“Every time I ask someone why they want to write a book,” says career advice specialist Penelope Trunk, “they have a terrible answer.” So she’s come up with five arguments against starting that book project. Here’s the core message: It’s not going to make your life better, you’re not going to make that much money, and it’s not even the best way to make people think you’re an expert anymore.

When you look at it that way, it hardly seems to matter that publishing’s a dying industry, does it? Counterarguments are, of course, welcome.