Invented Ideologies And Lexica

My blog series on the most common problems I found in the self-published, non-fiction books I recently judged for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards continues. In part one, I discussed books written by authors who are not qualified experts in their chosen subjects. In part two, I wrote about authors who come across as dabblers or flakes in their author bio. Part three was about memoirs masquerading as reference books. In today’s post, the last in the series, I’ll address the type of book that introduces an author-invented ideology and a new lexicon to go with it.

An ideology is a body of belief that guides an individual, group or social movement. For example, Freemasonry, veganism and all the religions of the world are based in ideologies. Many more ideologies are introduced in self-help books; Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is one example. An ideology often has its own lexicon, or vocabulary. For instance, Scientologists are on a quest to become “clear” and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioners use “tapping” to eliminate negative feelings.

Obviously, all ideologies were ‘invented’ by some person or group and if you’ve hit on a new body of belief about something, you may have to develop new terminology to explain it. However, your new concepts and ideas can only resonate with the reader if the reader understands them. Successful education in any new subject always begins with a foundation of basic ideas and concepts, ideally using examples drawn from the learner’s everyday life or experience. If you intend to teach the reader an entirely new way of thinking or being, it’s critical that you make it as easy as possible for the reader to learn and comprehend.

Several of the books I read were filled with needlessly complicated explanations of relatively simple concepts. I’m not sure if the authors were trying to impress readers with their huge vocabularies (or huge Thesauruses), or were genuinely incapable of communicating their ideas more simply. In either case the resulting books were a chore to read, difficult to understand, and not at all likely to inspire me to adopt the author’s professed ideology—assuming I could ever figure it out. The following two sentences should illustrate my point:

Track your resting cardiac and pulmonary throughput, as elevated rates of cardiovascular and respiratory activity in a resting state are often indicative of incumbent physical, mental or emotional demands on a systemic level.

Pay attention to your heart rate and breathing when you’re not being physically active, as an elevated pulse or labored breathing at such times may be a sign of physical, mental or emotional stress.

Believe it or not, both sentences communicate the same thing. Which one would you rather read? Now imagine 2-300 pages of the first type of sentence; would you want to read that book?

The poor choices with existing language were challenging enough in these books, but a couple of the authors went a step further by introducing positively baroque terminology of their own—with the words and phrases frequently bearing trademarks. I realize there are instances where an invented word or phrase is needed to make a strong impact, or to describe something that’s never been described before. I also know that inventing and trademarking a name for some concept is a way of laying claim to the discovery of that concept.

Nevertheless, the reader of a mass-market self-help book isn’t expecting to learn a whole new language, and probably has no desire to do so. She bought Freedom to Imagine* in the hope of learning how to spark her creativity, not to be told that her Creative Collective of Pattern Recognition (CCPR)™ is an Imaginational Oppositional Hindrance (IOH)™ to her ability to Futuretask™ and achieve a Creatively Cooperative Psycho-State (CCPS)™. None of those terms are real (as far as I know), but I saw equally annoying jargon in some of the books I read. There are several problems here.

First and most important is the fact that the author didn’t have to invent any new terms. All that the above sentence says is that old habits and patterns can prevent people from being open to new ways of thinking and doing. Rather than communicate this idea in plain English, the author forces his readers to decipher and memorize new terms and acronyms.

Secondly, if new acronyms are introduced every few pages, it’s only a matter of time before the reader begins confusing them or forgetting what they stand for. The author’s use of new terms and acronyms hasn’t made his ideology easier to understand, and in fact he’s made confusion and wrong conclusions much more likely.

Third is the risk that the author’s made-up lexicon will just seem silly to the reader. Seriously, didn’t you have to stifle a giggle while reading the jargon-heavy sentence?

Finally, all that invented terminology makes the book hard and unpleasant to read. Persistent use of unfamiliar terms and acronyms breaks up the flow of sentences and paragraphs, often forcing the reader to re-read entire sections of the book.

Sometimes it truly is necessary to develop new terms and teach them to readers, but only when the thing you’re trying to explain cannot possibly be explained any more clearly with words already in use. In the books I’m talking about, it seemed to me that the authors’ motives had nothing to do with clear explanation. Rather, it seemed they were trying to lay claim to concepts by naming them (and sometimes, trademarking the names).

