BY DANIEL BLACK
Never judge a book by its cover. Perhaps that’s true. But, and I do mean this in all sincerity, always judge a book by its intro.
Before we honor some great book intros (aka forewords), let’s zoom out and honor the topic of forewords with a foreword to this blog post.
First, there are actually many types and styles of content that come before the story in a book—the pre-read, if you will. I recently grabbed a few books off the Hencove shelves and found intros that immediately pulled me in. Structurally speaking, these intros included sections labeled “Author’s Note,” “Preface,” “Dedication,” “Foreword” (or, in one book, “First Foreword,” “Second Foreword,” and “Third Foreword”); and “Introduction.” Each served an interesting purpose, and more importantly, represented a deliberate decision by the author. Yes, I am going to share some of these great intros with you. And yes, I will explain the connection to the world of B2B marketing afterward.
Second, as far as snap judgments go, you really can tell a lot about a book by how the author handles this introductory copy. Coincidentally, if I could be a fly on the wall during an author’s writing process, it would be this very moment—when the author pens the intro—that I’d want to witness. Did they write this section before or after they completed the book? Was it a painful process, or a stroke of luck? Did it come as an epiphany in the middle of the night?
But I digress. Back to the topic at hand: great intros.
Thanks a Thousand, by A.J. Jacobs, opens with a simple Dedication: “To my family. And everyone else.” It’s a perfect intro for a book about following the chain of production of a single cup of coffee all the way back to the bean grower and beyond to remember to live a life of gratitude.
In the Dedication in his business culture book, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, Ben Horowitz recognizes formerly incarcerated individuals now leading constructive lives and he acknowledges the people of Haiti fighting to rebuild their society. He also notes that 100% of the book’s proceeds will go toward helping these two populations. While it’s probably not the dedication readers would expect when buying this book, after reading the book they’d see that the dedication makes a lot more sense.
Stephen King’s brilliant book, On Writing, is a must-read for authors, writers, and anyone who plays with words for a living. King is kind enough to deliver three separate Forewords, the second of which is my favorite. I’ve included it verbatim here because it’s that good:
“This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit. One notable exception to the bullshit rule is The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. There is little or no detectable bullshit in that book. (Of course it’s short; at eighty-five pages it’s much shorter than this one.) I’ll tell you right now that every aspiring writer should read The Elements of Style. Rule 17 in the chapter titled Principles of Composition is “Omit needless words.” I will try to do that here.”
If you’re going to read this book, do yourself a favor and listen to it instead. King highlights the sound of language throughout the book, and hearing his words come to life in his voice is a gift.
Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy and the Traitor and many other brilliantly captivating espionage nonfiction books, listed only two brief mentions in a Dedication and a Foreword. His Dedication reads “In memory of Joanna Macintyre (1934–2015)”; clearly, this is someone who left a lasting impact on him and who lived a long life. But as ever one to pull the reader in, Macintyre shares no additional details about Joanna. Through a bit of Googling, it appears Joanna was probably Ben’s mom. In his Foreword, Macintyre leverages a quotation, a common motif of authors: “He had two lives: one open, seen and known by all who cared to know … and the other running its course in secret.” The quotation is from Anton Chekhov’s short story, “The Lady with the Dog.” It’s an apt quotation for this, and perhaps all of Macintyre’s books. Intrigued? Grab a Macintyre book today.
In my favorite running book, Born to Run, author Christopher McDougall shares his parental love and appreciation: “To John and Jean McDougall, my parents, who gave me everything and keep on giving.” The part of the Dedication, “keep on giving,” is a befitting metaphor given the book’s topic: ultramarathon running. The job of parenting is never done. Having completed one ultramarathon in the woods of Topsfield, Mass., I can attest to a similar never-ending feeling.
Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, is a deeply powerful book about the world surrounding evictions. Desmond brilliantly saves his true insights about the book for six additional sections: an “Epilogue,” “About This Project,” “Acknowledgments,” “Notes,” an “Index,” and even a “Readers Guide.” All told, these extra sections add 130 pages to his book. Including this information at the beginning of the book would have changed everything for the worse. Instead, Desmond lists only the briefest of details in his Foreword, despite dedicating years of his life to the research and development of this monumental book. He simply instructs readers that this is a work of nonfiction from events that took place and were recorded in 2008 and 2009, and says that names of individuals have been changed to protect their privacy. Rarely do works of nonfiction require an author to state as such. However, this book is so unbelievable that one will naturally question its accuracy.
