It’s open for pre-order
You work with AI... What's it going to do to your career or industry?
Right, it’s real. The Next Rung is written, it’s with the publisher, and as of this week you can pre-order it. It’s out on 19 January 2027, and you can reserve your copy now.
If you’ve been reading along here, you already know the shape of it, though I’m not allowed to say “shape” anymore, so let’s say you know what it’s about. AI is doing something to knowledge work that doesn’t match the story we keep getting told from the top. It isn’t quietly automating a few tasks and leaving everyone to get on with the interesting parts. It’s taking out the orchestration layer, the coordinating and interpreting and deck-building that turned out to be most of what a lot of us actually do all day. And the mechanism that carried displaced workers up to the next rung last time, the thing that moved factory workers into services and services into knowledge work, is breaking at the same time. There isn’t an obvious next rung now. That’s the bit the book is trying to name, and then do something useful about.
I wrote it from an awkward spot. I build the tools that do some of this. I advise the business owners making the decisions about how to structure their teams, and the honest conclusion keeps being that they need fewer people. And I educate some of the kids who’ll inherit whatever’s left. I don’t think that contradiction disqualifies me from writing about it. I think it’s the reason to.
Why pre-order, and why now rather than in January
Pre-orders do more than they look like they do. They tell bookshops there’s demand before the book is even on a shelf, which is most of what decides whether it gets stocked properly or buried in a back room. And every pre-order, whenever you place it, counts toward the launch-week numbers, because the order lands when the book ships. So if you’re going to buy it anyway, buying it now is genuinely more useful to me than waiting. Same money, better timing.
Where to pre-order
I’d point you at Waterstones first.
Pre-order on Waterstones — £14.99
Two reasons. If enough of you order through Waterstones, it makes the case for them to put it in actual shops, which is the thing I’m really after. And supporting a bookseller that still has physical shops feels like the right call for a book that’s partly about what happens to the high street when the orchestration economy hollows out. Free UK delivery over £25, so if there’s a second book you’ve been meaning to get, this is your excuse.
If Waterstones doesn’t suit, it’s also on Amazon and direct from the publisher. The print version is the one that helps most, so if you’ve no strong preference, go print.
That’s the whole ask
No grand pitch. If the idea up top is one you’ve been circling without quite having the words for it, the book is my attempt at the words. Pre-order it, and if you know one person who’d recognise themselves in it, send them this. I’ll see a good few of you at the launch in January.
Thanks for reading this far. Genuinely.
Chris
The Next Rung is a book on how AI is quietly dismantling the middle of knowledge work, and what you can do about it before the market decides for you: pre-order it before it publishes in January.