Anne Janzer

Author

book review

Brag Better Book Review: Advice for the Qualified Quiet

Hand holding megaphone next to cover of the book Brag Better

Do you have a hard time owning your expertise and authority? Meredith Fineman’s new book Brag Better challenges you let the world know about what you’ve done.

A Review of Brag Better by Meredith Fineman

Are you a member of the Qualified Quiet: the people who keep showing up, doing great work, and waiting for others to notice their contributions or excellence?

If you want to make an impact with your work, you have to step out of the Qualified Quiet. You need to speak up for yourself and let other people see you.

Meredith Fineman offers detailed advice for how to do that in her new book, Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion.

Cover of Brag Better by Meredith Fineman
Brag Better by Meredith Fineman

Why You Might Need This Book

As someone who has spent much of her life as a card-carrying member of the Qualified Quiet, I find the advice in Brag Better invaluable. Fineman gets to the heart of a problem that many people face, particularly women: not knowing how to talk about their own accomplishments in a way that others need to hear.

The title might put you off for a moment. Bragging? Self-Promotion?

Many women, of a certain age and in Western cultures, were brought up not to brag. Don’t be braggy. Don’t put yourself forward. We have internalized those values.

But there’s a difference between bragging, with all of its negative connotations, and letting others know about your accomplishments.

You’ll note that the subtitle is Fearless Self-Promotion, not Shameless Self-Promotion.

What You’ll Find

The book begins with the why and how of “bragging” or speaking up for yourself. Here’s a hint:

Being a member of The Qualified Quiet is a good thing. It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength. We need you.  You are essentially the backbone of our society and workforce. We just need to hear from you.

Meredith Fineman in Brag Better

She outlines four key elements of effective bragging: gratitude, pride, presentation, and showmanship. Be thankful for the opportunity. Take pride in your accomplishments. (That doesn’t sound too boastful, does it?)

Fineman asks that we redefine bragging:

“Bragging Better requires cultivating pride in your work and then taking small actions that help you share it with those around you.”

She offers advice and exercises for talking about your accomplishments. Then, she looks at how to apply these practices in various situations. There’s solid, practical advice on a range of topics, including:

  • What to put in your bios and personal website
  • How to pitch media
  • Public speaking
  • Salary negotiations

Fineman includes plenty of stories and inspiration to help you take the next step, as well as how to deal with negative reactions or pushback.

If Not For Yourself, Then for Others

If you’re still uncomfortable with the idea of promoting your accomplishments, learn how to promote others. She suggests that you use these skills to elevate the voices of those around you.

“Raise your voice because others cannot. Raise your voice because it is your duty to others whose voices can’t be heard or aren’t allowed to be used.”

Meredith Fineman in Brag Better

Find the book on Amazon or on Bookshop.Org

Other resources:

Listen to my interview with Jennifer Dulski, author of Purposeful.

Read my review of Talking from 9 to 5 by Deborah Tannen.

The Business of Being a Writer – A Book Review

Short Version

It’s fashionable to complain that no one can make a living writing,  or that self-publishing is for hobbyists only. In The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman begs to differ. She knows a great deal about the publishing industry, and in this book she suggests that you can make a living, but only if you approach it like a business and think creatively about your income and your time. If you’re struggling to make a living with your writing, make room on your bookshelf for this invaluable guide.

Long Version

If you worry about whether you can support yourself with writing, pick up Jane Friedman’s new book, The Business of Being a Writer. It’s filled with wise, practical, and compassionate advice for writers of all types, by the always-generous Jane Friedman. Reading it is like having a smart, experienced mentor in your corner.

When I heard Jane speak at a writing event recently, she suggested that the core audience for this book is the fiction writer. Indeed, those writers will find important insight about pursuing an MFA or other graduate degrees, teaching, literary agents, and more.

But there’s great stuff in here for nonfiction writers as well, including advice on:

  • Freelance writing practicalities and opportunities
  • How to write an author bio
  • Online writing and blogging
  • The nonfiction book proposal

The book has five parts:

Part One: Making a life as a writer
Part Two: Understanding the publishing industry
Part Three: Getting published
Part Four: The writer as entrepreneur
Part Five: How writers make money

Each section works well on its own. Read them together to develop a realistic view of how authors and other writers can support themselves and thrive in today’s market.