Here’s one last one. Well, two, but on one topic: serial killers. I recently visited Austin, Texas, and was intrigued to read The Midnight Assassin, a book about a serial killer roaming the streets of Austin in the 1880s. Skip Hollandsworth, the author, pulled me in with his Prologue. He poses the question: “Why is it that certain sensational events in history are remembered and others, just as dramatic, are completely forgotten? Jack the Ripper has haunted the imagination of the public like no other killer in Western civilization … But beginning in December 1884, Austin, Texas, was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London’s Ripper.” Trying putting the book down after that.
Similarly, The Man from the Train is a deep dive into tracking and solving the mystery of a rampant serial killer in the early 1900s, written by famed baseball statistician Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James. The intro—notably, the James duo chose not to label this section—is a bit of a preview and pulls you in. And dare I say, it works:
“It is a warm night, most often on a weekend. There is a very small town with a railroad track that runs through the town, or sometimes along the edge of it. You can’t get more than a few hundred feet away from the railroad track and still be in the town. He is looking for a house with no dog. He would prefer a house on the edge of town, just isolated enough to provide a little bit of cover. A big two-story house would be best, with a family of five. A barn where he can hide out from sundown until the middle of the night … He is looking for a house with a woodpile in the front yard, and an axe sticking up out of the woodpile.”
I could do this for days, but I suspect that at some point I’d lose you. Perhaps I was a bit long-winded already, but there is a point to looking at these intros: if the eyes are the window to the soul, then the intro is the sequence of a book’s DNA. Who doesn’t love a good (mixed) metaphor? Speaking of DNA, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating book and contains an equally interesting outro.
As you sit here and think about your business, your brand, and your company’s story, what is your intro section? Would it be a dedication? Is your business dedicated to serving the mission of a founder’s legacy? Would it be a quotation from an inspirational leader or industry authority? Would it be a brief prelude? Would it be funny? Would you tell a story? Would it be lengthy and explanatory?
For someone to deeply and fully interact with your brand, they need to care. Why should they want to read more? For brands, I find a common challenge is that too often, they jump right into telling you their “what” and “how.” But our audiences want to know the “why” first. And they want the “why” to be an answer to their problems.
Don’t tell your audience what your product does, or expound on its bells and whistles. Your audience is interested in that info, but not yet. First, they need to know that you understand the things that matter to them, why those things are worth fixing, and that you know how to fix them. Only then can they start to care about your “what” and “how.”
Since this is a B2B marketing blog, I looked at a few companies to see if I could find their intros:
For Stripe, a leading fin-tech payments platform, the brand foreword is centered on the idea of driving GDP of the internet. It’s that simple, and it’s stated right in the About Stripe section of the website. That’s a pretty good sense of what this book (brand) is going to be about. If that doesn’t interest you, you’re probably on the wrong website.
For Stryker, a leading medical devices and technology company, the foreword can be found in language directed at job applicants: “People are at the heart of what we do, and by valuing our differences, we are stronger together.” That phrase, “by valuing our differences,” can be interpreted in the context of a diverse workforce and patient centricity. Each solution from Stryker must work for each patient.
For the hottest AI company on the planet, NVIDIA, the siren call is that it has “pioneered accelerated computing to tackle challenges no one else can solve.” Talk about a big idea. But in that phrase is the inherent answer to the question, “Why does this matter?” The answer: because they’re only focused on solving the universe’s biggest problems. It’s not hard to figure out what this business is about.
These are just a few examples of brand intros that work. That’s not to say the rest of the messaging from these companies is perfect. But in these instances, they’re on target.
So, how do you know whether you’re doing it well? The short answer is to hire someone who is good at this stuff. Sorry, I had to say it.
But the longer answer is that I believe everyone can do this if they want to. It’s not a question of ability, but rather, desire. The ability may not be there on day one when you write your first draft, but you’ll get there eventually. And when you do write a draft and you’re ready to run it through the editing gauntlet, here are a few questions to consider:
Does this matter to our target audience?
Is this really a problem? Is it worth fixing?
Is this unique and ownable by our business?
Have we made the foreword about our clients, or is it about us?
If you’re still unsure, maybe it’s time to call in the reinforcements (wink, wink).