On Words and Business

If you’re like me, you sign up for all sorts of RSS feeds and email newsletters. You read them for a while. Then start only skimming them. Then maybe read the headlines or subject line to decide if you even want to skim. Then simply delete when you see the return address in your inbox. Then finally get around to unsubscribing.

Then you start up again with an entirely new set of blogs and newsletters.

If you are like me, there are only a few stalwart sources that don’t end up in that cycle. You may not read ever word of every issue or post, but you continue to find value in them.

What are those writers and publishers doing to keep you engaged?

Six great posts about business from this past year, in no particular order:

5 Things to Do Every Day for Success

Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success

I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore

Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012

Marketing to Nobody

Content Marketing Tips from 5 People Who Know

Be a champion for your readers.

Whether you are writing marketing materials or the great American novel, fight for the stories, the language, the promises that serve your readers. Strive to share the inspirational thoughts and innovative ideas that draw them in. Lobby for the best of the best in every aspect of the piece.

If not you as the author, then who?

Cut This Story!

An argument that the format of newspaper stories is part of what is killing the industry. Interesting theory.

Books are not dead!

“For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts.”

Highlights:

• Literary reading increased by 7%, following significant declines reported for the last 10 years
• Biggest increase is among 18-24 year olds
• Nearly 15% of adults read literature on line in 2008

Let’s talk about books for the moment…

Writers write to be read.

If you watch the film version of a book, even one that follows the book closely, you didn’t read the book.

But if you listen to a book on tape (let’s say unabridged), can you say read it? If someone reads the book to you, can you say you read it?

So…what do you call it when you listened to a book (that someone read to you, or you got on CD, or listened to as a podcast, for example), but you never actually picked up the book and looked at the words on the page?

As media evolves and the nature of intaking and absorbing information changes, will this become a larger question? And what effect might this have on literacy?