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The 7-Step Nonfiction Book Writing Blueprint

Book Writing Blueprint

A solid book writing blueprint is essential for authors of nonfiction books, because this genre demands a high degree of execution. After all, nonfiction books are deemed to be written by experts, which means that they need to be produced using the best practices available.

In this article, you’ll learn a seven-step book writing process specifically developed for nonfiction authors.

The 7-Step Book Writing Blueprint

The blueprint below will help you navigate the steps you’ll need, to go from a blank page to a completed nonfiction manuscript that’s ready to be produced and published.

More specifically, this book writing blueprint will help you come up with your book’s main idea to turn it onto a completed manuscript, it’ll help you develop a writing routine that works for you and it’ll help you stay motivated through it all.

Step 1: Set a Hard Deadline

When it comes to the book writing process, traditionally published authors are paid an advance to write their books and are contractually bound to deliver results through the signing of a publishing agreement.

Since self-publishing authors like yourself aren’t subject to a formal deadline that carries with it consequences for noncompliance, you’ll need to create one for yourself.

One of the best ways for you to create a hard publishing deadline is to schedule a public speaking engagement, say a year from now, with a professional association in your field or other organizations that cater to audiences composed of colleagues, clients or prospects.

A 12-month period will allow you sufficient time to write and produce your nonfiction book (between 8-10 months) plus a couple more months to work on book promotion ahead of the event.

Here are some other practical approaches that’ll result in a hard deadline:

Industry events
Seasonal deadlines in your market
Trade shows
Conferences
Annual professional gatherings
Festivals
Courses, seminars or workshops

Step 2: Carve Out Your Writing Time

Now that you’ve set a clear deadline, you’ll need to create a writing schedule to make sure that you produce content with consistency. The best practice for creating a nonfiction book is to write for a set amount of time every day.

This is the practice followed by professional authors and it ensures that their writing muscle is constantly being trained.

How much time do you need to set aside each day? You’re looking for a 2-hour time block of dedicated, uninterrupted writing. Less time won’t be sufficient to get you going, and more time may impinge on your day’s responsibilities.

The key is consistency. Even if you have more time available, what you don’t want to do is to write for 2 hours one day, then 5 hours the next, then skip a day and go back to 2 hours the next day.

To become proficient, you need to work your writing muscle for a set amount of time every day and then let it “rest” until the next day. It’s also important that you begin and end your writing blocks at the same time.

Finally, creative writing requires intense focus, so you’ll have to enlist the help of those around you to make sure that you’re not disturbed during your writing time. Also, you’ll need to mute your electronic devices to eliminate distractions.

Step 3: Define Your Book’s Main Idea

Define Your Main Idea

Now you’re ready to begin the writing process. Your first task is to define what your book’s main idea is going to be. This is the main thesis of your book and it needs to revolve around solving a problem for your target audience.

In order to arrive at your main idea, you’ll need to develop a deep understanding of your audience.

You’ll need to learn what keeps them up at night. You need to understand what their hopes, dreams, challenges and fears are.

The closer you get to knowing your target audience, the deeper you’ll understand how their problems affect them.

The aim of your book’s main idea is to address a key audience problem that your expertise will help them solve.

For example, the bestseller “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Tim Ferriss addresses a key problem for its target audience: their deep frustration with living in a rat race.

Note that the book title doesn’t mention what the specific solution is. Instead, it focuses on how to overcome a deep frustration by conveying an aspirational outcome for its target audience.

This book’s main idea is then to help people escape the rate race by developing an alternative lifestyle that still achieves their financial goals.

Step 4: Create Your Book Outline

Your goal now is to take your main idea and develop a book around it. Although this may sound overwhelming at first, as you’ll technically be starting from scratch, the reality is quite different.

The solution that underpins your main idea is grounded on your expertise. When you think about it, all the strategies and tactics that your readers will have to implement in order to overcome their problem already exist in your mind.

You could even argue that the contents of your entire book are already stored in your brain, or in other words: your book is inside you.

All you need to do now is figure out how to extract this information from your mind and then structure it as a nonfiction book.

The best process to achieve this goal is to use a technique called Mind Mapping to download the contents of your book from your brain onto the page, and then to turn your mind map into a book outline.

Your book’s mind map will start with the main idea at its center and then it’ll break it down into its main components, sub-components, sub-sub-components, etc.

Your book outline will be the precursor of your table of contents and it’ll provide you with the structure and the writing prompts that are necessary to begin writing your book.

Here are two articles to help get you started in the right direction:

Step 5: Write a Set Daily Word Count

Daily Word Count

You should begin every writing block with a specific goal in mind: to accomplish a minimum word count. If you don’t set a writing goal, it’ll become very difficult to assess your progress over time.

This writing goal has to be achievable for a first-time author, so I recommend that you set an initial target of between 400-500 words per hour. This is for raw text, without any self-edits or rewriting.

If you make sure you have no distractions and are therefore able to focus for two hours solid, you should comfortably be able to achieve this hourly word-count.

Remember that as a nonfiction author you’re not starting from a blank page. You’ll be working off the writing prompts contained in your fully developed book outline.

Once you set off those triggers your brain will do the rest and you’ll notice how the text will begin to flow effortlessly to your fingertips.

Over time you’ll get faster as you gain more practice, and towards the end of your first book you’ll likely be able to write between 500-700 words per hour (as a point of reference, seasoned professional authors are able to consistently write in the 1,000 words per hour range).

Now, let’s do a back of the envelope calculation to figure out how long it’ll approximately take you to write an average-sized nonfiction book. Say you’re aiming for a 200-page book (250 words per page, including images).

If you write between 400-500 words per hour, and assuming that you’re writing a minimum of 6 days per week, you’ll then be writing between 4,800-6,000 words per week.

At this rate, you’ll be able to complete your manuscript in raw text form between 8.3 and 10.4 weeks.

Now double this range to factor in self-edits, rewrites and time off for illness, holidays, etc. and you’ll should able to complete the first draft of your manuscript between 17 and 21 weeks, or approximately 4-5 months.

Step 6: Staying Motivated

The beginning of your writing process will be very motivating. There’s nothing more exciting than having a detailed mind map of your book and a thorough book outline with writing prompts created for each section.

However, once you get to the dreaded “middle” of the book, with 100 pages done and another 100 pages to go, you may find yourself in need of motivation. After all, your hard deadline is still far, far away.

Your best antidote to a potential writing slowdown is twofold. First, you need to tell everyone in your close circle of family, friends, colleagues and clients that you’re writing a book that you’ll unveil at the event you scheduled earlier.

This psychological peer pressure will be sufficient to keep you grounded so that you soldier on through thick and thin. Second, there’s a practical way to keep you motivated that nicely aligns with the writing process itself.

Once your book outline is completed and before you begin writing your book, assemble an advance reading group.

This group is made up of between 5 and 10 people whom you know and trust and who also happen to be members of your target audience. Every time you complete a full chapter, you’ll email them a pdf version of it so that they can provide you with timely feedback.

Why not wait until your manuscript is completed to get their feedback? Because if you do you run the risk of having missed the boat when it comes to audience connection and engagement.

If the plurality of your advance reading group tells you that a given chapter or a section doesn’t resonate with them soon after they read it, you can then alter your course right away.

But if you implement a flow of ideas throughout your book that turns out to be sub-optimal for your audience, and you only find out about it at the end, then you’ll have to contend with a massive rewrite that’ll set you back significantly.

In short, by having both peer pressure and on-going feedback from an advance reading group, you’ll never suffer from a lack of motivation.

Step 7: Find A Professional Nonfiction Editor

Finally, make sure that you find a good professional editor for your manuscript. Your nonfiction book will become an extension of your professionalism and your credibility as a subject matter expert.

