From our perspective as authors, this imbalance in recommendability is the million dollar mystery, and unravelling it is our goal throughout this chapter. Useful books are problem-solving products You can divide nonfiction books into two categories by their purpose to the reader: Pleasure-givers (“interesting”, “fascinating”, “beautiful”) Problem-solvers (“useful”, “actionable”, “clarifying”) Pleasure-givers are crafted like art or literature, as a solitary act of genius. Whereas problem-solvers ought to be designed and built like products, through a reader-centric process of testing and
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