“In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.”

People seemed to like that when I wrote it in  my 2002 book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined.

About ten  years later, someone (sorry, I don’t remember who) pointed out that that phrase had in fact been first written by the Scottish singer and writer Momus [wikipedia], in 1991. Momus’ article that the phrase captions is especially insightful since it was posted before the Web created a plausible way to route around mass markets.

The page that currently houses Momus’ original article traces the history of Momus’ article:

This essay, written by Momus in 1991, was published by the Swedish fanzine Grimsby Fishmarket in 1992 then in the daily paper Svenske Dagblatt in 1994. Obviously a hardy perennial, it was then broadly paraphrased by trendy French magazine Citizen K in 1996)

I wasn’t aware of any of these and had never heard the phrase before I came up with it independently. When Momus’ prior use of the phrase was brought to my attention maybe ten years later, I blogged about it. But now I can’t find that post. So, since the origins of the phrase came up again today in a post by Dennis Falvy, I thought I should refresh the Web with this acknowledgement.

And if you want to know more about Warhol’s original saying, The Quote Investigator is, as always, worth reading.

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So, you’re an academic, a researcher, a scientist … a serious person. But you’ve decided to write a trade book — a book for the general populous — to amplify the effect of your work. Excellent!

I edit the Strong Ideas book series for the MIT Press — books about the ways in which today’s digital technology is or may be changing how we think and behave. The readers are assumed to have no, or little, technical background, but the authors are generally academics and scholars.

This is the advice I give them at the beginning if they have not written for laypeople before.

The differences between academic and trade books

1. A trade book is for people who know much less than you do about your topic.
2. A trade book is for people who are much less interested in your topic than you are.

These two points are inseparable when it comes to structuring and writing your book. When writing for academics, you’re dealing with people who come to your book already interested in your topic and who think your book has something worthwhile to say to them…or perhaps people who feel they need to be able to list your book in their bibliography. Either way, they are already motivated to read it.

That’s not the case for trade book readers. For trade book readers, you need to promise them something…

The promise your book makes

The promise is what you tell prospective readers they will get out of the book. It’s why they’ll recommend it to their friends. The promise is not a statement of what the book is about but why the book will matter to the reader.

That promise should be manifest in the title and subtitle, the text on the inside flap of the book, the organization of your chapters, and even your writing style.

Hiding what you know

An academic book typically starts with an introduction that tells you how the book is going to unfold. That provides helpful scaffolding for people who are already committed to the book. But it’s usually a mistake for a trade book. To draw readers through the book, you should keep information from them so you can disclose it progressively.

The chapters should be a series of surprises. In that sense, a trade book often takes the form of a non-fiction narrative: it unfolds not in time, the way a murder mystery typically does, but in logic. (Which is also how mysteries unfold, now that I think of it.)

For that reason, it helps to provide plenty of signposts to remind readers where they are in the intellectual narrative and why you are talking about whatever you’re talking about

By the way, the combination of you knowing more than your readers and you being more interested in your topic than readers are initially means that, despite years of academic training, your second chapter absolutely should not be a review of the literature or the history of your field. [Exceptions may apply. But probably not.]

Your voice

Readers want to spend time with authors they trust and like. Because you know what you’re talking about, gaining their trust should happen easily. But knowing stuff isn’t enough. Whether they like you as an author largely depends on your authorial voice. Unfortunately, there are no formulas for being likeable, or else we all would be.

But there are some common sense ways to do this, or at least to avoid being disliked. For example:

• You’ll earn more of their trust by writing clearly and competently than by listing your credentials and accomplishments.
• Be generous about the insights of other authors.
• Don’t be mean about other scholars even if you think are dead wrong or total jerks. (There’s a high-risk, bravura/gonzo style of writing that contradicts this rule, but does it really make the world better?)
• Examples help not only for obvious reasons but because they can be an opportunity for you to provide the reader with a small “Aha!” jolt when you reveal what we can learn from them.
• If you’re going to be digressive — a charming way of expressing your personality and keeping people interested — put in lots of signposts so readers know where they are in the narrative or argument.
• Be prepared to over-simplify. Readers usually only need to know how a technical concept applies to the point you’re trying to make. If you feel bad about simplifying a concept too much, you can briefly note that “it’s actually much more technical than that” or put in a footnote to ward off colleagues looking for flaws because they’re envious of how clearly you write and how far you are spreading the important things that they and you know about the world.

Drafts

People’s writing processes are all very different, but they all involve more drafts than you’d like. In fact, having to write many, many drafts is a good sign.

The end

If you have reactions, responses, suggestions, criticisms, or expert opinions, please let me know: david [insert an “at” sign] hyperorg.com

The prompt for the illustration: We are looking over the shoulder of a very serious scholar in a darkened study with many books. It is the 19th century. But we see that the scholar is writing using an ultra modern computer. The computer and the screen are brightly lit unlike the rest of the room which is in candlelight. The screen shows a modern , colorful, crisp, and clear word processor with a document open. The gender of the scholar should be ambiguous and impossible to determine.

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