The best Business Writing Skills books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Here ya go... http://www.managedservicesinamonth.com/

Buy the book on Amazon here. It's a quick read but you'll refer back to it over and over. It's a good starting point for those just getting into the game.

I read a helpful book on this subject recently: "Write to Market" by Chris Fox. It is not specific to the romance genre, but it IS pretty specific to Amazon, explaining their ranking system, how to research, etc. etc.

If you have a KU subscription, you can borrow it and read it for free.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

Love to see more Wix stores out there! How do you like Modalyst? I'm on Spocket, but not sure if it's any good or not.

If I had to give my top 3 pieces of advice, it would be this:

1. Hammer down exactly what the store helps people do (i.e. We help people treat their pets) and make it immediately clear on the first page you see on the website

2. Build a proper landing page for your home page

3. Clean up the design and try to mimic other, well-established stores

Those 3 things will help you clarify your message and connect with customers. I highly recommend reading this book, it helped me a lot: Building a StoryBrand

I second this advice.

Try to find a similar store to yours and copy it (obviously put your own twist on there).

Also, reading this book could help you. This book single handedly had the biggest impact on my freelance web design business.

Have you considered picking up a book?

There were girls that wrote like this back in HS and I always found it so obnoxious.

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Everyone that want's to get into clear and concise writing should give this book a perusal.

I’m new to writing, so I purchased On Writing Well by William Zinsser. It’s very insightful for my writing itself, and the advice translates well to blogging.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548

On Writing Well by William Zissner is easy to follow, informative, and succinct, and I'd recommend it to just about anyone.

Here are a few things to examine:

1) Are you marketing the books? Do you have a reader magnet/free book? Do you do book promotions with other authors on Bookfunnel or Prolific Works to get subscribers for a newsletter? Do you have a newsletter that you use to market to an audience of subscribers? Do you do newsletter swaps with other authors in your genre? Do you schedule promotions? What is your book pricing? Have you tried releasing at 99 cents?

2) If you are doing all of number 1, have you had beta readers look at your books to give you feedback?

3) Are your books written to market? I suggest reading this book if you haven't already on how to research what sells. https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

Economics is non zero sum. https://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-Wright/dp/0679758941?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=ef60b7d9-d157-4d9a-90d4-fcd43ebcede4

Instead of always attacking the billionaires we should all become billionaires. Then maybe we'd all have a little more empathy for them too

Learn proper punctuation. You use way too many commas, and that makes your sentences sound scattered all over the place. It's hard to read when there are five pauses in every sentence.

Cut down almost all the unnecessary metaphors. They're nice when they're used sparingly and in a clever way.

Use shorter paragraphs. Every instance of dialogue must have its own paragraph or it's really hard to read.

Lastly, embrace brevity. Keep it short. Get to the point. Don't draw out how long it takes to get up, for example. We get it. We all wake up every day. The entire post could easily be cut down to a single easy-to-read page.

There is potential here, so keep at it! I strongly recommend reading <u>On Writing Well</u> by William Zinsser. While it is predominantly for writing nonfiction, I find it's an excellent resource for all writers. You can easily obtain a pirated ebook copy on LibGen. Good luck!

Can you think of any profession in which purposely avoiding the best in the field is a good idea?

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• "I want to be a pro golfer, so I'm going to avoid watching any Tiger Woods."
• "I want to be a painter, but I'm not going to study Van Gogh or the Mona Lisa."
• "I want to be a successful entrepreneur, so I'm definitely going to avoid any information about Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Warren Buffet"

Studying other successes in your field is a very good way to improve.

Stephen King said: “You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

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You might also want to read &quot;Write To Market&quot; by Chris Fox.

There's an excellent book called The English Grammar Workbook for Adults: A Self-Study Guide to Improve Functional Writing, highly recommended

>Go over to him and start a conversation. If you are shy . . . .

You might want to take a look at this popular book: https://www.amazon.com/Conversationally-Speaking-Increase-Personal-Effectiveness/dp/1565656296/ref=sr\_1\_1

The best way to advertise is to have something people want to buy and a very clear one-line value proposition on how it will change someone's life for the better. Building a Story Brand is one of the most approachable and easily implementable books on creating marketing content, with great examples, and even a step-by-step guide to your home page.

Generally, beyond that, most "free" marketing actually means that you put effort into it. For example, content marketing where you gather a library of helpful resources that attract people, and occasionally advertise your product/service along with it. u/bawlerblog posted a comment in this thread where the offer free content marketing advice (For tech related niches). Even if that's not your niche, there will probably be other people offering a free content-marketing strategy session who are hoping to sell their services that way.

The other thing people do is create a free download to attract people who will sign up to your email list (and who you can then advertise to). The easiest way to create this is to create a free guide/tool/step-by-step exercise PDF that will make someone else's life easier. This adds an extra step in advertising, but it has the benefit of allowing you to offer something for free rather than immediately asking for something.

So, you get your history from comics?

Here, go read this one ... https://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-Wright/dp/0679758941

I promise you, it's not about capitalism or communism, it's about anthropology and group behavior, as polities get larger and larger.

It could be the site layout. Your above-the-fold section is very vague.