What the authors fail to recognize is that there will never be a need to defend their claim to this or that term if nobody wants to read their books in the first place. Moreover, the authors can only defend their claim to the invented (and/or trademarked) name, not the concept described by the name. And how likely is it that some other author will make the fortune that was rightfully the first author's by throwing around terms like Imaginational Oppositional Hindrance (IOH)? Not very.

*not a real book

Memoirs And Reference Books Are Entirely Different Things

My blog series on the most common problems I found in the self-published, non-fiction books I recently judged for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards continues. In part one, I discussed books written by authors who are not qualified experts in their chosen subjects. In part two, I wrote about authors who come across as dabblers or flakes in their author bio. Today, it’s about memoirs masquerading as reference books.

As with all the posts in this series, since I’m not allowed to reveal identifying details of the actual books I reviewed, the book names and specific contents discussed herein have been fabricated. While they serve to illustrate the types of problems I saw, they are not meant to refer to any real books.

Reference Books Are Supposed To Inform AND Educate

The jacket blurb describes Bicycling To Victory as a book filled with insight and advice for the competitive cyclist, and since it was written by a world-champion cyclist, there’s no reason to doubt that jacket copy. But in the book, the author merely relates his experiences on the competitive cycling circuit. No explicit advice is given, and at no point does the author finish up his retelling of a given incident by pointing out what he learned from the experience.

The cyclist has written a memoir, not a reference or educational book. His fans and fans of the sport may find the book interesting, but since it’s classified and described as a reference book, anyone who buys it is probably expecting to gain some instruction and practical tips. Those buyers will be disappointed.

Your Experiences May Not Be As Fascinating To Others As They Are To You

A body shop owner writes Bringing Back Baby, a book about his experiences in restoring numerous classic and rare cars over the many years of his career. Each chapter covers a different car, first describing how the car was obtained and what was wrong with it, then explaining what the body shop owner did to fix it. For example, one of the cars was missing its original headlamps so the body shop owner had to scour the internet and junk yards in four states in order to find the necessary replacement parts.

However, the book doesn’t offer any kind of detailed, step-by-step directions for working on the cars, and there’s nothing unique or special about the various strategies employed by the author in locating missing parts and necessary supplies. Finally, since each chapter is about a different car, and each car requires a specific repair that doesn’t relate to any of the other cars in the book, the book can’t even stand as an overview of classic car restoration.

This is another memoir, just like the cyclist’s book, but it’s a memoir that isn’t likely to interest anyone but the author and the owners of the cars he restored. I saw several examples of memoirs that had been wrongly classified by their authors as nonfiction, reference books, the contents of which would only be of interest to people with a personal connection to the subject matter.

If Your Book Is A Memoir/Self-Help Hybrid, Don’t Leave Out The Self-Help Part

The memoir/self-help hybrid is an increasingly common type of nonfiction book, but again, your accomplishments and experiences in overcoming various challenges don’t automatically make a book based on those things a self-help book.

Reading With My Mind Shut relates the inspiring story of a man who overcame dyslexia and Down Syndrome to complete his education and eventually become a special education teacher. The book names the facilities and programs which helped him along the way, and describes his personal experiences with those facilities and programs. However, while the book may be a terrific memoir, it’s useless as a self-help book because it doesn’t truly offer advice or instruction to the reader. It’s only a self-help book to the extent the reader is willing and able to utilize the exact same facilities and programs in the exact same ways as the author.

In Dance To The Tune That’s Playing, the author provides a series of anecdotes drawn from her experiences as a social worker serving the needs of battered women. The jacket copy suggests the book as a self-help manual for battered women, their friends and family. Each anecdote follows the same pattern of building trust, identifying the client’s specific needs or fears, and serving those specific needs or fears. But because each client’s circumstances are different and the author’s methods for building their trust and serving them are different in each case, no general conclusions can be drawn by the reader. The author hasn’t presented her anecdotes in a framework of methodology or instruction, nor concluded each story with an instructional passage explaining how readers can extrapolate from the story to address their own issues. So while the anecdotes may be interesting or even comforting to the target audience, they aren’t “helpful” in the self-help sense.

Coming Up Next Time: Invented Ideologies And Lexica

Nobody Wants To Take Advice From A Dabbler Or A Flake

My blog series on the most common problems I found in the self-published, non-fiction books I recently judged for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards continues. In part one, I discussed books written by authors who are not qualified experts in their chosen subjects. This time, I take on the dabbler: the author who comes across as a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Nobody wants to take advice from a dabbler, but judging by many of the supplied biographies on their book jackets, plenty of self-published, non-fiction authors seem to be totally unaware of this. They seem to think that if their qualifications in the subject matter of their book are light or spotty, their unrelated experiences and accomplishments will establish some level of general authority for them in readers' minds. This is not true.

