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Jake Knapp on designing nonfiction worth reading

Lessons & insights from a master product designer

By Devin Hunt and featuring Jake Knapp

In this Useful Books Community Q&A, we’re joined by [Jake Knapp], designer extraordinaire (Google Ventures and more) and author of Sprint and Make Time.

Timestamps & topics

  • 0:00 Well here we are
  • 0:26 Why Jake is great
  • 1:14 Where the books came from?
  • 4:11 On starting to write (& NaNoWriMo)
  • 6:00 Business & reputation
  • 7:58 Self-doubt, de-risking, and blogging as book v1
  • 9:49 Education vs. entertainment
  • 12:02 Structure, organization, & clarity
  • 14:44 The one-week prototype & ToC
  • 15:40 Learning from experts & friends
  • 18:13 Audience & marketing
  • 19:51 Word of mouth and what publishers can’t do
  • 23:35 Why not selfpub?
  • 24:46 Perils of cover design
  • 27:48 On writing something that works
  • 30:23 Devin being handsome & Jake laughing

More resources & articles

📺 Jermey Matthews (Acquisitions Editor @ MIT Press): Tradpub nuance, popular science, market research vs. timing, and entrepreneurial authors

📺 Strategic Email for Authors with Brennan Dunn: Brennan's personal playbook for using email to drive his book launch

📺 Nir Eyal on selling a million copies via curiosity, learning, and sharing: Q&A with the bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable

📺 How an Academic Turned Innovation Expert Created Massively Successful Books : Tendayi Viki on sounding pretentious and other mistakes authors make

📺 How to Turn 12-year olds into Published Authors: Emma Barnes on the publishing industry and its future