nI personally have never wanted to author anything and I just have other interests

so when,in another forum on this website, a long time contributor to this website announced that they had written..........an NLP book. this brings yet another NLP book to the marketplace, a market already "saturated" with NLP books

NLP books certainly don't make bestseller lists(at least now with any regularity), and I find it hard to believe that demand for this kind of book far exceeds supply. there cant be that much $$$$ in it.

and yet individuals continue to do it.

is it an overwhelming compelling desire to be published? or something else?

comments?

I think for some it’s a learning strategy…Something that I have heard Joseph O’Connor and Michael Hall mention.

I can imagine it to look good for marketing purposes too : P

It is a fight-club area, so let me ignore political correctness. However, please consider I do answer in general and not in particular (especially in the context of the book mentioned by Jim - I have not seen it and as such cannot talk about.)

I think most authors objectives hover around marketing, authority and credibility building, attempt to establish own and differentiating proposition, maybe commendable motivation to share own learning, to help, for reality checking through editor's process and audience response, but it may be also a vain attempt of the lost sheep to convince itself that it now should became a Sheppard. This case would be potentially dangerous, not because of ignorance, but offering artificial and academic information, not tested through sufficient practice and not based on genuine experience.

Sadly, most of the new books I considered over last couple of years do not seem provide too much of a really new (in contrast to repacked or re-framed) content. It sees to appear that maybe some people write just because they have a compulsion to to say something, even though they do not have anything in particular to say. Maybe this is just a form of therapy? Maybe it just makes them happy?

For example Charles Bukowski (the poet) was very clear on many occassions that for him, poetry was a therapy to keep sanity, not an exercise in art. Maybe we just do not appreciate that writing another NLP could deliver something similar - some exciting exercise or therapy, especially if somebody is not bored by chewing the chewed.

Another angle: why new books on meditation, theology, spirituality? Do we really receive anything new under the sun there? Maybe the simplest answer is just that every new time, decade or so, needs new interpretations, that vary with the context of the running time.

Last one: why no new really books on application of NLP? What about modelling in business, sports, writing, music - the field seems to be virtually unlimited. Instead - NLP about NLP. So unnecessary.

Ref: writing as part of a learning strategy ...

Yes, I use that 'technique' myself. Doesn't mean you have to write a book.

I've got over 1,000 pages of notes and pictures and mind maps I've written over the years to consolidate various workshops, about 60% of which never appears in any NLP book. (Because the books are mostly just the basic stuff.)

Do I want to turn that into a book? No. Those pages served their purpose and I'm like Jim: no desire to be an author.

My problem with the NLP book market is how bad many of them are. So many of them are just a regurgitation of what's gone before, without research or checking up on facts.

Take that old one: words are only 7% of communication. Ugh.

It's an age-old distortion / misquote that just gets copied time and time again. Expert after expert proclaims it and it's bullshit. Which they'd know if they just did some basic checks on their 'facts'.

I'm fed up with picking up NLP books that invite me to do a questionnaire to determine what my NLP type is, so I can use that to 'understand myself'. Just as I'm fed up with reading bullshit about deciding what 'type' the other guy is, so you can apply dumb rules like "speak to visuals only with visual words".

For me, that's a misunderstanding of what NLP is all about.

What a lot of the books fail to express (for me) is that NLP is a set of ideas, skills and models you use creatively, according to what you're calibrating and what you're aiming to do. More often than not, NLP comes across as this rigid 'fixed form' way.

My other observation is why make the NLP bit important?

For example, why does a book have to be (for example) "Selling with NLP"? Why not just "How to become good at selling"? By emphasising the "with NLP" bit, you're putting the focus on the method rather than the goal. If I want to become good at selling, I want to become good at selling. NLP/modelling may be the vehicle, but it's the 'selling' bit that's important.

(To be honest, when I see titles like that, what I actually think is: it's just a thin disguise for publishing a "yet-another-NLP-book" book.)

We don't need more basic NLP textbooks. We especially don't need any more bad ones. We could do with more books on how to be good at things though.

Cheers

Steve_W wrote:

I've got over 1,000 pages of notes and pictures and mind maps I've written over the years to consolidate various workshops, about 60% of which never appears in any NLP book. (Because the books are mostly just the basic stuff.)

So the question is: how those eager to learn could get access to this gold?

Since you declared you had no desire to be an author, there seems to be no simple way to share your material with a broader audience so that at the same time your intellectual property rights could be protected, not to speak of compensation for your time, creativity and intelligence required to build such a repository.

Or maybe you have just explained why there is so little new stuff shared in the forums like this: I imagine there may be some silent hunters around on the lookout for fresh ideas here… and should they be able to find them here – maybe they would put them into their “new” books. But as you rightly said - there was nothing new under the sun. Cheers

Which NLP books /are/ necessary?

Don't we have some canonical list somewhere on this site already? I cannot imagine we don't.

Should I have to pick one NLP book and one only (an almost impossible task) it would be Robert Dilts' and Judith DeLozier' NLP Encyclopedia available online at nlpuniversitypress.com.

Why? The authors really KNOW what they are writing about and want you, the reader, to understand presented material for yourself rather than installing the need in you to attend their seminar as a only way to get these things on board. Cheers

I’d guess that publishing a book is part of the motivation strategy that accompanies the learning strategy. Turning personal notes into a published book requires a lot of effort and commitment, which isn’t for everyone. I have enough trouble just posting on the forum haha

Maybe journals/blogs are where the more experienced would reap the most benefit.