If your book is self-edited or if you farm out the editing to an English student, a friend who’s a teacher or a family member, you’ll be producing a sub-standard book in the eyes of the book trade.

Every single traditionally published work of nonfiction is professionally edited and so should yours be. Since you’ll be automatically deemed to be an expert as soon as you publish your book, you’re expected to create a premium product.

The risk of cutting corners in this key area of the publishing process is just too great and never worth the savings.

Next Steps

Once your manuscript is completed and professionally edited, you’ll be entering the next publishing stage: book production. In short, your book will now need to be laid out by an expert and a professional book cover will need to be created.

When your book comes up on an online search, it’ll often appear side by side with traditionally published titles in your niche, and unless you can match their production quality you risk being labelled as “amateurish,” even if your content is better.

It’s really worth it to hire book-design professionals, and not just for the above reason. By creating a premium product, you’ll also be putting out a book that’ll generate new leads, new clients and new business opportunities for years to come.

I wish you the best in your book-publishing journey!

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of writing a nonfiction book, be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben

Leave me a comment below if you have any questions or a specific need that I can help you address – I operate an author services firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, professionals and business owners who want to publish books as a calling card for prospects, to establish their status as an expert or to just to generate additional leads for their businesses.

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Entrepreneurial Authors

The 7 Key Rules for Writers of Outstanding Nonfiction Books

Bennett R. Coles is an award-winning author of six books published through Harper Collins (New York) and Titan Publishing Group (London). He is also the publisher at Promontory Press, editor for multiple bestselling authors (including a NY Times bestseller), ghostwriter for CEOs and politicians and the founder of Cascadia Author Services, a boutique full-service firm that specializes in premium author services specifically designed for busy professionals. Our end-to-end services include writer coaching, ghostwriting, editing, proofing, cover design, book layout, eBook production, marketing, printing and distribution.

How to Nail the Edit of a Nonfiction Book Cover

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Edit Book Cover

When you edit a book cover, you have to consider that this is the one part of your book that must achieve nothing short of perfection, especially for nonfiction books.

The main expectation in the nonfiction genre is that titles are written by experts, therefore a single typo on your book cover would immediately reflect negatively on its entire contents.

In other words, there’s zero market tolerance for typos on nonfiction book covers and you must be methodical in how your approach your cover editing job.

I’ve written this article to help you make sure that you produce a 100% accurate cover before your book goes to print.

Paperback Cover Editing

Paperback covers are composed of a front cover, a spine and a back cover. Let’s discuss each section below:

Front Cover Editing

The front cover contains the main textual and graphic elements of your entire book cover. Needless to say, it’s the most visible area of your book and therefore it must be executed flawlessly.

Here are its textual components:

Title, Subtitle, Author Name

The largest font types in your book are reserved for your front cover’s title, subtitle and author name. Therefore, you have to triple-check that your spelling on those is 100% correct.

Now, this is easy to get right because you’re only dealing with a handful of words. Not so for the next component below.

Testimonials

Typically, you want your most powerful testimonial to be reserved for the top of your front cover. By powerful I not only mean its content by also its author. This premium location is always reserved for a celebrity testimonial.

Now, the fact that someone with a lot of name recognition has given you a testimonial doesn’t mean that it’ll be written in a grammatically correct way. In fact, many times this isn’t the case.

So, it’s perfectly acceptable for authors to adjust the text of their testimonials to ensure they follow proper rules of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, syntax, etc., provided that you don’t end up changing their meaning.

Graphic Elements

Graphic elements, such as images, illustrations, photographs, etc., sometimes contain text in them, so make sure that this text is free of typos.

In addition to typos, any graphic elements you use on your cover must also be free of cropping errors, cropping marks, pixelation due to low resolution, unintended blurriness, sizing issues and poor color contrast with the overlaid text.

Back Cover Editing

The back cover of paperbacks carries a lot more text than the front cover. Here are its different components:

Marketing Blurb and Author’s Bio

The main textual blocks on a paperback’s back cover are the marketing blurb and the author’s bio.

The blurb is composed of marketing copy whose main job is to sell your book, or at least to intrigue readers so much that they feel compelled to open it and browse its contents.

Your bio reaffirms your expertise by listing key accomplishments to cement your credibility, plus a short personal statement.

While your bio needs to be edited for typos and grammatical errors, the text in your marketing blurb must be thoroughly edited at the same level of depth as the text inside your book.

To this end, you’ll have to make use of the full arsenal of nonfiction editing techniques:

Developmental Editing: This editing pass will look at the overall structure of your blurb. Is it successful delivering your message to your target audience? Is it well-written to convert book browsers into buyers?
Content Editing: This editing pass has more to do with readability than structure. Are the paragraphs and sentences in the blurb built correctly? Is the flow of your ideas clear?
Copyediting: This editing pass will make certain that you’re using accurate language with no spelling, punctuation, capitalization, syntax or grammar errors.
Proofreading: This editing pass is the fine-tooth comb check that’ll catch any typos that were missed in all prior stages to ensure 100% accuracy.

Additional Testimonials

You back cover will also contain additional testimonials from less influential sources than the one you selected for your front cover, to further strengthen your social proof.

As with any testimonial, expect the text on some of these to also require grammatical corrections.

Barcode, Book Pricing and Publisher Data

Finally, your back cover will contain your book’s ISBN encoded in your Barcode, book pricing information and publisher information (typically their name and logo).

Although your ISBN will be included as part of your barcode image, corroborate that the number on top of the barcode matches your purchase records.

Finally, if your book shows book-pricing information on your back cover, make sure that it’s written correctly (e.g. $14.95 not $14,95).

Spine Editing

Your book cover spine will typically contain your title, your name and the publisher’s logo (i.e. in your case, your self-publishing logo). Depending on the total number of characters, it may also be able to fit your sub-title using a small font-size.

Like you do for your front cover, you want to triple-check that the spelling of all this information is 100% correct.

Hardcover Cover Editing

Hardcover books share many of the same cover elements with paperback books. For example, in the vast majority of cases the front cover and the spine will be identical. The only two exceptions are shown below.

Cover Flaps

The covers of hardcover books have two additional pieces of real estate: the left and right cover flaps.

Typically, the flap that extends from the front cover will display the book’s marketing blurb and the flap that extends from the back cover will display the author’s bio.

These two sections will contain exactly the same text that what you’ll find on the back cover of your paperback format (refer to the Back Cover Editing section above for editing instructions).

Back Cover

The back cover of a hardcover book is typically filled with testimonials taking over the space where the marketing blurb and author’s bio would’ve been found in the paperback edition.

As explained in the Testimonials section above, edit them to take care of grammatical errors and typos without altering their meaning.

In Conclusion

While it could be said that all books are judged by their covers, this is of particular importance for nonfiction titles, because they’re considered to be a reflection of the experts who wrote them.

Therefore, both your paperback and hardcover book covers will require extreme attention to detail to check that they’re 100% accurate before they go to print.

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of writing, designing or publishing a nonfiction book, be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Nonfiction Authors

The 7 Key Rules for Writers of Outstanding Nonfiction Books

The 12-Step Nonfiction Book Writing Process

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Writing Process

Using a solid nonfiction book writing process will make the difference between creating a compelling product for your readers using clear best practices, and spinning your wheels with many frustrating false starts.

This article will show you a writing process that’s used by seasoned nonfiction writers to produce great book after great book.

The 12-Step Nonfiction Book Writing Process

This writing process will guide you through the 12 steps that you need to follow in order to produce a top-notch nonfiction book that you’ll be very proud of and that’ll help you take your business and your career to the next level.

Step 1: Read the Top Books in Your Niche

Most nonfiction books are written to provide readers with the solution to a problem that they (or their businesses) are experiencing.

The most popular problem-solving nonfiction titles are written by authors who are very skillful at creating a deep bond with their readers.