Every non-fiction author has hobbies or interests outside of the subject matter of his book, but the only hobbies and interests his readers need to know about are those which help to establish his credibility as a subject area expert. It’s typical for non-fiction author bios in mainstream books to include some mention of the author’s general area or country of residence, and maybe a line or two about marital and family status, but that’s about it as far as personal details go.

Given that the person who buys your non-fiction book is, in a sense, 'hiring' you to educate them on some subject, your author bio is like a job application. Don't mention anything in your author bio that you wouldn't list among your qualifications in a job interview. While you may very well be "an eco-conscious lover of life, dreamer of dreams, and chaser of rainbows,” such a statement will not instill confidence in a potential employer, nor anyone perusing the jacket of your non-fiction book.

Just as in a job application, relevance matters. Nobody wants to buy a book on estate planning from an author who describes himself as a “Yoga instructor, 4th Degree Black Belt, Photographer and Community Theater Director”. Such a bio just makes the reader wonder why the author didn't write a book on yoga, martial arts, photography, or running a community theater, since those are his stated areas of expertise. If you have no experience, education or training to speak of with respect to the subject of your book, you’re not qualified to write that book.

Similarly, the longer your list of disparate professional titles, the less credibility you have in the minds of readers. The multi-gifted likes of a Leonardo DaVinci or Benjamin Franklin come along once in a generation or less, and anyone else laying claim to a half-dozen, unrelated professional titles is more than likely just padding her resume. Either that, or she's someone who's quit (or been fired from) every job she's ever had because she can't fully commit to any profession. Either way, it doesn't look good.

Invented, self-assigned titles are also a bad idea. Stating that you’re a “Spiritual Color Consultant / Themed Self-Actualization Life Coach” doesn’t make you seem important, accomplished or authoritative to the reader; it just makes you seem like a self-aggrandizing flake who has no legitimate educational or work experience.

Along those same lines…enough already with all the authors claiming to be a “Life Coach” when they can’t list any educational or career credentials justifying that title. While Life Coaching is a genuine career (just ask Tony Robbins), the title has become a trendy, umbrella term that’s frequently appropriated by people for whom a more accurate title would be “Unemployed Guy Who Thinks He’s Good At Helping His Friends Solve Their Problems”.

The fact that you helped your best friend start up her small business and provided moral support during her divorce does not make you a Life Coach, nor does the fact that all your salon clients bring their job, relationship and family problems to you because you give such great advice. A legitimate Life Coach is engaged in Life Coaching as his or her primary occupation, and typically has some kind of certification, or a degree—often an advanced degree—in a subject related to business, counseling or education. A legitimate Life Coach can usually introduce herself as the founder of, or a partner in, a thriving practice with a lengthy list of satisfied clients.

If you genuinely feel you’re in a position to advise others on how to be more organized, self-confident, driven, assertive, etc., but can’t offer degrees or a longstanding practice to back it up, then zero in on the training or career experience you feel justifies the title of Life Coach and spell that out in your author bio instead of just granting yourself the title.

Coming up next time: memoirs and reference books are entirely different things.

Hubris, Not Bad Writing Or Design, Sinks Most Self-Published Nonfiction - Part 1

I recently completed a stint of judging nonfiction, indie books for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Popular lore holds that most self-published books are of poor quality, both in terms of layout/design and writing, but that was not my experience with these books.

Most of the books had very attractive and professional-looking covers, and many of them had excellent illustrations and interior layout details (i.e., sidebars, recurring graphic elements) as well. While a quarter of the books could’ve done with a thorough edit to ‘trim the fat’, none of the books were so flawed in terms of mechanics as to make them difficult, or even just unpleasant, to read—and I’m somewhat of a stickler for spelling and grammar.

Nevertheless, fewer than half of the books in my allotment seemed worthy of publication and sale to the public, and some clear patterns emerged among those books. In this series of blog posts, I’ll discuss my findings.

