Category: Books

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time. By Maria Konnikova. Viking; 321 pages; $28. Canongate; £12.99. HONOURED for his charitable works, Mervyn Barrett was ready for a change.

Marrketing books online can be a time-consuming task for authors and publishers alike, especially these days when there’s so much noise online. Not only do you need to break through the clutter, but you need to make sense of it yourself so you can keep up with the latest trends. Fortunately, there are tools available that will let you add more creativity to your book marketing and save you time without a huge learning curve.

These books will teach you how to protect yourself from malicious manipulation, detect lies and deceit, become more charismatic, engineer persuasion, and, perhaps most importantly to anyone who wants to keep a healthy, open mind: develop a level of skepticism that will give you a sixth sense for detecting bullshit.

From 1990 through 1995, the television viewing public was obsessed with the goings on in Cicely, Alaska. Northern Exposureruled the television airwaves. And while our airwaves were dominated by this quirky drama, on the show itself the airwaves were ruled by Chris Stevens and his KBHR radio show Chris in the Morning.

I’m working on a new short story. However, it’s been a while, and I’m feeling out of practice, like I have to figure out how to write a short story all over again.

One of the most astounding works of art from this period is the Lindisfarne Gospels, created at the Lindisfarne Priory off the coast of Northumbria, northeast England. Predating the Book of Kells with nearly a century, the Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated manuscript the likes of which are rarely seen.

I’m a cover designer at Vintage & Anchor Books, the paperback imprint at the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. On average, roughly half our covers are adapted from the hardcover design, and the rest are entire redesigns. Whether or not a book needs a facelift depends on a number of factors, including (most importantly) hardcover sales, the hardcover design’s commercial accessibility, and its reproducibility in paperback. The goal of the paperback is therefore to reposition a book, capture a wider audience, or target a new market. We give books a second chance.

X-Files fans rejoice! Mulder and Scully have returned. But if spending every Sunday night in the X-Files isn’t enough paranormal extraterrestrial joy for you, we have eight books for X-Files fans that will satisfy the show’s most hardcore fan base. Yes, even those who dress up as Mulder and Scully every Halloween. We see you.

New Thought deals with mind power. Real mind power. These New Thought books, both “old” and “new,” will help you achieve mental mastery.

The January 2016 issue the Midwest Book Review’s online book review magazine “Small Press Bookwatch” features a review of The Wellness Blueprint: The Complete Mind/Body Approach to Reclaiming Your Health and Wellnessby Dr. Maiysha Clairborne and published by Kallisti Publishing declaring it “intuitive and innovative.” The review added that the book is very “highly recommended for both community and academic library Health & Medicine instructional reference collections.”

I love ACX.com and I am all in with my fiction there, but I’m also a podcaster and after years of doing my own interviews and audio, I decided to read my own non-fiction audiobook, and sell it direct! Here’s how.

Every revolutionary age produces its own kind of nostalgia. Faced with the enormous social and economic upheavals at the nineteenth century’s end, learned Victorians like Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold looked to High Church models and played the bishops of Western culture, with a monkish devotion to preserving and transmitting old texts and traditions and turning back to simpler ways of life. It was in 1909, the nadir of this milieu, before the advent of modernism and world war, that The Harvard Classics took shape. Compiled by Harvard’s president Charles W. Eliot and called at first Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, the compendium of literature, philosophy, and the sciences, writes Adam Kirsch in Harvard Magazine, served as a “monument from a more humane and confident time” (or so its upper classes believed), and a “time capsule…. In 50 volumes.”

The Book on Rental Property Investing, written by real estate investor and co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast Brandon Turner, contains nearly 400 pages of in-depth advice and strategies for building wealth through rental properties. You’ll learn how to build an achievable plan, find incredible deals, pay for your rentals, and much, more more! If you’ve ever thought of using rental properties to build wealth or obtain financial freedom, this book is a “must read.” Pick up your copy today!

Walk, Don't Run by Rusty Johnson is one of the most fun books I've read in a very long time. If you are a fan of 60's era music, particularly what was coming from the West Coast, you do not want to miss this read.

In 2013, Bowie posted his 100 favorite books on his public Facebook page. The list is a characteristically eclectic list featuring everyone from Junot Diaz and George Orwell to Angela Carter and Muriel Spark.

In July 1648, during the final clashes of the Thirty Years’ War, the Swedish army looted the city of Prague. Among the treasures they stole and brought with them when they returned home was a book called Codex Gigas. Not only is Codex Gigas famous for being the largest medieval book in the world, but because of its contents, it is also known as The Devil’s Bible.

It’s 2016. There’s one thing that you should make a point to do this year in order to make it the BEST YEAR EVER: Read more books.

Find a comfy nook and bring your favorite book... because these tips make it easy for you to start reading more right now.

At the festival each year we run a legal clinic with lawyer Julian Wilkins. Slots are by application and a number of questions get asked repeatedly, so we thought we would ask Julian these questions as a podcast you can listen to here.

If short stories fell off your radar on your last day of high school English, the world of lit mags may be one you know little about. You might consider yourself a novelist, but there’s plenty that short stories can do for your writing and your career.

In this article, we’ll discuss seven words you should avoid, but if I had to give you one piece of advice about how to become a better writer, this would be it:

Two books are credited with inspiring the international hit movie The Secret. One of them is The Master Key System. The other is this book, The Science of Getting Rich.

Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching a book cover to the resulting text-block.

The power of the phrase Marilyn Monroe reading’ lies in its application to Monroe and in our assumption that she wouldn’t know how.

