If you are working towards publication and own an eReader, chances are there’s a copy of APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur sitting on your Nook. It’s a manifesto on the art of self-promotion and marketing books aimed at the self-published author, but it’s making waves for wordsmiths of all publication inclination.

Its author, Guy Kawasaki, wrote most of this bestselling eBook from a 5-by-5 closet of a dorm in UC Santa Barabara, and he had a few choice words about any authors with finicky writing styles in an interview with Upstart Business Journal:

Writers should disavow themselves of the concept of an “ideal venue for writing a book” because it leads to “wimpification”: “I cannot write because the conditions are not ideal.” If you wait until conditions are perfect—the kids are asleep, making straight As, the house is clean, and global warming has been reversed, you’ll never write. A great writer can write under any conditions—not only ideal conditions.

But don’t be fooled by his humble writing venue – he’s a successful startup engineer, entrepreneur, former Apple Evangelist, and possibly the epitome of a new breed of author brand.

As Swenson Book Development wrote about close to two years ago, there are some hard truths about publication and self promotion authors need to understand, and most of it rests on getting out there and making yourself known.

It’s definitely not ‘ideal conditions’ to be an author if you don’t like playing the marketing game. once upon a time all marketing was done by a publishing houses’s sales team, but those times are past; until you’re flipping titles like JK Rowling, there’s an expectation for you to promote your material – and yourself.

Would Mr. Kawasaki think your strategy is ‘wimpified’? Take a deep breath and start the new year with a brave new plan.

Eggonomics: Voices of Human Egg Donors

2 weeks ago

Routledge releases medical anthropologist Diane Tober’s groundbreaking study of human egg donors this week, cracking open the conversations about IVF, women’s reproductive health, rights to bodily autonomy, and parenting before an important presidential election. Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them is both timely and jaw-dropping in its findings and implications. In February 2024, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where Diane Tober is a tenured professor, paused in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling which was later overturned. This is the first study to examine the experiences ofRead more…