Should you hyphenate “fixed income”?

It depends.

There are two schools of thoughts about whether to hyphenate compound adjectives, which is what “fixed income” becomes when you use it as an adjective. It’s the reader-friendly approach vs. common usage.

Reader-friendly

Let’s talk about “fixed income investing.” When you combine an adjective and noun and then use them to describe a second noun, you’re creating a compound adjective.

You’re also making it more difficult for your readers to interpret your text. They’re used to thinking of “income” as a noun, so they may struggle for a moment before they realize that “fixed income” serves as an adjective in “fixed income investing.” Following this line of thought, it’s kinder to your reader to write “fixed-income investing.”

Common usage

Opponents of writing “fixed-income investing” say “fixed income” is so commonly used as an adjective that a hyphen is unnecessary.

Your decision

Grammar Girl says that you should always consider whether a hyphen changes your meaning. As she pointed out in a post that has been removed from her website:

  • A hot-water bottle is a bottle for holding hot water.
  • A hot water bottle is a water bottle that is hot.


The Wall Street Journal uses a hyphen when fixed-income is an adjective.

What’s your decision? Is it fixed-income investing or fixed income investing?

Whichever approach you adopt, be consistent in your usage. That will help your readers know what to expect.

 

NOTE: Updated on Feb. 17, 2026 for a broken link.

Image courtesy of iosphere at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Do your grammar, punctuation, and usage affect your credibility?

Does the quality of your writing matter? It looks like it does. When I asked “Does a writer’s grammar, punctuation, or usage errors damage that writer’s credibility in your eyes?”, an amazing 100% of respondents said “yes” in response to the survey on my blog and in my newsletter.

Specifically, they gave the following answers to my multiple-choice question.

0%   No, I don’t notice errors
0%   No, I don’t care
26% Yes, but I forgive small mistakes, especially in social media posts
74% Yes, they damage the writer’s credibility

I imagine that my readers are more critical than the general population. Still, these numbers should make all of us, including me, pay closer attention to how we write.

Respondent comments on bad writing

As one respondent commented, “Having your reading disrupted by a misspelled word or badly written sentence is like having air suddenly let out of a balloon. It makes me question the writer as well as the content.” Another reader said, “it reflects poorly on the writer and shows lack of attention to detail.” On a similar note, one person wrote, “There’s always that nagging feeling: if they didn’t care enough to proofread this, where else are they cutting corners? I try to be charitable because I too make mistakes, but it really bugs me.”

In their comments, readers showed some tolerance for mistakes. Here’s one example, “To me, it shows the writer is not detailed enough to review their input before hitting ‘go’ – drives me crazy. That being said, I hit the wrong key often when texting and sometimes miss it before sending, so I have a small tolerance for those sort of errors.”

Believe it or not, despite concerns about writing mistakes, I fall into the 26% of people who tolerate small mistakes, especially in social media.

The worst mistakes?

The second question in my survey asked, “What is the worst mistake that writers make? Why is this mistake bad?”

Popular answers included spelling mistakes, mistakenly using “it’s” as the possessive form of “it,” and failing to proofread.

Here are more answers to my question about the worst mistakes:

“It’s a toss-up between thinking they are texting and using texting acronyms and overloading their writing with technical jargon.”

“Writing with very little thought and planning… poor sequencing of ideas, incomplete sentences, stream of consciousness, no clear call to action. When that’s the output, why bother?”

“Since I read almost no fiction–in my job, I don’t have to because what I see and hear no writer could make up–I confine my comment to non-fiction. Embedding numbers inside paragraphs abuses most readers because it asks them to ‘see’ relationships between and among numbers that can be shown much more easily with charts and graphs.”

“Using too many words. I want to get the point, learn the lesson without reading useless words.”

Dave Spaulding on writing mistakes

I’m not the only person raising these questions in the world of investment management. You can read Dave Spaulding’s “Should GIPS verifiers correct grammar? Spelling?

When Dave sees mistakes, he recommends changes. In his blog post, he says, “On occasion, I’ve discussed this with our clients, and in every case the client has been very clear that they welcome my comments. Most want their materials to be as correct in all respects as possible.” That’s good news.

