The Extraordinary Business Book Club

'Christmas is so many things, but it is also quite simply a moment of pause between the year that's ending and the year ahead. And as every writer knows, pauses can be extraordinarily powerful.' It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but Christmas is also very often a hot mess of busy-ness, stress and tricky relationships. So in these few days as the excitement/expectations build, here's a...

'Almost every experience that I have is a story that I'm going to tell.' We often think of great leadership as 'magic,' but the truth is that's a convenient excuse. Great leaders aren't born that way - they become great by leaning in to what John Amaechi describes as ' a very boring set of skills and a huge amount of personal effort'. John's own background in the NBA showed him that the most extra...

'The research shows that it's stories that are the most powerful mobilizers of change.' What does 'story' mean to you? Zoe Arden asked that question of more than 100 people, beginning her research, as she encourages us all to begin our stories, by listening first.  Leaders have at their disposal more facts and data than ever before, but the research and our lived experience confirms that facts and...

 'When you read a book... it's like when you watch a TV show or go to the theatre; you don't think about all of the work that went in behind the scenes.' I don't know about you, but I couldn't claim any of the following distinctions before I turned 26: flying a spaceship, losing a million dollars, being fired by Simon Cowell or dodging paparazzi.  Dominic Colenso, author of Cut-Through , ticked of...

' This technology isn't going to go away. We need to figure out what role it has.' George Walkley is a legend in the publishing world. Over the last three decades, and particularly at Hachette,  he has not only witnessed but helped shape the digital transformation of the industry, and these days he's focused on how publishers respond to the challenges and opportunities of AI.  While the book itsel...

When we talk about writing business books, we usually focus on concepts, models, clarity, structure, impact. But alongside the head work is a whole invisible heap of emotional labour: behind every sentence lies a secret history of fear, doubt, frustration and occasionally joy. In this Best Bits episode, we're bringing that emotional undercurrent front and centre. Because writing a business book, j...

 'If you haven't diagnosed where the problem lies in the first place, how do you know which lever to pull?' If your idea of a rebrand is a new colour palette and an updated logo, think again.  Too often, superficial design changes don't just fail to deliver growth, they actively damage the brands they were intended to bolster. Rachel Fairley and Sarah Robb have helped some of the world's biggest c...

  'That's all we've got as well in this age of AI… we have to put heart and soul into what we create.' When someone cheerfully tells you that when one door closes another door opens in the midst of the rawness of redundancy, you'd be forgiven for wanting to punch them. Eleanor Tweddell certainly did. But then she made a conscious decision to 'lean in' to the idea of another door. It turns out that...

'The absence of healthy conflict is a large part of why people will leave jobs, because it's not where the growth happens.' How do you feel about hard conversations at work?  Our approaches to conflict are often less than smart. Whether your tendency is towards avoidance or aggression, unless you're actively rejecting 'enforced harmony' for an environment in which people are able to disagree well,...

Fresh (if you can call it that) from the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2025, I'm here this week with a candid look at what we and other publishers were talking about over those three hectic days - global sales, routes to market, Amazon and its new algorithm, AI, digital library platforms, translation rights and the evolution of metadata - and what all of that means for authors.  Plus why I HAD to go and h...

'At some point, the right to be you ends and your obligation to others begins.' 'Just be yourself.' It's the most uncontroversial advice in the world, right?  Wrong, says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. He's a man who likes to pick fights with universally accepted truths, because of course they're almost always more nuanced than we like to think.  In his new book Don't Be Yourself , he points out that un...

 'At the lowest end of what a business book could be is, yes, it's a calling card... [But] what if your book was transformational?' Parul Bavishi - editor, former literary scout, co-founder of the London Writers' Salon and host of the Writers' Hour podcast - knows something about the realities of writing and the power of creative community. Writing can be a lonely business, but in the LWS's regula...

