Josh Bernoff on Muck Rack

Josh Bernoff

Maine
As seen in: Without Bullshit, LinkedIn, Medium, HuffPost, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, MarketWatch, The Daily Beast, The Boston Globe, Observer and
Author of Writing Without Bullshit and blogger at Bernoff.com. I help authors write and succeed.
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Articles

What I Learned from Turning Myself Into an AI Chatbot

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By Josh Bernoff
| Jane Friedman
Generated with Google Gemini Today’s post is by author Josh Bernoff. ChatGPT and its ilk are fine at answering general questions. Of course, in my little zone of expertise, which is coaching nonfiction authors, I’m proud enough to believe that any answer I could give would be more helpful, up-to-date, and discriminating than what you’d get out of a generic AI Large Language Model. So I began to wonder: Could I create a virtual book coach that would answer authors’ questions as well as I could?
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"Is this book any good?"

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By Josh Bernoff
| bernoff.com
This is a nonfiction author’s favorite question. As an editor, I’m often the first person to read an author’s drafts. And they inevitably want to know “Is this book any good?” I’ll tell you a couple of secrets: Don’t ask your developmental editor or coach. The editor only has two possible answers: Yes, it’s great and just needs a few improvements, or Yes, it has some problems but once they’re fixed it will be good.
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Who needs your book? Why focus is key when defining your audience.

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By Josh Bernoff
| buff.ly
It makes perfect sense to aim at the largest possible audience for your nonfiction book. Why create a book that’s designed for digital marketers when you could aim for all marketers — or maybe all executives? Hey, there must be millions of folks like that! Unfortunately, aiming at the largest possible audience is a dumb idea. You can’t solve everyone’s problems. More importantly, they won’t see the solution to their problems in your book.
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