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August 26, 2004
How 51 Gorillas Make Awful Business Books
Economist.com | Business books
As usual a witty, and insightful article from the Economist. This time about how bad most business books are. (Hopefully our book does not fit their description too closely. Although the sentences do tend to be short, we do like PowerPoint a lot, we have a number (5) in the title, and the wisdom, while not exactly homespun, is down to earth and hard won - but hey, we don't have any animals. Can't wait for you to judge for yourselves.) Below are a few excerpts:
"It is astonishing how bad most business books are. Many appear to be little more than expanded PowerPoint presentations, with bullet points and sidebars setting out unrelated examples or unconnected thoughts. Some read like an extended paragraph from a consultant's report...
"The formula seems to be: keep the sentences short, the wisdom homespun and the typography aggressive; offer lots of anecdotes, relevant or not; and put an animal in the title—gorillas, fish and purple cows are in vogue this year. Or copy Stephen Covey (author of the hugely successful “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”) and include a number. Here, though, inflation is setting in: this autumn sees the publication of “The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation” by Ronald Alsop. And Michael Feiner has written a book offering “the 50 basic laws that will make people want to perform better for you.”
Posted by johnza at August 26, 2004 04:46 AM
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