Because I am not allowed to disclose the titles of the books I judged, nor the specific category(ies), I’ve changed identifying details of the books in the following examples. (All book titles given below are fabricated, and are not meant to reference any real books)

Experience Doesn’t Always Equal Expertise

A tax attorney who’s struggled with her weight for years finds she’s somehow managed to lose fifteen pounds in one month. On reflection she realizes she’s been eating a lot of hazelnuts lately. Her internet research shows nuts are often encouraged as part of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, and she finds some studies that report hazelnuts have antioxidant properties. BOOM! The Hazelnut Crash Diet book is born.

A computer programmer’s YouTube parody of a celebrity is brought to the attention of the celebrity, who mentions it on a late-night talk show. The clip goes viral in a matter of hours. In the morning, the man learns what happened and finds he has several interview requests from the media…BOOM! How YouTube Can Make You Famous is born.

A caregiver in a nursing home notices the elderly in her care seem more responsive and alert when she plays music over the facility’s public address system. BOOM! Using Music To Beat Alzheimer’s Disease is born.

The tendency of so many authors to base an entire book or belief system on false correlations, or even mere coincidence, was astonishing to me, as was their complete lack of awareness that their ability to formulate a possible cause-and-effect relationship does not make that relationship valid, nor make them experts in either the cause or the effect.

There are many possible explanations for the first woman’s weight loss, but based on little more than intuition she’s concluded that hazelnuts were the key to her success. She’s not remotely qualified to design a safe and effective diet plan, yet here she is, promoting her hazelnut diet as a surefire, safe solution for anyone wishing to lose weight quickly.

If the YouTube guy had come up with a successful strategy to get the celebrity’s attention or the late-night talk show mention, that would be worthy of sharing with the world. In this case, he simply had an incredible stroke of luck that occurred entirely outside his control or even immediate awareness. Yet here he is, claiming he can show anyone how to recreate the same outcome.

The fact that the nursing home residents perked up when they heard music is no indication of music’s efficacy in staving off Alzheimer’s, and the caregiver’s only knowledge of Alzheimer’s comes from a continuing education class she once took and her observations of the elderly in her care. Yet here she is, claiming to have found a cure for a disease that whole armies of researchers and billions of dollars have yet to crack.

Books like the diet book and the Alzheimer’s book were particularly worrying to me because they can affect the health of others. Where very challenging ailments like Alzheimer’s are concerned, sufferers and those who care about them are often desperate enough to try anything that could possibly work. While exposing Alzheimer’s sufferers to music certainly won’t harm them, sufferers or caregivers might choose “music therapy” over other, better treatment options.

One of the books actually encouraged readers to use spoken mantras to treat a common physical ailment for which numerous safe, proven treatments already exist. Furthermore, the ailment was one of those things that's not usually serious, but can develop into something serious if it's not watched closely. By the time a caregiver employing the mantra method realizes the mantra isn't working, the ailment may have progressed to the point that aggressive and risky medical treatments are required. I was dumbfounded by the author's irresponsibility.

I understand there’s such a thing as alternative medicine, and I can also believe that laypeople and amateurs sometimes make discoveries that have evaded professionals and academics. However, I’m not going to take one person’s word for it that she's discovered a new avenue in healthcare or nutrition based on her personal experiences alone—especially when she has no significant background or training in the subject of her book. Background and training are the things that allow a person to tell the difference between a genuine result or discovery and a wrong conclusion.

Many of the authors seemed to think their own, untrained, non-professional interpretations of others’ academic and scientific studies constitutes “independent confirmation”. It doesn’t. I am an animal lover and even spent a number of years studying Veterinary Science and working as a Veterinary Technician while in college. Even so, that past experience and bit of education doesn’t give me all the knowledge and background I’d need to accurately interpret the statistics reported in veterinary studies conducted by actual veterinarians and scientists.

There are very good reasons why doctors, lawyers, physical therapists, nutritionists, accountants, etc. are required to complete years of education and training before being licensed to practice. Judging by the lengthy disclaimers I saw at the front of several books, the authors knew this, yet still deemed themselves capable of going toe-to-toe with the professionals. The disclaimers variously advised readers that nothing in the book should be construed as professional advice, that the reader shouldn't rely on the information provided in the book when making medical, legal or financial decisions, and in one case, went so far as to say the reader shouldn't rely on the book's content as a reliable source of information on the subject matter of the book.

A book that needs a disclaimer like that is a book that never should've been written, and should definitely not be offered for sale to the public.

Coming up next time: nobody wants to take advice from a dabbler.