They achieve that by:

Using language and stories that are relatable
Making use of hooks in the right places to keep readers highly engaged
Sharing their knowledge without pontificating or sounding condescending
Using persuasion techniques to entice readers to take action
Taking readers through an emotional journey, not an intellectual discourse

For all of the above reasons, it really pays for you to read their books cover to cover, armed with a highlighter. Why reinvent the wheel when the best practices are out there in the open ready for you to discover them?

Read the top 4 or 5 books in your niche and whenever you catch yourself getting hooked into the writing, stop, go back in the text and analyze the techniques the author used to hook you in.

Then make copious notes, because you’ll need to emulate the same techniques in your own book. Here are some examples of the type of devices you’ll discover:

Using Chapter-Opening Hooks

Seasoned authors use these devices to grab the reader’s attention at the beginning of each chapter.

Here Are Some Examples

Using questions to address a challenge readers are experiencing – e.g. “How you ever noticed how working twice as hard doesn’t usually double your results?”
Using facts that are unexpected – e.g. “Did you know that you could be consuming over 40 teaspoons of sugar every day without even knowing it?”

Using Advertising Copy Techniques

Authors use these techniques mainly to create their chapter headlines.

Here Are Some Examples

Starting a headline with “How to”
Making a controversial statement – e.g. “The wrong workout can make you gain weight”
Using a controversial question – e.g. “What if meaning well is not good enough?”
Using a comparison – e.g. “Improve your strengths not your weaknesses”

Using Effective Writing Techniques

Here Are Some Examples

Using the power of story-telling to draw readers in
Using heart-felt language to take readers through an emotional journey
Using the element of surprise

Step 2: Always Write to an Audience of One

Audience of One

For nonfiction books to be effective, they must be addressed to an audience of one. Whenever a reader picks up a book to solve a problem they have, they’ll only be thinking about themselves.

They won’t care about the author or even others who like them are in the same predicament. They are in pain, so all they care about is how to make it go away. Also, problems are a very personal matter; for this reason, readers expect to be engaged at a personal level.

So, make use of the 2^nd person throughout your book and avoid using language like “We,” “Our,” “They,” etc. Make sure that you use words that make each reader feel like they’re your only audience; almost as if your book were just written for them.

Before you begin writing your book you need to do thorough research on your target audience to learn about their hopes, dreams, challenges and fears.

When your writing is grounded in this knowledge, your readers will feel a deep connection with you (they’ll think to themselves: “I feel this author really knows me”).

Step 3: Write from a Stream of Consciousness

As a nonfiction writer, you have to consider that your book is already lying dormant inside of you. Its content is stored in your brain and made up of the sum total of your knowledge.

This includes your professional experience, the interactions with your clients, the skills you’ve developed over the years, and your personal experience.

Whenever you sit down to write, and provided that you’re armed with a good book outline to guide you, open yourself up so that you can write from a stream of consciousness. Don’t pre-judge or over-analyze what you’re going to say next.

Just let your fingers do the typing and write down the flow of thoughts that comes into your mind at that moment. You already know your stuff so you don’t need to censor yourself with thoughts such as “I don’t think this sounds good” or “this doesn’t flow well,” etc.

Writing is not a judgmental process, it’s a creative one: your aim is not to block your flow of ideas but to allow them free reign so they can come to the page. Just focus on writing as a vessel to download information from your brain.

You don’t need to worry about giving it any shape yet – that’ll come at a later stage. For now, allow your tap of thoughts to be fully open so that you can engage the creative right side of your brain while holding back the critical left side.

When you’re writing from a stream of consciousness, focus on quantity not quality. Only after you’ve completed an entire section should you bring the critical thinking left side of your brain into the picture so that you can begin to give shape to your message.

Step 4: Protect Your Writing Time

Protect Your Writing Time

The creative writing process requires peace and quiet to sustain itself. Any type of break into this flow, from the disruption of a social media notification to someone coming into the room and starting to talk to you, will break your creative flow.

Creativity requires a certain inertia in order to achieve “cruising speed.” If you allow external circumstances to force you into a stop-and-go situation, you’ll never be able to get up to speed and your writing will suffer.

It’s for this reason that you must set aside daily writing blocks that are well-protected from interruptions. You must enlist the help of those around you to support you by eliminating any type of disturbance when you’re writing your book.

Unless there’s an emergency, your family, friends, or business associates must ensure that you’re not bothered when you sit down to write. Also, this level of “protection” involves not just external but also internal disruptions.

For example, you must refrain from reading or sending emails during this time, going on the Internet for any reason or engaging in any other type of communications. In short, outside of your writing app, you should really go “off the grid.”

When you do manage to achieve this level of peace and quiet, you’ll notice how your writing, as well as your time, flies by. After your two hours pass, you’ll be surprised to find that you’ve written upwards of 1,000 words of original text.

On the other hand, if you allow yourself to be interrupted you’ll find that, at most, you’ll be able to write a third of that amount and it won’t even flow that well.

Step 5: Choose the Right Writing Tool

Depending on the publishing stage of your book, technology can play an important role as a productivity booster. For example, the process of laying out your book would be intensely laborious without desktop publishing software (like it used to be back in the day).

But there’s one area where the use of technology can actually become a hindrance if used in excess: writing.

When you’re going through the creative process of drafting your manuscript, anything beyond the most basic of word processor features will slow you down.

The reason is that for this process to be effective, it requires a path of least resistance to be established between your brain and the written page.

Any other technology or features other than a keyboard and the most basic word-processing functions will become stones on your path.

Here’s an example of advanced word-processing features may slow you down:

Book templates

It’s rather pointless to pre-format a book in your word-processor so that it takes shape as you write it, because this job must be done by a professional layout artist after your manuscript is fully edited and proofread.

Outlining Features

Some software programs have sophisticated outlining tools that allow you to set up your book structure in advance.

While this can be perceived as useful in principle, the reality is that they aren’t the easiest to set up and some have steep learning curves.

Besides, any initial outline that you do set up may become irrelevant after your manuscript goes through the hands of an editor, forcing you to re-do a lot of the work.

Distracting Features

An overabundance of features may temp you to spend time playing with fonts sizes, kerning, line spacing, fiddling with the look of chapter headings and subheadings, and so on.

All of these activities are unnecessary distractions at the manuscript level. All that’s required is text in a single font and minimal formatting.

The best scenario you want to achieve is to just type what comes to your mind without having to play with any of the menus in your word processor. Exceptions would be to create a page break whenever you start a new chapter, plus some bolding and italics, but that’s about it.

Now, some writers will disagree with me and claim that using outlining features are necessary so that you can rearrange chapters easily should you need to at a later stage.

But I’ll argue that this will become more of a distraction because you first need to spend time learning how the software app works and then take even more time setting the features up, which will come in the way of your writing.

Now, I’m not a Luddite. I’ll grant you that a word processor is miles ahead of an old typewriter. But what I’m suggesting is that it’s very inefficient to spend time figuring out complex feature sets that will add very little value to your manuscript.

In the end, the only thing that adds true value to your manuscript is your words, your thoughts, your ideas, your conclusions, your analysis, your stories and so on – none of which can be enhanced by the use of software features.

Just let your creativity and your inspiration take over and make it as easy as possible for them to run the show.

Step 6: Choose the Right Writing Place

When you sit down to write your book, make sure that you choose a place that’ll enhance your creative flow. Whether this place is indoors or outdoors, private or public, it needs to bring a feeling of comfort.

You have to find a writing place that has the right energy, a place that “fills your bucket.” The true act of creation inspires an inner state of joy, so you want to find a place that reflects that.

Some writers have a favorite spot in their house, some have a favorite coffee shop and some others feel inspired when surrounded by nature, so they’ll write from a bench at the city’s botanical gardens.

