Authors stress about titles. So do agents and editors—it's a never-ending challenge for everyone involved in the publishing process. This is particularly true with advice books, where you need to tell readers how your book will address a perennial problem (weight loss, anxiety, lagging sales, etc.) without

Last time, I wrote about Norman Foster, the architect who doesn't hesitate to junk a good design in pursuit of a great one. Crucially, however, he only starts shredding blueprints after everyone on the team has lived and breathed the project for months. By that point, they all

Norman Foster is an architect. As I writer, I see architects as our closest creative kindred spirits (it's no accident I named my company Bookitect). Authors, like architects, have to design something much too big, complicated, and interconnected to completely envision before putting pencil to paper. An artist

"Originality," wrote the British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, "is not an attempt to capture attention come what may, or to shock or disturb in order to shut out competition from the world." Too often, however, this is precisely what writers striving for originality attempt. Scruton continues:

Have you ever dreamed of writing a nonfiction book? Before diving in, take a moment to visualize the path clearly. Don't let a formless urge to "be published" quietly nag at the back of your mind. Why? Recently, a prospective author reached out for help with

As a music student at Juilliard, composer David Lang was told by a professor to "write some melodies." As Lang later recalled in a conversation with fellow composer Steve Reich: [My teacher] went into my music notebook and drew it in pencil: "Write a melody that goes

Obviously, publishers charge more for thicker books. They cost more to make. It's only fair. That said, the figure we landed on when I was an editor always felt like a guess, at least when working for certain publishers. You know how monkeys throwing darts outperformed professional stock

I love it when a plan comes together. —"Hannibal" Smith, The A-Team Sequencing is an essential skill and one of the unsung benefits of real-world experience. Take cooking: If I'm following a recipe, I have to understand how the whole process works before starting at "

Earlier, I shared my journey learning Transcendental Meditation (TM) but left out a surprising tip: “Don’t set a timer,” my instructor advised. “It’ll snap you out of meditation. When you think twenty minutes have passed, check the clock. If you’re early, close your eyes and keep going.