 

March 13, 2017 update: The original version of this post linked to my original survey. I updated the post to focus on the survey results, which I’d published in my newsletter.

Jan. 22, 2025: I made minor updates.

Is your free report “complimentary” or “complementary”?

Offering a free report to folks who sign up for your email list is a great marketing technique. However, you risk making a mistake if you substitute a multisyllabic word for “free.”

Look at the example in the image below, which shows a sticker that appeared on a local newspaper. I feel confident the advertisers wanted to push the benefits of a free class. Too bad that’s not what they offered.
complementary misuse example
“Complementary” doesn’t mean “free.” It addresses the relationship between two or more items. Taking this ad literally, it suggests that if you pay to take a music appreciation class, it will enhance your experience in the other courses, lectures, or seminars offered by the advertiser.

“Complimentary,” meaning “given free or as a favor,” is the word the advertisers needed.

When you offer a report at no cost to your newsletter subscribers, please consider making it “free.” You’ll avoid an embarrassing mistake. Also, the single-syllable “free” is easy for your readers to absorb.

If you must go multisyllabic, please use “complimentary.”

Free help for wordy writers!

Wordiness is a curse. Long-winded writing obscures your meaning and scares off readers. However, many writers don’t realize that their writing is dragging on and on.

A free online tool—the Hemingway App—can help you recognize when your sentences are too long. Hemingway highlights sentences that are too long. It also suggests some ways to improve your writing. You could identify long sentences using your word processing software, but Hemingway is easier to use.

I’ll walk you through how to use Hemingway.

Step 1. Drop your text into the middle of the Hemingway page

Entering your text into the Hemingway app is a little more complicated than I expected, but it’s worth the effort. First, click to select all of the colored text in the middle column that starts with “Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.” Then, hit “delete.” You’ll see a blank space in the middle of your screen.

Next, either type or copy-paste in the text that you’d like to analyze. As soon as you drop in your text, Hemingway will analyze it.

 

Step 2. Look at Hemingway’s grade level analysis

Look first at Hemingway’s overall rating of your text. The image below says the sample below is written at a grade 17 level. You may think, “Great! My clients are sophisticated, so aiming at a graduate-school level is fine.” Think again. Grade level measures how hard you’re making your reader work. Do you want your readers to struggle or to easily absorb your message?Hemingway Grade 17

Direct marketers aim for grade eight. On its home page, Hemingway shows grade seven as “good.” You might be able to hit that level in a personal finance blog post, but it’s too hard for more formal financial communications that discuss technical topics. I figure I’m doing a good job if my client materials hit grade level 10.

Your grade level gives you a “big picture” indication of how hard you should work to simplify your writing.

 

Step 3. Review Hemingway’s assessment of your sentence length

Hemingway will color code your text according to its wordiness, as you’ll see in the example below. Red means a sentence is “very hard to read” because of length, as in the first sentence in the image below. Yellow isn’t as bad, but it’s also too long, as you can see in the sample paragraph’s second and third sentences.

 

Hemingway analysis of ECB sample

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4. Start simplifying

Hemingway also uses highlighting to suggest some simple fixes by using fewer adverbs and simpler words or eliminating the passive voice.

Hemingway’s suggestions are just a starting point. Complex sentences require a re-thinking of the content. That’s what it took for me to go from the sample paragraph in Step 2 to my rewrite below:

Prices of riskier investments rose in response to recent proposals by German and French leaders, but we are skeptical that this will continue. Investors seem to believe that the proposals will strengthen the euro zone by capping bond yields. This would make euro-zone bonds more attractive to private investors. However, success would require the European Central Bank (ECB) to use strong language or to boost its daily purchases of the troubled countries’ debt by at least €5 billion. To convince distrustful investors will require strong action. That may be more than the ECB can achieve.

If you’d like to learn more about shortening and simplifying your complex sentences, check out my publications and my presentations for do-it-yourself tips. I also edit materials, typically for larger firms with bigger budgets.

 

NOTE: This post originally was published in 2014, but was republished because it remains relevant today.

JULY NEWSLETTER: Creating content for an AI world

Creating content for an AI world

Traditional content is less successful in a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Your potential customers are relying less on traditional search engines. “Because content discovery mechanisms that marketers have relied on for decades are being fundamentally disrupted. Users are bypassing the entire traditional search ecosystem and instead asking AI for answers directly,” according to “The Future of Content(ly)” on Contently’s The Content Strategist blog.