Just make sure that whatever place you choose is devoid of interruptions. In fact, if you’re using an offline word processor to write your manuscript, you don’t even need a place with a Wi-Fi signal.

Step 7: Choose the Right Writing Time

Different people get their creative juices flowing at different times. You may be an early bird, or perhaps a night owl. What’s important is that you sit down to write at the same time every day.

When it comes to writing a book, consistency is a key for success. If you always write at the same time, you’re conditioning your writing muscle to perform and then recover for 24 hours.

If you write in the evening one day and then in the morning the next, then you skip a day and you write two mornings in a row, you’re giving your mind confusing signals that aren’t conducive to creating good writing habits.

This is no different that developing your muscles. An uneven physical workout routine similar to the one mentioned above would result little if any progress – assuming you don’t give up first.

Your writing muscle requires consistency and a clear cycle – it’s also counter-productive to write for two hours one day and then for five hours the next, even if your starting time is the same.

So, to be productive and creative on your book-writing journey, choose a daily writing block no longer than two hours and make sure you begin and end writing at the same time.

Step 8: Choose the Right Daily Word Count

Word Count

If you’re writing from a stream of consciousness and without any distractions during your writing block, you’ll be able to average between 400 and 500 words per hour for a maximum of 1,000 per day.

Now this doesn’t include any rewriting or self-editing.

So, say you’re aiming for a final word-count of 50,000 for your book (approximately 200 pages, depending on trim size, graphic elements, etc.) and you’re writing 6 days a week, then you’re looking at between 50 and 60 days of raw writing.

Next, double this time to allow for rewrites and for stoppages due to illness, holidays, etc. and you’re looking at a maximum of 120 days, or about 5 months, in order to produce the first draft of your manuscript.

Step 9: Don’t Self-Edit Prematurely

Once your book writing is on a roll, you want to keep it going by writing as much content as you can using the guidelines from Step 3.

The more writing you produce in this fashion, the more material that you’ll have to work with when you begin to edit and polish your manuscript. If you self-edit too soon you may end up sending content to the cutting floor prematurely.

For example, if you leave the edits towards the end, you may find that some sentences or even entire paragraphs that you feel need to depart from Chapter 2 may be a perfect fit for Chapter 11.

But if you cut too soon, before you even write Chapter 11, then you might delete that text forever before you discover that it’s valuable somewhere else.

Step 10: Write Like You’re Being Paid

When it comes to writing, quality requires practice, and practice requires discipline. Like in all creative fields, there’s no workaround to accelerate time spent developing your craft.

Now, this task is more motivating for professional authors because they get paid an advance in order to write their books. But this advantage is only temporary since eventually you’ll receive payment too.

The mere act of publishing a nonfiction book will turn you into an expert overnight. This will happen the moment a prospect, a client, a potential strategic partner, a committee that selects bids on contracts, and so on, gets a copy of your book.

Eventually, you’ll be able to leverage this new status into new revenue for your business. The end result of landing new clients, signing off on a new strategic partnership that will drive new leads into your funnel, getting a lucrative contract, etc. will be as real as getting an advance on royalties.

So, you have every motivation to write as if you’re being paid because instead of receiving cash in advance of your writing, your writing will become an advance on your ability to generate future revenues.

Step 11: Never Write to Fill Space

Now, for your nonfiction book to be successful, it has to be chock full of value for your target audience. Don’t make it a goal to write an “X” number of words for your book (say 50,000).

Once you have a book outline that shows all the topics that you need to cover in order to deliver your solution to your target audience in a clear and effective way, don’t take this number and divide it by your number of chapters to arrive at a chapter word-count.

Write to fulfill a need, not to fill up empty space. If there’s anything that turns off readers, it’s the subconscious feeling that they’re wasting their time. This could happen if you’re using 10-15 words to say something that could be said more elegantly in 6-8 words.

Make this your writing mission: keep it simple. Now, you may not achieve this goal during your initial pass since simplicity is not your main focus the first time around – stream of consciousness is.

However, when you get into the rewrite phase, make it your mission to use an economy of words in everything that you edit. When you re-write, focus on delivering value not volume.

Each paragraph must be able to stand on its own and be as short as necessary to deliver its message in a clear and effective way.

Step 12: Hire an Editor When You’re Done

Last but not least, as a self-published nonfiction author, you’ll be competing head-to-head with traditionally published books in your niche.

The good news is, the often insurmountable gatekeeping role played in the past by bookstore buyers has been replaced by Amazon’s product-ranking algorithm, which offers both traditional and self-publishers the same search optimization tools.

If you fine tune your title’s setup on Amazon in the right way, you’ll have a very good chance of ranking side by side on user searches with popular books in your niche, and you can rest assured they they’ll all be using the services of experienced editors.

This is an area where you can’t afford to cut corners, especially because your nonfiction book will act as a proxy for your professional reputation. A sub-standard editing job will reflect poorly not only on you as an author but also as an expert.

Therefore, you’ll need to hire a professional editor with experience in your nonfiction niche so that you can deliver Amazon with the absolute best book you can possibly produce.

Next Steps

Now it’s time to put “pen to paper” and embark on your book-writing journey.

Below I’ve compiled a list of articles that you’ll find quite useful as you navigate these waters.

I wish you all the best!

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

The 7 Key Rules for Writers of Outstanding Nonfiction Books

Bennett R. Coles is an award-winning author of 6 books published through Harper Collins (NY) and Titan Publishing Group (UK). He is also the publisher at Promontory Press and the founder/CEO of Cascadia Author Services, a boutique full-service firm that specializes in premium author services specifically designed for busy professionals. Our end-to-end services include writer coaching, ghostwriting, editing, proofing, cover design, book layout, eBook production, printing, distribution and marketing.

12 Critical Steps to Writing a Nonfiction Book

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Steps to Writing a Book

The number of steps to writing a book varies greatly with each genre.

Writing steps for fiction books, for example, need to aid the writer in the development of the central story and the characters in it. This process tends to be more art than science.

Most nonfiction books, on the other hand, require steps that allow the writer to create an intimate connection with readers in order to deliver a solution to a problem.

Luckily for writers, the process for nonfiction books tends to be more science than art, which is much easier to encode into a specific set of steps.

The 12-Step Writing Process for Nonfiction Authors

For this article, I’ll assume that you operate a business or run a professional practice to help clients solve specific problems, and that you’re writing your book to become recognized as an expert and then leverage this status to grow your business.

Now, it’s important to understand that the book project you’re embarking on isn’t and shouldn’t be about you or your business (although it’ll clearly help both). Your nonfiction book must always begin and end with your target audience in mind.

For example, your book title and cover design must reflect the aspirations of your readers to overcome the specific problem that your book addresses, and the body of your book must deliver the precise solution that’ll relieve them from that problem.

With this in mind, let’s begin with the first step to writing a nonfiction book that can find success in the marketplace.

Step 1: Get to Know Your Audience Intimately

For nonfiction books to work, they must achieve two things:

They must establish a deep connection with their target audience
They must be addressed to an audience of one

I’ll explain both points below.

Problem-solving nonfiction books are by nature very personal, because people’s problems are personal. Before you can truly help readers, you’ll need to learn about their hopes, dreams, challenges and fears.

You’ll need to learn how they feel about their problem and how it affects them. The more you understand your audience’s psyche, the closer you’ll be able to bond with them.

Also, when dealing with subjects of a personal nature, you need to address each reader individually. In other words, you need to target your book to an audience of one.

How do you do this? You begin by looking into your current and past clients and then expanding your research online until you have enough information to develop an “avatar” of your ideal reader.

This avatar is a written profile that acts as a composite of all the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your target audience rolled into a single audience member (or two if your book caters to both genders).

This composite of an ideal client will become your audience of one. So when you write your nonfiction book, you’ll address it to your avatar.

