Since my book Dogs of the Oligarchs became a best-seller (without a NYC publishing house, without any PR, without corporate media ‘reviews’), many people have sought me out for ‘writing advice.’

I don’t know that there is any one-size-fits-all advice. Most of the time, I need to look at a particular writer’s situation to see whether there are any thoughts that I can offer which might help him.

To the extent I have any generalized advice, it is this:

Forget your audience. Forget the ‘hot’ genres. Don’t try to back into a book that resonates with people; you can’t back into a valuable book. There is no general ‘audience’ for a book that doesn’t exist. A book is read one person at a time, only then does an audience come to exist. Write for yourself, create something valuable, something good, fun, thought-provoking, etc. If you can’t write anything you would want to read yourself (had someone else written it) then your cause is lost.