In particular, the book will open your eyes to options for crafting a business that supports your writing. It covers everything from affiliate income, teaching, freelance editing, freelance writing, crowd funding, and more.

3 Things I Love About This Book

The author platform discussion: Everyone talks about “author platform” but few people define it well. Friedman identifies six components of the platform:

  1. Publicly available writing
  2. Social media activity
  3. The author website
  4. Personal relationships
  5. Influence
  6. Actual reach

Literary citizenship: Friedman writes of the importance of literary citizenship activities that sustain the community to which you belong. Writers at any stage of their careers can cultivate literary citizenship by sharing the work of others, writing reviews, and building relationships.

The book’s overall approach and attitude: Knowledgeable as she is, Friedman does not pretend to have all the answers. Instead, she provides the resources and arms you with the right questions. She writes:

“Successful authorship isn’t a formula. It requires individuality, thoughtfulness, and critical thinking.”

Her supportive approach encourages writers to take the long view. And while realistic, the book is also optimistic:

“It remains possible to make a decent living from writing if you’re willing to pay attention to how the business works, devise a business model tailored to your goals, and adapt as needed.”

Treat it like a business. Invest your time, effort, and sometimes money to bootstrap a successful writing life. It may not be as glamorous as your dreams, but it’s possible. Use this book as a guide.

Subscribed: The Subscription Economy Has Been Waiting for This Book

The Review: Short Version

Finally – a comprehensive guide to the Subscription Economy, told from a viewpoint at the center of this tectonic shift.

Long Version

When I wrote the first edition of Subscription Marketing (published January 2015), I tried to get my head around the scope of the changes happening to businesses as they shifted their revenue models to a subscription pattern. Then I tried to communicate what I saw to others. Plenty of people didn’t get what I was talking about, but Zuora was always there, trailblazing. I’d show up at their events just to have other people to talk with!

In building a company supporting subscription-based businesses, Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo has become a champion of this Subscription Economy model. Now he’s teamed up with Gabe Weisert (another Zuora insider) to create a fun and informative guide to this emerging economy. The book is called Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – And What to Do About It.

Seriously – if they had done this three years earlier it would have saved me a lot of work trying to explain what I meant by “subscription marketing.” (No, I’m not just talking about magazines…)

This book answers all of the questions I had about the world beyond marketing, including:

  • How do you make the cultural shifts to support this business model change?
  • How does the financial model work?
  • How do sales teams respond and adapt?

The first part of the book outlines the impact of the subscription shift in industries as diverse as railroads, electric guitars, power tools, and more.

But the meat of the book is about managing that transition in your business. It describes the changes that have to happen in product development, sales, finance, IT, and of course marketing. The final chapter reveals how Zuora itself manages growth sustainably in this business model.

Of course, I’m partial to the marketing chapter. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:

“When the data wonks get together with the writers, that’s when the cool stuff happens.”

And this one:

“Today you communicate brand through experiences, not ads.”

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, check out the book. It’s a fast and entertaining read, and I guarantee you’ll finish inspired.

The Power of Moments (A Book Review)

The Short Version: A Must-Read for Subscription Marketers

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact should be required reading for marketers who participate in the Subscription Economy. The book both inspires and instructs us in creating the moments and experiences that foster meaningful connections, in our lives and businesses alike. Oh, it’s also well-written and entertaining.

The Long Version: Why Moments Matter

In Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath taught us how to make our ideas “stickier.” In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, they showed us how to look beyond the rational mind to find other motivators of human behavior and beliefs.

To these valuable lessons, they’ve now added a third, about creating meaningful moments. The Power of Moments may be the most important of the three books, because it applies equally well to our business and personal lives.

The lessons of this book are invaluable for businesses that participate in the Subscription Economy – or any business that depends on sustaining long-term relationships with customers. Which is to say, nearly any business.

If you practice marketing in the Subscription Economy, you must realize this:

Subscription business success isn’t about the stuff you sell – it’s about the relationship.

Instead of transactions, focus on moments.