To combat this, Google Search Central suggests that you “Focus on making unique, non-commodity content that visitors from Search and your own readers will find helpful and satisfying. Then you’re on the right path for success with our AI search experiences, where users are asking longer and more specific questions — as well as follow-up questions to dig even deeper.” It also suggests that you assess your content using Google’s criteria in “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.

Streamline your content for greater impact!

Writing that’s less wordy is more powerful.

I have some suggestions on how to cut your word count. One tip is to substitute simple words for phrases. For example, “building my knowledge” becomes “learning.” “In advance of” becomes “before.”

Learn more in “8 ways to cut word count and boost your impact!

Neurosurgery in 19th-century Japan

Having lived in Japan and earned a Ph.D. in Japanese history, I enjoy watching Japanese-language shows on Netflix.

Here are some subtitled shows that I like:

  • Jin—A modern-day neurosurgeon time-travels to the period just before the 1868 Meiji Restoration. He meets some real-life historical characters, such as Sakamoto Ryoma.
  • The Family—A zaibatsu family’s son and father disagree about the company’s future.
  • Dr. Coto’s Clinic—A doctor moves from Tokyo to a clinic on an isolated island.
  • Inheritance Detective—A former lawyer helps clients resolve inheritance issues.

Pan-fried chickpea patties

These chickpea patties from the Well Seasoned Studio blog are delicious! I’ve been trying a lot of dried bean recipes as I get rid of old pantry staples.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Quit underlining headings in your documents!

Underlining headings in your written documents used to be common. That’s no longer true, especially because underlined text now leads people to expect hyperlinks.

Underlining headings dates back to the days of typewriters. As Practical Typography says,

Underlining is another dreary typewriter habit. Typewriters had no bold or italic styling. So the only way to emphasize text was to back up the carriage and type underscores be­neath the text. It was a workaround for shortcomings in typewriter technology.

Please stop underlining headings, unless you want to prove that you’re old-fashioned.

Old vs. new style of headings

Sample 1

This is what headings and text sometimes looked like in the old days:

Heading

This is the text under the heading.

Sample 2

Here’s an easy, more modern style of heading:

Heading

This is the text under the heading.

When you compare Sample 1 with Sample 2, which makes it easier for you to focus on the heading? It’s Sample 2.

That ease is important in encouraging readers to skim—rather than abandon—your content. That’s important now that everyone’s attention spans have shortened. If they continue skimming, perhaps they’ll find a heading that tempts them to dig into the details of what you’ve written.

Use heading styles built into your software

If you only have one level of headings in your document, it’s easy to make them all bold. But what if you have different levels of headings? You’re most likely to need multiple levels in a long document like a white paper.

Different heading styles are built into many types of software.

For example, here is one style you can find in Microsoft Word’s ribbon:
Style ribbon in Microsoft Word

 

 

Here’s what these styles might look like in a document:

Word heading style sample

 

You can learn more about using styles in Microsoft Word on Microsoft’s help page, starting with “Show or hide the ribbon in Office.” (Depending on your version of Word, your steps to find and apply headings may differ.)

Styles can get pretty fancy, but I tend to stick with the basics. I prefer to devote more time to writing than design.

Microsoft Office isn’t the only software with different styles for headings. You’ll also find them in WordPress. Here’s an explanation of headings in WordPress.

Invest Comm Webinar

 

MAY NEWSLETTER: AI prompts for content marketing

AI prompts for content marketers

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content marketing is increasing. I’m not a big fan of AI, but I realize that it can be useful.

If you’d like to experiment with AI in your content marketing, check out Andy Crestodina’s “The Prompt Library Starter Kit,” recommended by my fabulous copywriter friend Robyn Bradley.

Crestodina covers topics such as “personal generation using AI,” “audience research,” “content marketing mission statement and CTA,” and much more.

Check it out!

When the going gets tough

A friend shared the following “Four things to tell yourself when the going gets tough”:

  • This has happened before
  • Failure is the path to success
  • This won’t matter nearly as much in five years
  • I live according to my values

She said it came from Inc. magazine, but I can’t find the original article. I did, however, find a related article: “5 Ways to Stay Positive When the Going Gets Tough.”

