Many Business Books, But Few Written Well

The New York Times laments that there's not very many well-written books on business.

From the piece...

The problems are as varied as the books themselves; enumerating them could take an entire page of this newspaper. Some are too technical, some not technical enough. Some topics are hopeless: I’m not sure anyone can shape the Greek debt crisis into a narrative an American would read.

Some authors aren’t able to gain access to the business people they chronicle, and thus produce books that feel incomplete. Some don’t know how to tell a story. Some don’t even try. Some books just plain put me to sleep.

I co-wrote my first business book in 1990 — it did O.K. — and ever since, I’ve wondered why so few take flight. There are theories, the kind business writers will discuss after a couple of beers but generally refrain from debating in public.

For one thing, these books aren’t easy to create. Businesses, and especially American corporations, offer scads of compelling human dramas, the vast majority of which go untold, even unnoticed. It’s the corporate world’s zeal for secrecy — and the tendency of companies to avoid publicity they can’t control — that makes these tales tough to find and even tougher to tell.

The difficulty of spinning a good business yarn, however, doesn’t fully explain quality issues. One problem for the business reader is that too many of the authors aren’t gifted writers; they are chief executives, professors and experts in their field, and the lack of professional craftsmanship shows.