Moments Large and Small

Stuck with a magnet to my refrigerator is a photo of a mountainous profiterole slathered in chocolate sauce. Looking at it, I relive a surprising and funny experience at a small restaurant in an outer neighborhood of Paris.

I could tell you the story of the lively discussions with the waiter, the enormous portions of the entrees, the waiter’s insistence that we could split a “small desert,” and the giant tub of chocolate sauce that topped the whole thing off. But the story loses something in the telling. As the saying goes, you had to be there – and that’s the point. 

The way that the dessert was delivered transformed the evening from a lovely meal to an unforgettable experience. Experiences like this are special to those who are present, as they happen. These fleeting moments last in our memories and color our perceptions.

We all have important, defining events in our lives: weddings, graduations, births, deaths. The big ones are important, but the smaller ones enrich our lives as well:  the memorable exchange with friends, an unexpected gesture, words of wisdom imparted from a mentor. These moments shape our lives and relationships.

In The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath suggest that we don’t have to leave these experiences to chance. We can make the time and space for them, and create them with intention. In the business context, we can plan and execute special moments for our customers.

Moments in the Customer Experiences

Successful customer experience isn’t only about smoothing out the obstacles and friction in the customer’s path.

Enthusiastic customer loyalty usually grows from critical moments – when the customer service agent goes the extra distance to resolve a problem creatively, or the business does something unexpected that surpasses expectations, or an employee makes a meaningful connection with a customer.

Those events build the exceptional customer experience – and they are often within our control as businesses.

The authors describe four general categories of special moments:

  • Elevation (the unexpected touch that elevates an interaction)
  • Pride (a recognition of a customer achievement)
  • Insight
  • Connection

The book offers solid advice on how to build those moments, such as turning “pits” into “peaks,” breaking the script of business-as-usual, and so on. Examples drawn from many different contexts make the book entertaining and instructive.

From Prosaic to Special

In one of my favorite quotes from the book, the authors exhort us to “recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation” and build moments around it.

Prosaic customer interactions can also benefit from moments.

For example, the café chain Pret a Manger empowers its employees to spontaneously give away a certain number of food or drink items every week. Employees can choose the recipients, and the actions are  random enough to delight unsuspecting customers.

How much fun would it be to approach business in this way, for your employees and customers alike? What if you can translate routine customer transactions into something more meaningful or unexpected?

Value Nurturing and Moments

If you’ve read Subscription Marketing or my previous writing about value nurturing as a marketing activity, you may recognize the alignment between these special moments and the practices of nurturing the customer’s perception of value:

  • If you create moments of pride by celebrating customer successes and transitions, you’re adding value to the customer relationship.
  • If you create and foster community among your members and craft moments of connection, you’re adding value through community

Moments of insight, connection, pride, and elevation add intangible value to the customer experience, no matter what you’re selling.

For example, does your business notice or remark on customer transitions or successes? When a customer chooses to unsubscribe, can you mark the occasion with something more meaningful than an exit survey? What if you crafted special moments for transitions, or created reasons to celebrate your customers’ acheivements?

The Power of Moments should inspire you to look at ordinary transactions, customer transitions, and even service failures as opportunities to add lasting value to the customer relationship.

 

Newbie’s Guide to Sell More Books [Book Review]

book marketing mistakesA few years back I took a pause from my B2B marketing career to write a book. Then I got hooked on the book thing, and never looked back.

Oddly enough, in learning about indie publishing, I forgot everything I knew about marketing. Or it seemed that way.

Books Need Marketing – Duh!

The B2B technology marketing world was filled with long sales cycles that demanded tons of content. Multiple decision-makers weighed in on every purchase. When I started writing and publishing books, I though I could leave all that behind.

How wrong I was. Yes, a book is a simpler sale, but the marketing basics still apply. It took me a while to internalize that fact and put my big-girl marketing pants on yet again.

You don’t have to suffer through that same struggle.

Start on the Right Path

newbieIf you’re just publishing a book or figuring out this author marketing thing, there’s a better way. Read Chris Syme’s Newbie’s Guide to Sell More Books With Less Marketing.

Chris is an excellent guide to the marketing challenges. I first encountered her on the wonderful Smarty Pants Book Marketing podcast. Give it a listen. Then I started reading her books.