When you revamp it, it needs to be more clear what your product does as soon as you click onto the site. Your slogan is great, "Give back to your eyes," but I have no idea what I'm looking at when I log on. And that's a problem, you could lose a lot of clicks that way.

Also, there's way too much text for a homepage. I would look at similar stores and see how they structure their landing pages.

Overall though, the site's not bad. Miles ahead of some of the other stores I've seen. I would read this book: Building a StoryBrand

I'd create a brand messaging framework to reflect back to and re-wireframe your website with new copy. If you can't hire a conversion copywriter + designer, I highly recommend reading Building a StoryBrand. I work in this field and it's totally worth the investment of time and/or money–whichever you prefer. I use this method and so far, all but 1 of my marketing clients made their money back within the first 2 months. Copy is powerful!

Reading a lot is essential (don't skip this step) but you have to practice writing daily too. It'll take time.

My advice is to study the material you want to emulate. If the goal is to write with clarity, check out this book: On Writing Well. This is the often recommended book when I was in school.

This book, Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, has list of techniques to improve your writing. It's great as it provides real-world examples from novels and news articles.

The Foundation Bible of starting an MSP: Managed Services in a Month by Karl Palachuk Amazon Link

I'll also throw a vote in for Traction as a general business book.

Know how to write. Strive for conciseness and clarity. "Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood."

Curiosity. Dig deeper and look for root causes. Challenge assumptions. "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."

Empathy.

Some books which have helped me:

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating https://www.amazon.com/Understood-Would-Have-This-Look/dp/B06XNYPTJQ/

I was recommended the book ‘On Writing Well’ by William Zinsser, it covers all the bases and should help you immensely in general essay/report writing.

I’d further recommend that you get to grips with Word and understand how to add written formula in correctly and learn how to reference correctly, Cite This for Me is a good starting point.

Asking targeted questions on the internet will get you a lot of answers. The key is to ask well. You need to show that you have tried all avenues before asking the question. If you want to learn how to write something well(which leads to better quality questions), here is a book https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_2?crid=214N15WXGBVW3&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=on+writing+well+william+zinsser&amp;qid=1595456276&amp;sprefix=On+writing+%2Caps%2C185&amp;sr=8-2

Another book that might help with a framework to deal with complex ideas is this: https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Complexity-Breakthrough-Formula-Anything-ebook/dp/B07H7GN1NZ/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&amp;keywords=complexity&amp;qid=1595456820&amp;sr=8-3

Again, just do the IoT. Write notes extensively. Then you clean it up and post it as a blog post(This is important). Best of luck.

I did a brief Amazon search and came across these two books, are they the kind of thing you're looking for? The English Grammar Workbook for Adults and The English Tenses Exercise Book - I'm not sure if there's anything specifically geared towards grammar for fiction writers but they might be a good place to start!

how about getting into copywriting https://www.amazon.com/Copywriters-Handbook-Step-Step-Writing/dp/0805078045/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_2/131-4439742-0115906?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=0805078045&amp;pd_rd_r=8c15cb19-acd3-4252-9306-f20ed24652ea&amp;pd_rd_w=1AYbA&amp;pd_rd_wg=pij6h&amp;pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&amp;pf_rd_r=EC7HN8M0VYZK9WZJQR98&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=EC7HN8M0VYZK9WZJQR98 should be right in your wheelhouse

Some light reading to broaden your perspective

Read "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser

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https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548

Given that I am trying to bring the audience to speed quickly on something they would unfamiliar with, I would apply the principles outlined by something like Story Brand.

In the ad I would want to:

Identify how this product addresses a felt need, enables the person to achieve an aspirational perspective of themselves, concluding how your company could guide them and how your product accomplishes that goal. I think of the way apple interacted with the budding portable music player market.

After taking a very quick breeze through your landing page overall I'd say simple and to the point which is great. I would say however I feel your landing page needs more of a kick. I feel you need something that grabs the users attention and says, "you need me now, and without me your f*c**d"

I'd recommend this book called building a story brand.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-StoryBrand-Clarify-Message-Customers/dp/0718033329

Good luck! Feel free to message me if you want to talk shop.

I'm by no means an expert, but here are some tips I've picked up over the past year or so:

Prep

• Make sure they know how long you plan to interview them for, and stick to that time limit when you do the interview.
• Know the basics of what the person does that you are interviewing. Don't waste time asking basic stuff.
• Have some questions for if the conversation goes dry or to get at specific points, but don't try to structure the whole thing. Plan to go off-track with your interview.

The Interview

• Don't be afraid to wait after your interviewee finished talking. Just a few more seconds might lead to the really interesting bits of what they are thinking about.
• Ask questions you already know the answer to. This can help with getting good quotes and can also lead to unexpected places (because you wound up not actually knowing the answer).
• Don't be afraid to write stuff down (or record if your interviewee doesn't mind). You'll never remember everything interesting that they say and you don't want to kick yourself later while writing.
• Regarding notes, make sure to look at them and summarize them shortly after the interview! They'll make more sense sooner rather than later.

Some other Resources

Longer-Term, the Turnaround is a podcast about interviewers and their techniques.

The chapter about interviews in Zinsser's On Writing Well was helpful for me. If you are pressed for time grab it at your library and just read that chapter, it's short. Amazon Link

> Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does -- in his own words.

Zinsser, On Writing Well