Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters. A Comprehensive Guide for Authors

Your brain burns with a powerful idea worth sharing. Could writing a business book spread that idea, create real change, and launch your career on the path to visibility and influence?

Definitely. But don't start by piling up words. Instead focus on the story. What urgent problem does your reader face? How can they solve it? And what journey must your reader take as you guide them from confusion to understanding, action, and success?

Build a Better Business Book is the first accessible and comprehensive guide for authors who

want to create impact. Josh Bernoff, a bestselling author, veteran editor, and insightful writing coach with decades of experience on 45 successful book projects, explains the systematic way to refine your idea and then research, write, publish, and promote a book that matters. Learn how to:

● Build your book not just from ideas but from people and their compelling stories -- and how you can research and tell those stories.

● Write a first chapter that creates powerful motivation by emotionally connecting with readers.

● Select among the three major publishing models -- traditional, self-publishing, and "hybrid" -- on the axes of speed, cost, and influence.

● Plan your book as a project, then efficiently execute on that plan with a low-stress, high potency tool: the fat outline.

● Structure chapters that no reader can put down.

● Collaborate with coauthors, editors, and ghost writers without excessive bloodshed.

● Promote your book to maximize your sales, revenue, and influence.

Josh Bernoff's book projects have generated over $20 million for their authors. This guide includes results of an extensive author survey and secrets from interviews with successful business authors like Jay Baer, Laura Gassner Otting, Phil M. Jones, Joe Pulizzi, and Scott Stratten.

Don't waste valuable energy without accomplishing your goals. Construct your business book as a compelling story, and you won't just get your words in print. You'll create change in the minds of your readers. And that is the first step to making a meaningful impact on the world.

Josh Bernoff is an expert on how business books can propel thinkers to prominence. Book projects on which he has collaborated have generated more than $20 million for their authors.

Josh's most recent book is Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean (Harper Business, 2016). Toronto's Globe and Mail called it "a Strunk and White for the modern knowledge worker." He is the coauthor of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Harvard Business Review Press, 2008), which was a Businessweek bestseller. He has authored, coauthored, or ghostwritten eight business books.

He works closely with nonfiction authors as an advisor, coach, editor, or ghostwriter. His author clients include Mitch Lowe, former Netflix cofounder and Redbox president; Kevin Tracey, CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research; and Stefan Falk, former lead trainer at McKinsey & Company. He has collaborated on more than 45 nonfiction books.

Josh writes a blog post on topics of interest to authors every weekday at Bernoff.com. His blog has generated 4 million views.

He was formerly Senior Vice President, Idea Development at Forrester, where he spent 20 years analyzing technology and business. He appeared on "60 Minutes" and got quoted everywhere from The Wall Street Journal to TV Guide. The Society for New Communications Research recognized him as "Visionary of the Year." Prior to Forrester, Josh spent 14 years in start-up companies in the Boston area.

Josh has a mathematics degree from Pennsylvania State University and studied mathematics in the Ph.D. program at MIT.

He lives with his wife, an artist, in Portland, Maine.

Contact Josh on his blog or at josh@bernoff.com.