights on the job. The facts are in: sitting literally shortens your life. Your chair is your enemy, and it is murdering your body.
Like most authors I am resistant to marketing, and especially to writing newsletters. But this book showed me how to create a real relationship with my readers, based on mutual respect and appreciation, and to treat writing newsletter and marketing emails the same way I treat writing books. A healthy mailing list is the single most important asset a writer can have: it’s a community of people who like your work.
Thanks to this book, I get great open rates and great retention on my list, and yes, when I write a book, a lot of folks on my list go and buy it, which pays for the time to write more books!
Are you struggling with email? Newsletter numbers getting you down? Fewer people opening your messages? No real reaction when you launch a book?
There's another way—a better way.
Imagine having a large list of happy readers who devoured every email you sent. Or launching a book and activating an army of fans who did the selling for you. You could be that person, with the help of Newsletter Ninja.
Newsletter Ninja is a comprehensive resource designed to teach you how to build and maintain a strongly engaged email list—one full of actual fans willing to pay for the books you…
A brisk, no-nonsense guide to developing your skills in writing,
publishing, and marketing books.
Almost all of the guidance applies to
any kind of nonfiction writing and includes advice on how to write
well: how to plan your book or write without a plan, how to get reader
feedback as you go, how to avoid procrastination and imposter syndrome,
what tools to use, how to write without destroying your body, how to
publish: commercial, indy, or something else, what metadata you need
and how to create it, how to choose your publishing platform, everything
you need to know about copyright and piracy, and the best book
marketing strategy of all time.
I’ve become passionate about telling parents how to raise happy, resilient, creative, confident, entrepreneurial children who are doing something that gives them joy. So many young people are unhappy; parents don’t understand how to help. They think their children should follow their path, but that no longer works for many. For the last 10 years, I’ve been speaking to parent groups; I was an Advisor to EQ Generation, an after-school program that gives children the skills to succeed; on the Advisory Board of MUSE School, preparing young people with passion-based learning; and on the Board of Spark the Journey, mentoring low-income high school students to achieve college and career success.
This book shakes longstanding assumptions of parenting.
Through 99 stories of people who are now changing the world, it shows how to raise creative, confident, resilient children who are filled with joy and purpose. Based on interviews with top entrepreneurs and their parents, it guides you to help your children identify their passion and figure out how they can spend their professional lives doing something they love.
Parents' well-intentioned efforts often boomerang. By ignoring their children’s skills and interests, parents can inadvertently create pressure and anxiety, thwarting their children's ability to excel and find happiness. Too often, following your heart…
Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did
Learn how successful entrepreneurs were raised! Could your children start a company that disrupts existing industries? Or a non-profit that helps people around the world? Or follow their passion as an artist or activist? And most important, lead a life of joy and purpose, to be happy and fulfilled? Margot Machol Bisnow, mother of two thriving entrepreneurs, reveals how to raise creative, confident, resilient, fearless kids who achieve their dreams, through 99 stories of families who did it.
Read stories from 70 families who raised true game changers. See family photos of these thriving entrepreneurs, both when they were young…