What kind of information should be contained in this profile? Here’s a comprehensive list:

First you need to make up a first name
Then find a headshot with the appropriate age and gender from a free stock photo site and paste to your avatar profile (a Word document or equivalent will do)
Add the avatar’s age and marital status
Add their profession and income level (annual family income)
Include their number of children if any, their status and their living arrangements (single, married, working, studying, living at home, living away)
Is your avatar a homeowner? What’s the value of the home?
Any pets? Hobbies?
Any health or other issues?
Finally, list their hopes, dreams, fears and challenges

Step 2: Identify the Problem You Want to Solve for Them

Problem to Solve

Now it’s time to identify the specific problem that you’re setting out to solve for your target audience. This has to be a problem that registers at a high personal level of pain and, naturally, a problem that you’re fully qualified to solve.

In fact, this problem should really jump out of your avatar research; a painful issue that’s shared by all members of your target audience.

For example, it could be related to health, their lifestyle, money, debt, psychology, employment, and countless other personal issues.

Or, in the case of a business, it could be related to retention issues, diversity issues, time management issues, efficiency issues, and so on.

Step 3: Identify Your Unique Solution

This will be the main idea of your book, the solution that you propose including strategies and tactics that address your audience’s problem head on.

Now, the word “unique” doesn’t imply that you must have discovered some miracle breakthrough the likes of which have never been seen before. It could mean creating a new combination of strategies out of existing ones.

In other words, an invention developed by interconnecting a group of known inventions in a new way is still an invention.

What’s important is that you had success implementing your new approach and you also have the social proof that’s necessary to prove to your audience that your solution produces the results they’re seeking.

The more evidence you can collect about your results, the more credible they’ll be to your audience. This is where client case studies and testimonials come in handy.

Your own personal story in overcoming the same problem can also make a compelling argument. In short, the more stories you share, the more credible your solution will be in the eyes of your target audience.

The more they can relate to them, the more they’ll buy into your solution.

Step 4: Mind Map Your Book

Mind Map Your Book

Now that you have a handle on the problem that you’re setting out to solve and your unique solution, it’s time to begin laying down the elements of your book on paper.

Being the subject expert, you’ll find that all this information is already floating in your brain. When you offer your professional services to clients, you can always recall what’s necessary to perform those services with precision.

But when it comes to putting all this information down on paper, you can’t just sit down with a pen and a notebook and expect that words will start to flow out of you effortlessly. That’s not how our brains are wired.

Luckily, there’s a technique called “mind mapping” that does just that. If was popularized by British author Tony Buzan decades ago and it emulates the way our brains store and retrieve information to access the content you need for your book.

Here’s how it works. You begin by writing in the center of a large piece or paper (a whiteboard is ideal) the main idea of your book. Then you draw branches radiating out of the center.

Next, you break down your main idea into its components and write down each one at the end of a branch. Then, you break down each component into sub-components and expand radially out of the main component using sub-branches.

You’ll repeat this process as many times as necessary until you feel you’ve captured all the required topics for your book.

Mind maps work so well because they access information in a “brain-friendly” fashion and then organize it in a way that’s conducive to creating a thorough outline for your nonfiction book.

Step 5: Create Your Book Outline

Turning your mind map into your book outline now becomes a natural process. At its core, a book outline is a numbered list.

To create it, start a new Word file or equivalent, and then type the categories from your mind map’s main branches on the first level of the list (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.). Then, tab to the next level for each category and begin listing its sub-categories (1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c, etc.).

Continue this process until you exhaust all branches in your mind map.

When you’re done, clean up your sub-categories if necessary. For example if a main category has 20 sub-categories, you may want to combine some of them to create a more manageable number.

Once you have a de-cluttered outline, think about what the best roadmap for your audience would be. Perhaps you’ll need to reorder some of the main categories until you achieve a flow of ideas that makes the best sense.

Step 6: Create Your Chapter Prompts

Chapter Prompts

Each outline topic, sub-topic, etc. will identify a specific chapter or sub-chapter in your book and it’ll also act as the trigger or writing prompt for that section.

Since the content related to each book section is already stored in your brain, you’ll find that all you need to begin writing is a short phrase to “prompt” you brain into a state of recall.

So, use each outline topic and sub-topic as a seed to write the beginning of each section – just a short sentence will do. These initial sentences are going to be your chapter prompts that will be instrumental for downloading your book content from your brain onto the written page.

When you’re done creating a prompt for each section and sub-section, not only will you be ready to begin the writing process, but you’ll also discover that you’ll never experience “writer’s block.” The prompts will make your ideas begin to flow like a torrent.

Step 7: Set a Publishing Deadline

Now it’s time to get dead serious about your book project. By that I mean it’s time to set a hard deadline for publication so that you can beat that dreaded statistic that everybody talks about: “97% of new authors never finish or publish their books.”

The only way to be excluded from this statistic is to create an immovable deadline to motivate you to publish your book.

For example, this could be achieved by booking yourself into a public speaking engagement with your professional association a year from now in order to officially launch your book.

Here are some other ideas:

Have your book ready to launch at a seasonal industry event
Introduce your book on a panel or a workshop at a trade show
Present your book at a conference you’ll be attending
Present it at an annual professional gathering
Launch your book at a festival
Schedule a course or seminar based on your book’s content for prospects, clients or colleagues

Step 8: Create a Publishing Plan

With your book outline ready and a deadline set in stone, work backwards from your publication date to create a publishing plan that brings you back into the present.

In this plan, you’ll need to incorporate all of the different facets in the book publishing process, including:

Writing your manuscript
Doing multiple revisions
Having your manuscript professionally edited
Having your book layout and cover professionally designed
Publishing and printing your book
Creating and implementing your book marketing and promotion plan
Creating a book launch plan

Step 9: Set a Writing Schedule

Set a Writing Schedule

In order to make sure you actually find the time to write your book in spite of your daily pressures, you’ll have to set aside a well-guarded block of time on a daily basis (or at the very least six days a week).

Your goal is to set up a 2-hour book-writing window at the same time every day and away from all your other responsibilities. Some people prefer to write early in the morning when everyone is sleeping in the house, or late in the evening.

Although lunchtime is a possibility, it’s quite challenging to set aside a chunk of time in the middle of the day without expecting distractions. You don’t want to sit down to write when you should be attending to your business.

The book writing creative process can’t be multi-tasked. It requires consistency, linearity and above all peace and quiet.

Make sure you tell those around you that you’re not to be disturbed during your writing time, short of an emergency that only you are equipped to take care of.

When you write, put all your electronic devices on mute to prevent being disturbed by notifications.

Also, avoid going down the rabbit hole of the Internet during your writing blocks or the time will disappear before you even notice it. If you want to look something up to incorporate into your writing, then add it to a to-do list for later.

Here’s another important piece of advice: don’t write for more than two hours at a time. If you feel like you’re on a roll and you write for five hours, you’ll end up creatively spent and you’ll pay the price the next day.

If your ideas keep flowing after your writing block has ended, then make notes and go back to them the next day.

Finally, keep in mind that nonfiction books don’t need to be written in sequence. Just choose any random section on your outline that inspires you that day and work on it independent of the others.

Eventually, when everything comes together at the end you’ll have plenty of time to work on chapter transitions and other matters of content flow.

Step 10: Establish a Daily Word Count

If you’re a first-time writer and follow the above steps, armed with a solid book outline and good prompts, you’ll be able to write between 400 and 500 words per hour.

Now, keep in mind that this throughput can only be achieved without disruptions to your flow, which is why it’s so important to mute all devices, including your laptop. When you get into the “flow” of writing you’ll notice that two hours will fly by.

At this rate, and writing a minimum of 6 days a week, you’ll be able to generate a 50,000-word manuscript (approximately a 200-page book) in about 50-60 days, or approximately 10 weeks.