Her newest book, the Newbie’s Guide, does a great job of encapsulating practical marketing strategies for people figuring out the book marketing thing.

What Makes This Book Special

The online world is filled with book marketing advice. Here are three things that differentiate this book from the crowd.

1. Simplicity. While Chris comes from a marketing background, she doesn’t assume that you’re going to go on a full-on marketing crash course. As the title indicates, this book about setting the goals and working on the most essential parts of the marketing plan.

For example, she narrows down on three things every author needs: a website, an email marketing strategy, and a Facebook business page. You might want to argue one of those points, but there’s power in simplicity.

2. Understanding your starting point. Every time you see one of those “this is how I sold 10,000 copies” posts, ask yourself: where was that person starting from? Chris makes the starting point explicit. The book describes various platform levels for fiction and nonfiction authors, and discusses how they map to marketing strategies and tactics.

3. A focus on loyalty. Instead of promising thousands of sales, Chris focuses on all three components of the book buyer’s journey: discovery, sales, and loyalty. As someone who has spent a great deal of time talking about the importance of long-term customer retention and loyalty (read Subscription Marketing), I’m thrilled to see due attention given to nurturing existing readers and loyal fans.

The book is on sale now on Amazon, and the book includes access to a free book marketing course.

 

 

How We Learn: A Book Review

how we learn
I thought I was reading a book about learning, but then I realized it was about writing, thinking, and creativity.

We live in a culture and time that requires all of us to be life-long learners. Our jobs are changing. The world is changing. Not only do we have to stay informed, we must keep learning.

As an indie author in the rapidly changing publishing world, I’m always picking up tools and tactics. As a marketer, I keep up with new technologies.

So I picked up Benedict Carey’s book How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens with interest, ready to apply its practices in real life.

Dang, I wish I’d read it years ago. As a college student, the research in this book would have been incredibly helpful. In practice, I’d arrived at some of the ideas in this book, but often felt guilty, like I wasn’t really studying “the right way” if I wasn’t suffering.

However, the guidance remains useful in my everyday life. For example, Carey writes of “the illusion of fluency.” This is what happens when you review your notes and they look so familiar that you think, “I’ve got this nailed.” But when you have to summon that content under pressure, you cannot retrieve it.

When it comes to public speaking, you might suffer from the illusion of fluency when you look over your notes and practice in your head what you’re going to say on a podcast or in a workshop, only to stumble when it is time to deliver. You imagine that you are fluent speaking about the topic, but recalling it under pressure is different.

That’s why most of us have to practice speaking to make it appear natural.

Reading the book, I picked up plenty of strategies for the future. For example, as I work to brush up my French (a language I muddled through in college), I will test myself frequently to aid recall, and space out my studying sessions. Carey includes chapters on physical practice, perceptual learning, and the importance of various sleep stages to different types of learning.

But then he got to creativity, and I was hooked.

Incubation and Percolation

The book includes a lengthy chapter on the incubation effect, and what happens when you let ideas simmer in your head for a while.

My book The Writer’s Process discusses the importance of leaving time for incubation in the writing process. Carey has a different (possibly better) term for this: percolation.

The three elements of percolation are:

  1. Interruption (immersing yourself in the issue then leaving it incomplete)
  2. The scavenging mind that works with the ideas while you’re not paying attention
  3. Reflecting or writing about what’s happening in the process.

Writes Carey, “Creative leaps often come during downtime that follows a period of immersion in a story or topic, and they often come piecemeal, not in any particular order, and in varying size and importance.”

Much of what he writes here lines up directly with the practices and ideas described in The Writer’s Process. What Carey labels the “scavenging mind,” I call the Muse.

He also writes about using this percolation effect with intention, just as one intentionally schedules incubation in the writing process: “Percolation is a matter of vigilance, of finding ways to tune the mind so that it collects a mix of external perceptions and internal thoughts that are relevant to the project at hand. ”

The book is well written, clearly explaining the science. It’s conversational yet occasionally poetic. For example, he refers to “the foraging brain” as the mind searching for content. It’s a lovely way to think about the mental processes working in the background.

I’d suggest adding this one to your reading shelf, and perhaps giving a copy to anyone you know embarking on a course of learning. Really, that should include all of us.