Posts Tagged ‘non-fiction’

Content Inc. is a book by Joe Pulizzi. In it, Pulizzi makes the case that you can build a business using a content model in which you begin by providing your audience with lots of useful content, and once the audience grows you figure out what to sell them.

It is a long-term gain. Pulizzi suggests you need to do producing regular content for 12-months before you will have a sufficient audience and understanding of the marketplace to bring in the dough. But once achieve this, it should rain down.

There is a tonne of useful information here for building a content-based business and it gels with a lot of what the internet marketing industry is talking about. Definitely worth a read if you want to make money from online publishing.

Irongran: How Keeping Fit Taught Me that Growing Older Needn’t Mean Slowing Down is a book by Eddie Brocklesby. She started running in her 50s, took up triathlon in her 60s, and holds the record of the oldest British woman to finish an Ironman, aged 74.

In her biography, she shares her story of how she got involved in endurance sports, went on to found the charity Silverfit, an organisation dedicated to getting older people active, and the many Ironmans she has done. I lost count but I am pretty sure she has finished at least five: Lanzarote twice, Kona, Vichy and Cozumel.

It’s not a rags-to-riches story. She starts by talking about her grandmother who was Winston Churchill’s private cook. But throughout the book, she shows a high level of self-awareness about her opportunities and ability to afford what all of us in triathlon must surely admit is an expensive sport.

Some of the story seems like a sharp contrast. For example, she says she is not well organised. And yet managed to maintain a career, running Silverfit and Ironman training: all things which sound like they need a lot of organisation. Similarly, it’s not like she never got off the couch before 50 as she did play netball competitively, although it is true that she never tried endurance sport until later in life.

Overall, it is a fun and inspiring read.

Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person is a 2015 book by Shonda Rhimes. Rhimes is the creator Grey’s Anatomy and a number of other very successful TV shows. In the book she talks about how she made 2014 the year in which she would say yes to everything.

What does that mean in practice? A number of different things. Challenging her fears for one thing. She started doing TV show interviews and accepting public speaking engagements. She said yes to her family and started making time for her kids when she ‘should’ have been working. And not feeling guilty when she didn’t.

The book is a first-person autobiography of the changes she made and how it changed her life.

Did I learn anything? Probably not. However, maybe that was the point. We all know that we should look after ourselves and spend more time with the people we love, rather than being in the office. Maybe the message is “if the woman who owns Thursday nights can do it, so can you.”