Now, this is just the initial draft. Then the real work of rewrites and self-editing begins, which can easily double this time. Expect that it’ll take you between 5-6 months before you’re ready to hand out your manuscript to an editor.

Step 11: Tell Everyone You’re Writing a Book!

Tell Everyone Writing a Book

To ensure that you can sustain your motivation throughout your writing project, tell everyone you care about that you’re writing a book with the view to launch it at the “xyz” event on such and such a date.

Tell all your relatives, friends and business associates about it. You’ll never want to let them (or yourself) down and that feeling will carry you through the entire project.

Step 12: Assemble an Advance Reading Group

This step is key for your success. Before you start writing your book, assemble an advance reading group made out of people you know who are already members of your target audience.

These people could be present or past clients, friends of friends, friends or family and other acquaintances. The more arms-length the relationship the better.

Then, as soon as you finish each chapter, email them a pdf file with it so that they can read it and give you feedback. This is very valuable information that you’ll be using in your rewrites to make sure that your book resonates with readers at all times.

There’s nothing worse than writing an entire manuscript only to find out at the end that it missed the mark with your target audience. Remember, you’re writing your book for them, not for you.

What to Do After You Finished Your Manuscript

Great, now your manuscript is finally done! What comes next? The Following 7 steps:

Next Step #1: Hire a Professional Editor

Your book will cement your status as an expert in your field and experts are expected to have excellence in everything they do, including book editing.

Since your book will be a reflection of your professional reputation, it must be edited by an expert – this is not an option.

Also, this isn’t an area where you can afford to cut corners by editing your book yourself or by hiring a relative or a friend. For your book to succeed in the marketplace you’ll need to budget for a professional nonfiction editor.

Next Step #2: Hire a Book Layout Designer

By extension, you’ll also have to budget for a nonfiction book layout artist.

The nonfiction book trade has a high bar for production quality, hence the need to hire a book design professional with experience in the genre.

Also, when your book goes on sale, you’ll find yourself competing head-to-head with traditionally published nonfiction books in your niche. Those books will be professionally laid out, therefore so must yours.

Next Step #3: Hire a Cover Designer

When your book appears side by side with traditionally published titles on an Amazon search, it’ll be apparent very quickly if your book cover hasn’t been professionally designed because your book will look amateurish.

You’ll need to budget for a professional book cover designer because, fair or not, if your cover looks sub-standard, readers will assume that your book content will be sub-standard as well.

Next Step #4: Create an Account on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Once your professionally produced print-ready files are completed, it’s time to set up a self-publishing account on Amazon’s KDP so that your book can be listed for sale on Amazon.

To help you with the account setup, I’ve written a companion article that shows you all the necessary steps: “How to Self Publish Nonfiction with Kindle Direct Publishing.”

Next Step #5: Create an Account on IngramSpark

Another book distributor that you’ll need to set up an account with is IngramSpark. They’re the self-publishing subsidiary of Ingram, the largest book distributor in the world for brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries.

For more details, read my companion article: “7 Time-Saving Steps to Publish a Book For Your Business.”

Next Step #6: Hire a Book Marketing Professional

Setting up books on Amazon correctly requires specialized marketing knowledge.

You’ll have to choose the right keywords to rank high on user searches, you’ll need a compelling book description that closes sales and you’ll have to be very strategic on how you choose book categories and subcategories in order to qualify for one of the highly coveted Amazon bestseller lists.

If you do all of the above work on your own, you’ll risk being out-competed by authors who hire book-marketing professionals to stack the deck in their favor.

Making this investment now will pay off later in hard book sales. Here’s an article I recommend you read: “How to Find the Best Book Marketing Services for Nonfiction.”

Next Step #7: Assemble a Book Review Team

Aside from choosing the best keywords for user searches, creating a compelling book description and placing your book in the right categories and subcategories, a key signal used by Amazon’s product-ranking algorithm is the number and quality of user book reviews.

To this end, you’ll need to assemble an advance book review team to strategically leave book reviews on Amazon in order to boost your ranking and, by extension, your book sales.

To learn how put together this important team while complying with Amazon’s strict book review rules, read this article: “How to Get Reviews on Amazon for Your Nonfiction Book.”

Next Steps

Self-publishing has many moving pieces and this article gives you a rundown of all the steps that you’ll need to follow to first produce a manuscript and then turn it into a high-quality nonfiction book that can compete in the marketplace.

Now it’s time to take the first step and get going on this exciting journey. Remember, you’ll end up with a legacy that you’ll be very proud of while you make an investment that’ll pay reputational and financial dividends for years to come.

Best of luck!

Ben

Leave me a comment below if you have any questions or a specific need that I can help you address – I operate an author services firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, professionals and business owners who want to publish books as a calling card for prospects, to establish their status as an expert or to just to generate additional leads for their businesses.

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Nonfiction Authors

The 7 Key Rules for Writers of Outstanding Nonfiction Books

How to Prepare for a Nonfiction Book Launch Event

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Launch Event

A well-executed nonfiction book launch event is a powerful way to kick-start your book sales, provided you plan it correctly.

Since there are many moving parts that need to be coordinated to be ready for your event, you have to make sure that you allocate sufficient time to prepare for them.

This article will teach you the book launch basics so that you can set a solid foundation for your event. To expand on this foundation, I’ve written a companion article that I recommend you read as a follow up: “10 Great Book Launch Ideas for Entrepreneurial Authors.”

Set the Date and Choose Your Venue

When it comes to a venue for your book launch, there are many good options to choose from depending on whether you want to have food catering available or not.

The best venues for where food catering is an option are:

Your own home. Here you don’t have to ask anyone for permission to serve food nor is there a venue rental cost, but some authors fear that instead of being the guest of honor they’ll become a party host.
A rented hall or room. This is the most flexible option since you can choose the right-size space based on the number of guests you expect to have, but it does come at a cost. Now, some venues will waive the cost of the room provided you hire them for the catering as well.
A large coffee shop. Many indie coffee shops like to encourage book launches and other public speaking events since they bring foot traffic into their stores. In exchange they’ll likely require that you hire them for the catering. They’ll promote your event in-store and some may do so even on their website.
A restaurant. Some restaurants offer to rent their space in the off hours for private functions, or they may have a special room set aside for these types of events. Naturally, they’ll provide the catering in exchange for the space.

The best venues for where food catering isn’t an option are:

Large independent bookstores and bookstore chains love to bring in authors for signings, readings, workshops and book launches. Although they don’t typically allow food to be served, most will have a significant promotion budget. They’ll all do in-store and website promotion of your event and some will even place large ads in local newspapers showcasing their upcoming line up of events at no cost to you.
Public libraries also love to bring in authors to speak and to hold book launches. Food is not typically allowed during the event, but they’ll gladly promote your event on their website and within the library system.
Trade, professional and other non-profit organizations. These organizations bring in speakers regularly to add value to their membership. They can become a valuable venue for your book launch, provided that you find the organization with the right fit whose members are a perfect match to your book’s target audience.

When it comes to setting the date for your book launch, keep in mind that the vast majority of the venues listed above require several months of advance booking – anywhere between three to six months or even more, so make sure you plan ahead.

Create a Launch Calendar and Work Backwards from Your Event Date

Once you book your venue, the planning process begins. Starting with the date of the event, work backwards to set dates for all the tasks on your critical path that you’ll need to fulfill to be ready for your book launch.

These tasks may include:

Setting up a book launch team to generate buzz by orchestrating a flood of Amazon book reviews right after your book launch takes place
Attracting the attention of your local media to promote your event
Making sure that copies of your printed book are available to hand out of local media as part of your pitch package and to have copies on hand for sale at the event
Creating a blogging schedule to build anticipation for your book launch by turning excepts of your book into blog articles
Pitching your book to book reviewers and other influencers in your niche

Build Your Launch Team

Book Launch Team

Over the last decade or so, Amazon managed to change the behavior of book buyers in a significant way – in other words, gone are the days of browsing bookstore aisles to discover new titles.