' Nobody cares about you until you show that you understand their problem, their situation, and you care about them.' As a former international speaker bureau owner, Maria Franzoni knows exactly what it takes to become a highly sought-after (and well-paid) speaker. In this week's conversation, she reveals what speaker bookers are really looking for, and you might be surprised to discover that how...

 'You need to kind of kick off this persuasive chain reaction and enlist people to the cause of your book.' In the book trade, James Spackman is known as 'The Pitch Doctor'. From an illustrious start to his career in the post room at Bloomsbury to sales, marketing and agency roles at Hachette, Osprey and now The bks Agency, his passion has always been to communicate a passion for books.  As he exp...

When she started her first job reporting on farming, trying to work out how to move into interior design, Sally Percy had no idea she'd forge such an extraordinarily successful careeer as a business journalist and author. But the lessons she learned in her earliest days - how to write so a five-year-old child could understand, how to write to word count, the sanctity of deadlines, and perhaps most...

People who write business books - at least, business books worth reading - tend to think a little differently. This 'Best Bits' episode features a formidable line-up of disruptors, each of whom brings a very personal toolkit for unsettling the status quo, in work and in life. Challenging the system often starts by asking awkward questions and you'll find lots of those here. What you WON'T find are...

'I see confidence as something that's rooted in how we feel before any words, something which touches on sensations.' What do you think of when you think of sports coaching? Elite lean performance machines preparing to break records?  Mike Porteous has competed and coached at elite level as a triathlete, but he believes that coaxing new swimmers from the shallow end is just as important an act of...

 "How do you want your book to make people feel? Start with the feeling and then work your way backwards." When you're all about creativity, social justice and empowering individuals to transform pain into positive action, how do you design a book launch that reflects that?  Kerry Tottingham rejected the warm white wine option for a radically different book launch event to celebrate the launch of...

What does a good working life look like in the 21st century? Dr Hilary Cottam, OBE has spent the last five years exploring this question through collaborative workshops she calls 'imagininings', involving all sectors of the post-industrial workforce from gravediggers to consultants. The same resonant themes kept emerging: the need for work that pays the basics, offers meaning, allows space for car...

 'Every time I interviewed somebody, I said, is there anyone you think I should talk to? And so it had a network effect for me. My network grew with these generous, amazing, thoughtful people.' Writing a novel can be lonely; writing a thesis can be demanding; writing a business book can be a team effort. Charlotte Otter's done all of these, with a side of journalism, and in this week's podcast we...

' I think reading a book is sometimes like... you've slowed things down. You're in this present moment, working on this very particular thing. And I think we want more of that in our lives.' What makes a business book worth reading - or publishing? If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume (and, let's be honest, variable quality) of business books on the market, you'll appreciate Todd Sa...

'Creativity needs oxygen just as much as fire does.' What does it take to turn a spark of inspiration into a sustained creative fire? This week's episode is a reflection on the art of making fire, from striking the first spark with flint and steel to nurturing the ember with just the right balance of oxygen and fuel, and how that process sheds light on the creative process. More specifically, it's...

'The foundations of how authors build visibility, build a readership... while the tools change, the principles don't.' Jane Friedman has been commentating on the business of books for many years, and her classic The Business of Being a Writer has demystified the industry for thousands of authors. So on the release of its second edition it seems a good time to ask: what has changed over the seven y...

Leslie Grandy always wanted to be 'creative', but after discovering that she 'sucked' as a child at piano, painting, drama, dancing and so on she decided (to the relief of her teachers) that it simply wasn't for her.  Until she realized, in her corporate career working with visionary leaders like Steve Jobs, that creativity can also be defined as 'the ability to solve problems in novel ways'. And...

 'If you just want a machine to write all of this stuff and put your name on it and say it's yours, I don't know what the motivation is. I don't know what results you think it could bring.' What does it look like to use AI in creative activities practically, ethically, and in a human-centred way? One answer to that question might be Cliobooks.ai, the speak-your-book technology developed by publish...