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What business readers want
George Burns was wrong; you can’t get there by faking it.
I have been a business writer for many years, and worked on many bestsellers and memorable articles. Recently, as the editor-in-chief of a thought leadership firm, I realized I need to raise my game further. So I set out to learn more about business readers. I went to the place where consumers of thought leadership express themselves fervently about what they like and hate. I went to the book reviews section of Amazon.com.
Here is what I learned.
Most valued by Amazon readers is credibility. All too few pieces of business writing come across to them as trustworthy. Second is explanatory power: the ability to show how the world works, in a way that wasn’t obvious before. Third is rhetorical skill. They want to be carried away by the craft of a writer. They want to be immersed in the story, especially since it’s their story. Ultimately, in any good storyof business guidance, it’s the reader’s story being told.
These qualities all ranked higher than evidence, practical value, impact on peoples’ actual lives, or inspiring visionary messages. Because Amazon book reviewers volunteer their praise and outrage, their comments are as good a proxy for business readership as we are likely to find.
Because Amazon book reviewers volunteer their praise and outrage, their comments are as good a proxy for business readership as we are likely to find.
We started in November 2021. With my colleague Wallace Mohlenbrok, and with some advice from Juliette Powell of KPI and George Roth of MIT, I developed a methodology for distilling Amazon.com reviews. I chose twenty best-sellers, deliberately selected without attention to my own preferences. Ten were the most popular books in Amazon’s business category, on November 18, a date chosen at random. The others were the most popular books by the highest-rated members of the Thinkers 50, the so-called “Academy Awards of management thinking.” Fortunately, Thinkers 50 proprietors Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer had just released their biennial rankings in mid-November, so we had a fresh list of pundits with popular books.
Amazon doesn’t publish its book sales, the rankings shift multiple times a day, and all…