In fact, since late 2018, Amazon for the first time surpassed Google as the primary search engine for product searches, including books.

Today, Amazon operates the largest dedicated book search engine in the world, with over 300 million customers and millions more searching its database looking for nonfiction books that address their needs.

In order to bring up relevant results in their searches, Amazon has developed a ranking algorithm that hinges on the quantity and quality of book reviews left by users in order to rank book titles.

So, to ensure that your book comes up on Amazon searches, you’ll need to garner a large number of positive book reviews shortly after you upload your book into their database.

To do so, you need to recruit a group of advance readers who’ll get copies of your book pre-publication so they can read it and leave you an honest review when instructed to do so. Naturally, you’ll want to coordinate this activity with the date of your book launch.

Set Up Your Book Review Team

To set up you team, you’ll need to enlist a large number of people who have an arms-length relationship with you in the eyes of Amazon.

For example, people who live in the same household are disqualified from leaving reviews. So are people who share the same credit card on their Amazon accounts. They even claim to detect who your business associates are.

So, tap into your network to identify people who are ideally members of your book’s target audience by enlisting your friends, relatives and business associates to ask their own friends, relatives and business associates for help.

In exchange for their participation, you’ll be gifting a print copy of your book plus any other cost-free content of value to them – perhaps a pdf with coursework related to your book, a checklist that relates to your solution, etc.

To make sure you comply with Amazon’s review rules, read this article: “How to Get Reviews on Amazon for Your Nonfiction Book.”

Place Your Book Order

Now it’s time to make sure that you have all your ducks in a row when it comes to having printed copies of your nonfiction book ready for your launch team, the media and your book launch event.

Assuming that your book is fully edited, you’ll need to work into your schedule the time that it takes your book designer to lay out your book and the time it takes to execute your cover design.

Keep in mind that the cover designer will need to know the trim size of your book and its final page count before they can complete their job. Then, once all files are ready to be uploaded to your printer, you’ll need to determine their turnaround time plus the shipping time.

Order Any Other Marketing Collateral

While you’re working on your book order you’ll also need to plan out the design and ordering of any marketing collateral, such as business cards, postcards and bookmarks that depict your book cover.

Your cover designer will gladly design these items for a small additional fee and produce the necessary print ready files with the correct specifications. But first, you’ll need to shop around for a printer.

You can look for reputable local print shops in your area, or use online services that specialize in these types of marketing materials, such as vistaprint.com.

In Conclusion

Book launches are very exciting events, but they require a lot of advance planning and coordination among multiple parties.

To minimize unnecessary stress, allow for more planning time than you think you’ll need because when there are that many people involved, something is always bound to go sideways and you’ll be working toward a hard deadline.

Good luck!

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of publishing or promoting a nonfiction book, be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How to Find Book Cover Artists for Your Nonfiction Book

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Cover Artists

Finding the best nonfiction book cover artists for your book project is essential for your success, because as book discovery has migrated to the world of search engines you’ll need to be competitive with established titles produced by traditional publishers.

When your book shows up side by side on a search with a bestselling title in your niche, the contrast between both covers will be immediately apparent. So it’s imperative that you aren’t tempted by low cost operators and hire instead an experienced nonfiction cover artist.

You Don’t Need Just a Good Cover Artist, You Need the Right One

If you do a Google search for book cover designers you’ll find pages upon pages of potential candidates showcasing many beautiful covers. However, you’ll also find that 99% of the covers you see are for fiction books.

The reason is that the vast majority of the millions of books that are self-published every year are fiction titles.

As a nonfiction writer, you need to find a specialist in your genre because the skills of a nonfiction book cover artist are diametrically opposite to those of fiction cover artists.

A fiction designer’s goal is to capture the essence of the story in the cover imagery. In other words, to create a visually appealing representation of the book’s characters and their journey. Fiction covers are about the book, not about the reader.

Nonfiction covers, on the other hand, must always be about the reader and not about the book. Their goal is to show a visual representation of the life of the reader after they put into practice the solution conveyed throughout the pages of your book.

While a fiction cover focuses on the character or characters in the book, a nonfiction cover focuses on the reader and their deep desires.

For this reason, you must find a book cover artist who understands how nonfiction works, who understands the needs of your target audience and who understands your reader’s aspirations.

Don’t Look for Cover Artists as a Commodity

In the age of the gig economy, exemplified by websites where you can find cover artists that’ll work for under $20, it’s easy to treat book cover designers as a low-cost commodity.

While this approach may prove valuable for fiction books, where you might want to keep your overall costs down in order to test the book in the market before you commit more resources, it could prove disastrous for nonfiction.

The reason for that is that nonfiction titles are expected to be written by subject matter experts and as such your book will become a projection of your professional reputation.

Therefore, you can’t afford to cut corners and hire anyone but the most experienced nonfiction book cover artist that you can budget for.

Ask to See Lots of Nonfiction Cover Samples

Once you find the right candidate, ask to see as many nonfiction cover samples as possible – this will be proof of their length of service in the trade.

Then compare these covers with the book covers of bestselling nonfiction books in your niche to see how they measure up.

Ask How Many Sample Covers They’ll Make Available for You to Choose From

Another important question to ask is how many different covers they’ll include in their fee in order to give you greater freedom of choice.

Typically, you want to have at least three different covers to choose from, and by different I mean unique concepts, not the same cover with some twists.

Ask How Many Revisions Are Allowed Before Extra Charges Are Triggered

Once you decide on the main theme of your cover, you’ll want to be able to make tweaks to get it right where you want it to be.

So you need to ask the designer how many revisions their standard fees will allow before extra charges kick in.

Ask to See Their Contract, Fees and Terms of Payment

Always work with an artist who has a clear contract that details the services that they’ll provide, the fees, the terms of payment and, more importantly, how they’ll handle and charge for change requests.

The world of design is highly subjective and experienced book cover artists will not offer unlimited changes (beware of those who do).

What you’re looking for is a fair amount of changes to be covered by their standard fee and then reasonable charges for additional changes beyond that number.

Ask for Their Expected Timeline Based on Their Current Workload

Something else that must be stipulated in your contract is the expected length of time required to produce your cover design.

This must include the initial timeline from capture of your requirements to production of the initial set of covers plus the time between a change request and its execution.

These times will vary based on the designer’s workload, so you must ensure that their time frames fit the schedule of your self-publishing project plan.

Ask to Provide You With 2 or 3 References

Although having access to book covers produced by the artist in the past is a necessary first step, you’ll also want to talk with their clients so that you can learn details about the working relationship.

To this end, ask for two or three references. Any reluctance to provide you with references is a sign of inexperience (i.e. lots of sample covers but few actual clients).

Check for a Good Rapport

Finally, make sure that there’s a strong rapport in your interactions with the designer during the interview stage.

Creative endeavors require that professionals that you hire be good listeners and empathetic to your needs. After all, they may work with you for a few weeks, but you might have spent years on your book project.

If you feel you have to walk on eggshells when you communicate with your designer no matter how talented they may be, then that’s a sign to take a pass and go down the list.

Creative relationships demand openness and vulnerability and you must ensure that you can always work with your book cover artist on a basis of mutual respect and understanding.

In Conclusion

Nonfiction book covers are a critical element in your book’s potential success in the market and require a deep understanding of the needs of your target audience.

Therefore, you must hire a book cover artist who’s not only skilled in the visual arts but who also understands the psychology of readers in your niche so that they can tailor your book cover to their aspirations.

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of writing, designing or publishing a nonfiction book, be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How to Make a Nonfiction Book Cover in 5 Steps

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Cover How to Make

This article will show you the best practices to make a book cover for your nonfiction title in five simple steps.

