How To Start And Run A Small Book Publishing Company by Peter I. Hupalo

Of the books on publishing I'm reading, I've found Peter I. Hupalo's How To Start And Run A Small Book Publishing Company: A Small Business Guide To Self-Publishing And Independent Publishing least helpful.

Don't bother with it, really.

Click here to view the table of contents.

White House Ghosts by Robert Schlesinger

I've finally finished Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters (click here to view all my posts about this book); once I made some time for reading it was a breeze to get through.

And my final verdict: this book is a winner!

As a young person born after most of these president's governed, I enjoyed learning more about our nation's presidents. I also liked learning about the roles of Chris Matthews, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Peggy Noonan, James Fallows, and other familiar figures through different administrations.

I especially appreciated reading about Eric Liu (who thoughtfully expressed the confusion anguish many Asian American's feel about their heritage and cultural identity in his memoir The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, which I read in 2002) and Rahm Emmanuel and their roles in the Clinton administration.

Schlesinger convinced me of the importance of presidential speechwriters; as he tells it, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush failed to win second terms (and Bill Clinton contributed to the Republicans winning control of the House and Senate and George W. Bush's election to governor of Texas in 1994) largely because they did not view presidential speeches as serious business.

And serious business it is. An effective leader must have excellent communication skills or will fail to effect change. So while some have derided Barack Obama for his eloquent prose, I believe it will make him a better president.

Click here to visit the official website for the White House Ghosts, here to read an excerpt on the publisher’s website, or here to view the table of contents.

Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts

Just an update on White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger (which I first heard about in May and have been slowly reading since August; click here to view all my posts about this book).

I am enjoying the book; Schlesinger is a great storyteller and with each chapter I am more and more impressed by his abilities.

It's just that with all of the excitement surrounding the Presidential election and the drama of the financial crisis, I found myself watching news on tv and reading news online during every spare moment.

So I confess I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to these past few months.

Click here to visit the official website for the book, here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher’s website, or here to view the table of contents.

Books on Publishing

I'm interested in learning about the book publishing industry. I've been told to read:

• Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual, 16th Edition: How to Write, Print and Sell Your Own Book by Dan Poynter


• Publishing for Profit: Successful Bottom-Line Management for Book Publishers by Thomas Woll


• How To Start And Run A Small Book Publishing Company: A Small Business Guide To Self-Publishing And Independent Publishing by Peter I. Hupalo

I tried my local library but they don't seem to have many books on this topic.

Any other suggestions?

White House Ghosts by Robert Schlesinger

I've just started reading Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.

I found out about this book through the New York Times, checked it out from the library after the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and finally got motivated to start reading this lengthy book as I've been eagerly watching the presidential and vice presidential debates and the candidates speeches about the bailout bill.

So far, this book seems very well-researched. Schelsinger is a natural storyteller and expertly weaves the facts into a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of presidents and their speechwriters.

This book is required reading for students of the American presidency.

Click here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher’s website or click here to view the table of contents.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startup’s Early Days by Jessica Livingston

I've really enjoyed Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work: Stories of Startup’s Early Days -- one of many library books I borrowed last month.

This book tells the story of startups like Firefox, TiVo, WebTV, Craigslist, Hotmail, Adobe, and others through interviews with their founders or creators.

Initially, it made me think of If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers (click here to read all my posts on this book) in that both books seek to shed light on what makes entrepreneurs tick.

While Livingston interviews individuals who founded or created dot-com or other technology start-ups, Bowers talks with founders of small businesses from varied fields that include jam making, cosmetics, manufacturing and more.

The main difference in the book lies in the way each author organizes his/her book. Where Bowers organizes his book into chapters based on eight traits of entrepreneurs with stories from 40+ entrepreneurs sprinkled throughout the book, Livingston spends just her two-page introduction discussing the patterns of entrepreneurs and then spends a chapter on each person with an in-depth interview.

Call me crazy, but I much prefer the way Livingston organized her book. It is easier to follow and you learn more from each individual.

And, as you know by now, I love primary sources. so I appreciated how each chapter was an interview with a founder or creator of one or more start-ups.

Here are the patterns that Livingston found for comparison to the list by Bowers:

1. Uncertainty that they were actually onto something big.
2. Determination, especially to build things that work.
3. Perseverance through uncertainty, isolation, and sometimes lack of progress.
4. Adaptability and mental flexibility to understand what users/customers want and to change and develop their original idea.
5. Empathy for users/customers.
6. Desire to change the world and to keep building things.

Livingston doesn't assert this list as a steadfast rule (where Bowers does); she merely states that these were some of her observations from interviewing the 32 entrepreneurs featured in her book.

Back to reading!

Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts by Tom Sant

I read Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts by Tom Sant to get advice on -- you guessed it -- writing better business proposals -- and it was pretty helpful.

