Friday, August 27, 2004

Economist.com | Business books: How 51 Gorillas Can Make You Seriously Rich (Or, why so many business books are awful)

Economist.com | Business books: How 51 Gorillas Can Make You Seriously Rich (Or, why so many business books are awful) "If you want to profit from your pen, first write a bestselling business book. In few other literary genres are the spin-offs so lucrative. If you speak well enough to make a conference of dozing middle managers sit up, your fortune is made. You can, says Mark French of Leading Authorities, a top speaking agency, make a seven-figure income from speechifying alone.
Given this strong motivation to succeed, it is astonishing how bad most business books are. Many appear to be little more than expanded PowerPoint presentations, with bullet points and sidebars setting out unrelated examples or unconnected thoughts. Some read like an extended paragraph from a consultant's report (and, indeed, many consultancies encourage their stars to write books around a single idea and lots of examples from the clientele). Few business books are written by a single author; lots require a whole support team of researchers. And all too many have meaningless diagrams."

1 comment:

  1. I agree Bob, the great Business books are few and far between.

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