Set to release in conjunction with The Force Awakens in December 2015, the book features exclusive interviews with the entire creative team, imparting insights into director J. J. Abrams’s vision, which includes unused “blue sky” concept art, and offering glimpses into roads not traveled. Bursting with hundreds of stunning works of art, including production paintings, concept sketches, storyboards, blueprints, and matte paintings, this visual feast will delight Star Wars fans and cineastes for decades to come.

Here are 17 great grants for writers based in the United States. Ready to apply for money to fund your writing?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is fast approaching. To commemorate this exciting event, we've selected ten of our favorite Star Wars books. Have you read any of these? Suggest your own favorites in the comments!

Here, then, are some things I have noticed in drafts by new or untested writers, and these are I think standard errors — and they’re ones also that tested authors sometimes stumble into, so peruse this list, see if you have stropped up against any of these sins like a randy tomcat, and then fix your business. Get it? Got it? Good?

While browsing the bookstore to buy a gift for that special someone (or yourself), you may be faced with a tough decision: e-books or the old-fashioned kind? Each one has its pros and cons, and choosing the best option depends on a number of factors.

How a young woman with the uncommon talent of applying poetic imagination to science envisioned the Symbolic Medea that would become the modern computer, sparking the birth of the digital age.

The Belgian typographer Fernand Baudin, in How Typography Works (and why it is important) (New York: Design Press, 1988) wrote, “Novices are mistaken when they suppose there should be a ‘technical term” for every product of their enthusiasm & ignorance.” (p. 98)*.

People Centricity is a philosophy to take you through life. It’s all about learning how to understand and share the feelings of other people so as to produce the best mutually beneficial outcome for those other people and for you. From your personal interactions to your business success and beyond, Stephen Hewett will guide you on this life-changing journey, one that will make your bad days good and your good days wonderful.

Take a look at how your favorite authors paid the bills with this infographic from Adzuna.

Knowledge does not apply itself; we as individuals must make the application, and the application consists in fertilizing the thought with a living purpose.

Which is why some writers get desperate in their quest to tear the reading public's fickle attention away from whatever butt picture they're currently looking at. Butts are pretty damn distracting, though, so it's not unheard of for authors to turn to some intensely crazy stuff. Like ...

In an ideal scenario, founders already have experience in what it takes to build a company. They might have worked different jobs in the past or have a fancy college degree which will, at the very least, point them in the right direction. But startups are tricky; be prepared to dig deep and get your hands dirty. Fortunately there's a wealth of advice out there from people who've achieved brilliant things and want to give their knowledge to others like them. In no particular order, here are four books every aspiring tech founder should read.

Space, dystopian futures, robots, technology, aliens . . . what is there not to love about science fiction, a genre that stretches the imagination and offers a glimpse into what lies in a galaxy and time far, far away? Now that you've indulged on the most compelling, classic epic fantasy series, it's time to switch gears. Onward, futurists!

That’s why I was interested in Derek Doepker’s take on a “formula” that can help you come up with a book title that fulfills its main purpose: to appeal to the readers for whom the book was intended,  catching their attention and compelling them to want to know more.

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.

Pictures of Rusty and the Boys from Walk, Don’t Run...

Little is truly known about the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (sometimes also known as Laozi or Lao Tze), who is a guiding figure in Daoism (also translated as Taoism), a still popular spiritual practice. He is said to have been a record keeper in the court of the central Chinese Zhou Dynasty in the 6th century B.C., and an older contemporary of Confucius. This could be true, but he may also have been entirely mythical—much like Homer in Western culture. It is certainly very unlikely that (as some legends say) he was conceived when his mother saw a falling star, or born an old man with very long earlobes – or lived 990 years.

Jobs arrived at that perspective through a lifetime of reading, as reviewed in Walter Isaacson's biography and other places. We've put together a list of 14 books that most inspired him.

The novel – “one of the finest thrillers ever written,” declared the Telegraph – was serialised in Blackwood’s Magazine during the summer of 1915 and published as a book that October. Broadstairs inspired its seaside climax – and its curious title. “His daughter, my late aunt Alice, used to count the steps as they went down to the beach from the cliff,” James Buchan, John’s grandson and a novelist himself, tells me, adding that during the Forties those old oak steps were ripped out of the cliffs. The 39th was saved by a builder and sent to the family.

No matter how much a book costs me it is still priceless once it’s in my possession;  I have several first editions that were bought accidentally and a few (less well known authors) signed copies but they’re never going to make me rich. It appears however, that books can and do make people rich and more often than we imagine. Here are the top ten most expensive books ever sold (as of 22 July 2015)

Though the term “weird fiction” came into being in the 19th century—originally used by Irish gothic writer Sheridan Le Fanu—it was picked up by H.P. Lovecraft in the 20th century as a way, primarily, of describing his own work.

With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve created a list of some great horror-filled, thrilling novels to get you in the scary spirit. From mind-bending, psychological thrillers to down-right terrifying ghost stories, these imaginative books will make turning off the light at night a little more difficult. Enjoy!

I wanted to share some of the books that were recommended to me this year that I found really compelling. It’s hard to choose between the list of great suggestions, but these are the ones that I think spoke to me the most.

Hollywood makes a habit of stealing our favorite books to make movies out of them. Sometimes that’s a good thing, like with these 20 great film adaptations, and sometimes it’s a bad one. But, for better or for worse, no book goes through the filmmaking process unchanged.

Charlie "Tremendous" Jones rose from a broken home and the squalor of the Great Depression to become a bestselling author, a successful entrepreneur, and one of the top twenty speakers of the 20th century. His speeches and writings, filled with surprising insights and hilarious anecdotes, have changed the lives of thousands and influenced some of the greatest figures of our time.