Do you know when your article is finished?

The following line by novelist Hilary Mantel caught my eye because it speaks to the difficulty of knowing when you should stop rewriting or editing your work: “…unfortunately, for writers, there’s no intellectual equivalent of the sexual climax; they don’t always know when they’ve finished.”

The line appears in Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing, a collection of essays. Some of her essays were quite interesting, but I skipped over many others.

Microsoft Word shortcuts

I found this list of Microsoft Word shortcuts on LinkedIn. It covers shortcuts for text and formatting, navigation and editing, and document management, plus some shortcuts it deems “lawyer-specific” that might still benefit the rest of us.

So at the start of a sentence

When you start a sentence with “so,” must you follow it with a comma? There are two schools of thought, as I explain in this post.

What the heck’s a “manicule”?

If you know or care about the answer to my questions about the manicule, read “The Secret History of the Manicule, the Little Hand that’s Everywhere.” I must thank Wendy Cook, another fabulous friend, for this link.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

APRIL NEWSLETTER: Help for identifying best practices

Everyone wants to use best practices. But how do you identify the best practices for your situation?

Tom Brakke of The Investment Ecosystem blog shares a simple exercise that you can do. In “Common Practices, Best Practices, and Next Practices,” he suggests that you ask, “How would you describe what you do in comparison to the standards that are prevalent across the industry in like positions and situations?”

You can organize your responses into three columns:

  • Common practices
  • Best practices
  • Next practices

I like the simplicity of the three columns.

I also like the idea of striving for “next practices.” Brakke says,

Innovative organizations are constantly working to improve their methods. Identifying next practices and working toward them (while knowing that some won’t come to fruition) is part of their DNA.

Brakke publishes free e-newsletters so you can receive his ideas in your inbox.

Mice or mouses?

What do you call more than one computer mouse? Read “Computer mice or mouses? It’s a case of irregular plurals” for some expert opinions.

For my part, I’ll continue to try to avoid referring to the plural of this device.

Protect your personal data from Meta

Want to limit the ability of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to monetize your data? The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers practical advice in “Mad at Meta? Don’t Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data.”

Egg substitutes for baking

If you’re interested in working around high egg prices, check out “No eggs? Here’s your guide for substituting” on the King Arthur Baking website. I’ve had good luck using “flax eggs” in pancakes and banana bread.

My best tip for improving your investment commentary

If you’re frustrated by your lack of results from publishing your investment commentary, read “My best tip for improving your investment commentary.”


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Style guidelines for financial services firms

Style guidelines for financial services firms can help you to make your written communications more consistent and thus easier to read.

 

Why create style guidelines for your financial services firm?

writing guidelinesIt can be distracting if writing styles are inconsistent within and across documents published by your firm. For example, is it “counterparty” in the first paragraph and “counter party” in paragraphs two and three? Do headings randomly mix sentence case and title case? Is your company name abbreviated in different ways?

It’s a good idea to pick a major style guide, such as the AP Stylebook, to use as your reference for common questions. However, style guides often don’t cover challenges specific to financial services firms. They certainly don’t tackle company-specific branding issues.

Creating style guidelines tailored to your company can help your writers and editors fill in the blanks left by the major style guides.

How I create style guidelines for my clients

For my editing clients, I create style guidelines for my own reference. They help me to be consistent. Also, I share the guidelines with my proofreader, when I use one.

As issues arise, I record the preferred style in an Excel spreadsheet. In the first column, I record the word, phrase, or other issue. In another column, I record the preferred practice.

Here’s an excerpt from the Capitalization section of one style sheet.

Capitalization style guidelines sample

 

 

 

 

 

potential topics to cover in your financial firm's style guidelines infographic

Section headings that I’ve used include the following:

  • Abbreviations/acronyms—for example, BRL→Brazilian real, 50 bps→50 basis points (0.50%)
  • Capitalization
  • Company names—identify your source for the preferred spelling of company names
  • Credentials—for example, use the ® mark with the CFP designation
  • Headings—for example, use sentence case and bold
  • Numbers—for example, SPELL OUT numbers 1 to 9, even in five-year Treasury
  • Punctuation/grammar/style—for example, use serial comma; DO hyphenate first-quarter and worst-performing WHEN used as ADJECTIVE; use a consistent number of decimal places
  • Spelling—for example, health care, NOT healthcare
  • Word replacements—for example, cap rate→capitalization rate

How long should your style guidelines be?

