Storytellers prefer heroes, although research and development is done by teams...

I've spent some time helping my publisher(s) sell my book Who Gets What and Why since it came out in early June, so I have a renewed appreciation of how journalism works.

Stories are important. The easiest stories have heroes, and since books have authors, authors are even more likely to be painted as heroes in news stories about their book than in other kinds of stories. That's not crazy: authors are in many ways the heroes of the story of their book, even if the story in the book involves lots of people.

And off course, stories about science are more often stories about teams than about heroes.

Mentions of collaborators are relentlessly edited out of short pieces. That's one reason I liked writing a book (although, as it turns out, even books have editors who fight against "excessive detail"). But I've been very fortunate in my collaborators, and I was able to tell some of their stories.

If you haven't been keeping up, here are some of the stories about Who Gets What and Why that I've blogged about since the book came out: http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/search/label/WGWaW