I wouldn't recommend reading it cover-to-cover but it's useful as a reference book.

It has lots of example proposals which should help novice writers put together professional business proposals.

I especially liked his writing tips in Section IV, which gives readers some grammar lessons.

Also, I never did read (just flipped through) The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun, which I borrowed from the library at the same time.

Click here to read the table of contents for Persuasive Business Proposals.

Freerice.com

So this isn't exactly related to books and reading, but i figure anyone who loves to read would also be interested in freerice.com.

I'm a big dork and ever since a friend first told me about freerice.com last summer, I've made it my default website when I need a quick break.

It's basically a multiple choice vocabulary quiz and for every word you get right, 20 grains of rice is donated to the UN World Food Program.

Makes me think of studying for the SATs back in high school and how much more fun it would have been to learn words on freerice.com than by studying the Princeton Review's Word Smart.

What's so cool about it is that it adjusts based on your vocabulary level. When you get a question right, you get a harder word; and if you guess wrong, you get an easier word. There are 60 levels in all, but it's rare for people to get above level 50.

Freerice.com claims that learning new vocabulary has tremendous benefits. It can help you:

• Formulate your ideas better


• Write better papers, emails and business letters


• Speak more precisely and persuasively


• Comprehend more of what you read


• Read faster because you comprehend better


• Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school


• Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT


• Perform better at job interviews and conferences


• Sell yourself, your services, and your products better


• Be more effective and successful at your job

Have fun!

White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger

I love reading the New York Times, particularly their book reviews.

Unsurprisingly, I read about yet another book today on the NYTimes website that I want to read:

White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger. Schlesinger, son of historian and presidential speechwriter Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., is deputy assistant managing editor, opinion at U.S. News & World Report and teaches political journalism at Boston University's Washington Journalism Center.

Schlesinger researched this book by interviewing 90 speechwriters and other key officials from each of the administration covered (from FDR through the George W. Bush). White House Ghosts: provides a history of speechwriting and tells the stories of some of the most iconic presidential phrases, such as:

• the first inaugural of FDR ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself")
• the first inaugural of JFK ("ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country")
• Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook"
• Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speeches
• Bill Clinton's ending "the era of big government" State of the Union
• George W. Bush's post-9/11 declaration that "whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done"

The website for this book tells us

Judson Welliver, "literary clerk" during the Harding administration, from 1921 to 1923, is generally considered the first presidential speechwriter in the modern sense - someone whose job description includes helping to compose speeches. Emmet J. Hughes, who wrote speeches for President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the first year of his first term (and again briefly in the 1956 campaign and into the Ike's second term) was the first staffer to officially be called "speechwriter."

Clearly presidential speeches are viewed to be much more important. As Schlesinger says on the book's website, "Herbert Hoover made an average of around eight public appearances per month; Bill Clinton made an average of 28!"

Given the intense interest in Barack Obama's beautiful, poignant and often poetic speeches (which are largely written by Jon Favreau and a team of other young speechwriters -- click here for the NYTimes article) and the immense popularity of David Letterman's "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" skits (probably my favorite part of watching Letterman), I expect this book will do very well!

Click here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher's website.

NYTimes.com Book Review - Kluge by Gary Marcus

Just read this week’s NYTimes.com Book Update and found one more book that I’d like to read:
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus (NYTimes Book Review "Patch Job" by Annie Murphy Paul).

I'm admittedly interested in reading this book largely because Marcus is a fellow MIT alumnus. Marcus, professor of psychology at New York University and director of NYU's Infant Language Learning Center, borrows the engineer's term kluge, used to refer to a clumsily designed solution to a problem, to describe the human mind.

And the other interesting article from the April 25, 2008 NYTimes.com Book Update was an essay by Rachel Donadio titled "You’re an Author? Me Too!." This essay discusses how despite the "well established [fact] that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to" (check out the June 2004 article "Fewer Noses Stuck in Books In America, Survey Finds" by Bruce Weber), more and more people are becoming authors by writing blogs and self-publishing. I think I am unlikely to purchase a self-published book by an author whose books I haven't read.

I don't have aspirations to become a published author, though I am fascinated by this self-publishing phenomenon. I've only purchased one self-published books, and that is Strategy and the Fat Smoker: doing what’s obvious but not easy by David H Maister. And that was only because I had read two of his other books (The Trusted Advisor and Managing The Professional Service Firm) and found them both educational and straightforward.

Still, I am skeptical about the survey data that says that Americans don't read anymore (I tend to agree with this WSJ.com blog that questions the methods used in the famous 2004 National Endowment for the Arts survey). Statistics and studies can be manipulated so easily to confirm anticipated results.

I think the 2007 Associated Press-Ipsos poll that showed that only 25% of Americans had not read a book in the past year may be more accurate, though who knows?