My client style sheets would typically fit on one page, if printed out.

I like the philosophy of Intelligent Editing, which recommends that your style sheet run no longer than four pages. The firm says in “Writing a Style Guide: What You Need to Know“:

…bear in mind that the goal is just to focus on points of style where there is no right answer but where one usage is preferred by the organization. A style guide is not the place to teach your colleagues things that they should already know.

The longer your style sheet, the harder it will be for you and your colleagues to apply it consistently. It’s harder for users to keep all of the issues in their heads, even if they scan the style sheet repeatedly.

If you already have style guidelines

If you already have style guidelines, please share them with writers and editors whom you hire, in addition to your company’s employees.

You may struggle with getting your financial firm’s writers to follow them. I’ve addressed your challenge in “Reader question: How to get writers to follow style guidelines?

Writer image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Note: This post was updated on March 10, 2025. It was originally published in 2016.

MARCH NEWSLETTER: Curly versus straight

What kind of quotation marks do you use in your writing?

Did you know that there are two kinds of quotation marks—straight and curly? Straight quotation marks don’t curve, whereas curly quotes seem to wriggle on the page (see image below). The actual appearance of the marks will vary depending on the font you use.

image with the words straight in straight quotes and curly in curly quotesStraight quotes are a hangover from the days of typewriters when you would have needed separate keys to show the curly quotation marks that appear on the left versus those that appear on the right. Today, software can automatically supply the appropriate quotation marks. In fact, curly quotes are also known as “smart quotes” because they’re smart enough to lean in the appropriate direction.

Here’s what one blog says about straight versus curly in “Curly quotes and straight quotes: a quick guide.”

Straight quotes come from typewriter habits. Typewriter character sets were limited by mechanics, so they were replaced with straight quotes. That’s not an issue anymore with word processors and modern typing. Straight quotes are no longer a necessity.

Curly quotes are typically preferred by writers today because they’re more legible and flow better with the content. Straight quotes rarely have a place in any type of modern writing or typography, the technique, and art of arranging type. Designers and people who work with typography tend to stay away from straight quotes as a rule of thumb.

I favor curly quotes because they’re more modern and are generally preferred by my clients. If your company prefers straight quotes, that’s OK, but please use that style consistently. It’s jarring for some readers if you switch between styles.

There are some rare cases in which straight quotes might be preferred. “The ‘Smart Quote’ Struggle” discusses how the use of curly quotes is not supported for searches in some scholarly literature databases. (Thanks, Robyn Bradley, for this link!) This is also true, according to my techie husband, when technical query text is pasted from word processors directly into most database management software that uses some form of structured querying language (SQL).

To turn curly quotes on or off in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, read “Smart quotes in Word and PowerPoint.”

Historic versus historical

Do you know when to use “historic” instead of “historical” in your financial writing?

For example, if you’re talking about the market setting new highs, you might refer to “historic highs.” That’s because “Historic is most commonly used for something famous or important in history,” as explained in “What’s the difference between ‘historic’ and ‘historical’?” on the Merriam-Webster website.

Treasuries or Treasurys?

How do you write the plural of “Treasury”? Read my take on the topic in “Treasurys vs. Treasuries — Which is the right spelling?

Learn more about hospice care and the end of life

I wish I had known more about hospice care and the process of dying before a family member started it some years ago. Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully is a practical, down-to-earth book written by hospice nurse Julie McFadden. McFadden has a YouTube channel where you can get a taste of her approach to this topic.

On this topic, a friend also recommends The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life by nurse Suzanne B. O’Brien. The book is scheduled for release on March 18, 2025.

Flemish art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem

I’m a big fan of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

The museum is currently hosting a traveling exhibition of Flemish art, “Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks.” The show runs through May 4, 2025.

 

carving or statue of a woman reading a book    pink and white flowers on a black background surrounded by a intricately carved frame    image of a male painter painting in a black frame


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).