The writing

Just finished writing another book - well, the first draft anyway. A rewarding and fascinating few months, and with a tight deadline it was pretty intense towards the end.

Now comes the editing, which involves: 1) the commissioning editor's initial judgement - fortunately, she liked what she read; 2) a copy editor marking up the document of 100,000+ words with highlighted mistakes and queries - see the example to your left from a chapter on Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 50 Economics Classics; and 3) the manuscript going into 'proofs', which is the page layout you see when the book is published, and which gives me a final chance to make corrections.

These stages mean that by the time you read the book, I've read it through at least four times. A bit laborious, but it doesn't mean mistakes and typos don't get through - for example, we somehow left out the author bio page in 50 Economics, which is in every other title in the series, and in the original edition of 50 Spiritual Classics I confused GI Gurdjieff follower Kathryn Mansfield, a Kiwi poet, with the film star Jayne Mansfield! - but luckily advances in the printing industry means you can do quick reprints (with corrections) more often.

What have I just written? A couple of years ago I sent out a survey asking people what subject they would most like to see featured in the 50 Classics series. Top was philosophy, which was duly covered; second was business, so there's a hint of what's coming in 2018.

Help yourself

Almost 15 years have passed since 50 Self-Help Classics was published. What, if anything, has changed in the self-help field? Many would argue that the genre has been superseded by psychology and its more scientific approach to understanding why we think and act as we do. Indeed, when I wrote about Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism, such titles were a sign of things to come in terms of personal development becoming more grounded and scientific. A person who, 20 years ago, might have been happy to get a lift or a set of life pointers from How to Win Friends and Influence People, today might be drawn to a book by Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

Success manual

The success genre continues to develop as well. One thing that has changed since the first edition is that strategies for success, which were once the preserve of folk wisdom, parents, bosses, and motivational speakers, have become the subject of mainstream academic research. Two great examples, which I include in this new edition, are psychologist Angela Duckworth’s investigation of the concept of ‘grit’, which tells us much about what makes people successful irrespective of intelligence, grades, or even life circumstances, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant’s research into the long-term benefits of being a ‘giver’ in the workplace, which contradicts the idea that success comes from selfish ambition.

I also wanted to go beyond tips, ideas and advice to cover theories of success. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success has been important in the way it goes beyond pat explanations of the ‘self-made’ person to offer a more well-rounded environmental, social view of how success happens.

And yet, I believe that Gladwell goes too far in reducing the role of human agency and free will. The fact that life is not just about good opportunities, but having the guts or wisdom to seize them, despite the waves they can create, is really the essence of success.

Enlightening read

The third in the personal development trilogy was 50 Spiritual. Getting into the minds of people like Teresa of Avila, Herman Hesse and Paramahansa Yogananda was an amazing thing, and while writing it I had some spiritual experiences myself. One would think you could only have such experiences while meditating or praying or being in nature - but no, it can come simply while reading a book.

This is not a new edition as such, just has a new cover, but if you feel ready for a book like this it is a good entry point. It spans the thinking of all the great religions, but also novelists including Somerset Maugham and New Age writers including Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson and Eckhart Tolle.