The Importance of Nonfiction Covers

The cover of a nonfiction book is absolutely critical for its success. If you’re writing a nonfiction book, changes are that you’re doing so to solve a problem for your target audience.

Your unique solution needs to be reflected on your cover in a way that’s clear and unambiguous. Since problems have a strong emotional component, your solution and the imagery of your book cover must clearly reflect this fact.

Your best approach is for your cover to pictorially reflect the outcome of your solution, which is the most desired state that your target audience seeks to achieve.

For example, the book “The 4-Hour Workweek” provides strategies to escape the rat race and gain personal and financial freedom. Now, the title doesn’t explain how this is achieved and neither does the cover – clearly, you must read the book to find out.

However, what both the title and the cover do is to show the outcome of having put this yet unknown solution into practice. Specifically, this book’s cover depicts the outline of a person lying on a hammock between two palm trees with a sunset in the background.

This cover achieves a direct emotional connection with the source of its audience’s problem (living in a financial rat race) while offering an aspirational outcome that symbolizes personal and financial freedom.

Why It’s Key to Hire a Professional

When it comes to nonfiction, your self-published book will be competing head to head with traditionally published titles.

When your book comes up on a user search, it’ll be flanked by other books in your niche that have professionally produced covers. Anything less will look amateurish by comparison.

This is the reason why you can’t afford to farm out this important task to family or friends, or even do it yourself (unless you all make a living as professional cover designers).

Don’t cut corners in the most important aspect of visual marketing for your book. Also, keep in mind that your nonfiction book will establish you as an expert in your field and as such it’ll become an extension of your professional reputation. Any sign of amateur design will poorly reflect on your professionalism.

Now, even when you hire a book cover artist, it’s important for you to be familiar with the basics of cover design so that you can both have an intelligent discussion.

To this end, here are five steps to making a nonfiction book cover that can move the needle:

Step 1: Research Covers in Your Niche for Ideas

The first step is something that I recommend you do before you hire a professional.

Do a Google search for the most popular and critically acclaimed nonfiction books in your niche and create a list of titles and authors.

Then search Amazon for those books and copy and paste the covers in a document on your computer – you can use PowerPoint or similar so that you can easily manipulate the images.

Place three covers side by side per page, then print them and make notes on the margins about the features that you find appealing, or that you would like your designer to emulate.

Then take pictures of each page with your phone and email them to your cover designer so they can read your handwritten comments. They’ll use this research to inform their design choices.

Step 2: Choose the Right Trim Size

The next step is to choose your trim size. Now this is a decision that will be made jointly by your layout artist and your book designer and it’ll take into consideration the following two criteria:

Using the trim size that is most favored in your nonfiction niche – the goal is to match the expectations of your target audience. For example, a financial investment guide printed in a small 5×8 trim size may give the appearance of a lack of gravitas as many mass-market novels are printed using this size.
The number of words in your book. The larger the trim size the larger the number of words that can be fitted onto each page and the fewer the number of pages that will be required. Now, a book that’s too thin might give the perception that it’s not thorough enough for specific niches. Again your designers will arrive at the best compromise.

Paperback Format

For your paperback format, your cover will consist of a front cover, the spine and a back cover. Your front cover will include the main graphic elements, your title, sub-title, your name and if available a key testimonial from a highly trusted source.

Your spine will include your title, sometimes your subtitle in small print (but not always) and your name, and your back cover will include a sales blurb for your book, your bio and additional testimonials.

Hardcover Format

Your hardcover’s book cover will be slightly different. The information in your front cover and spine will be identical as your paperback edition, but your back cover will be different, plus the hardcover format introduces a new element: cover flaps.

Your back cover will now only show testimonials and no book blurb. This information will be shown instead on the front-cover side flap. The back-cover flap will contain your bio.

Step 3: Choose the Right Fonts

The next step for your book cover designer will be to choose the cover fonts. This is a critical choice since there are thousands of font families to choose from.

Here are some of the guidelines that your designer will use:

Font Selection “Do’s”

Use Fonts That Look Good When Enlarged

Cover fonts tend to be narrower than body fonts due to the natural limitations of book covers.

Since standard size book covers have a portrait orientation, fonts must be narrow in order to fit your title without having to use too many lines of text.

Use Fonts that Match The Expectations of Your Niche

Some nonfiction niches may call for more “artistic” fonts, while some may call for more “formal” font designs. Your book cover professional will be able to advice you on this important choice.

Your Title Must Always Be Bigger Than Your Name

This is always the case unless you’re a well-known author.

Also your font title must be large enough to be easily legible in a small thumbnail image of your book, since this is what will appear on search results.

Font Selection “Don’ts”

Never Use Gimmicky Fonts for Your Book Cover

This will distract from your overall theme and message and will also make your cover design look amateurish.

Don’t Use a Lot of Graphic Elements

Stick to a single main image if at all possible. You designer will likely produce multiple cover samples with different images for you to choose from. Multiple images in a cover can become distracting and confuse the reader.

Don’t Use Too Many Colors

The goal of a cover is to convey the main theme of your book while relating to your readers aspirations. The use of too many colors will be distracting, may look garish and may be perceived as amateurish.

Don’t Use Too Many Font Types

Consistency is key. Once you agree on the main font family for your front cover with the help of your designer, you should stick with it.

It’s okay to use a different font family for your front and back covers (e.g. a sans-serif font for your front cover and a serif font for the text-heavy back cover) but try to stick with a single font family on the front cover.

Step 4: Choose the Right Images

Photographs

If you’re using a photograph, stay away from stock photos because they tend to be overused. You want your book to be unique and not to reuse photographs that may appear on people’s blogs, or worse yet, on another book cover.

The solution is to use a professional photographer that you hire for the occasion. This will guarantee your uniqueness and also ensure high production quality.

Make sure that your contract stipulates that the copyright transfers to you on payment of the photographer fee without any limitations.

Images or Drawings

You’ll also have to hire a graphic artist for your cover image. Don’t use stock images for the same reason as stated above.

Your book and the solution that you’re offering to your target audience are unique and so must be your main image.

Also, make sure that the copyright to the image transfers to you on full payment as well.

Step 5: Choose the Right Colors

Nonfiction books demand very specific color palettes, and they are driven by the expectations of your target audience in your niche. For example, cookbooks require colors that people will identify with based on the food theme of your recipes.

If you use colors that don’t reflect your theme, it’ll be confusing to your audience, and perhaps even unappetizing. Colors trigger an emotional response so you must ensure that they are in line with your subject matter.

This is another area where your cover designer will be able to advise you. They’ll know from experience the colors that work well in your niche and what colors you need to stay away from.

In Conclusion

By following the above five steps, your professional designer will produce a great cover in consultation with you that you’ll be very proud of, and also a cover that’ll compete effectively with traditionally-published nonfiction books in your niche.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

9 Book Cover Ideas to Lift Your Nonfiction Sales

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Covers Ideas

In this article I’ll show you 9 book-cover ideas to take your nonfiction cover design to the next level. In this competitive age of digital shopping habits, your book is more likely than ever to appear side-by-side with traditionally published books than ever before.

By implementing the nine ideas below, you’ll be able to level the playing field with your competition, making your book cover more compelling as you’re able to match the expectations of readers in your niche.

All Books Are Judged by Their Covers

While it’s true that all books are judged by their covers, this is of particular importance for nonfiction books.

The reason is that while fiction book covers only need to reflect the story and characters in the book, nonfiction book covers need to show a reflection of the reader’s hopes and dreams.

In other words, what readers of nonfiction titles want to see on their covers is who they stand to become if they read your book. Nonfiction covers are aspirational.

So if you want your book to be picked up, you’ll need its cover to reflect a mirror image of the future your reader can expect if they were to implement your solution.

In this article, I’m going to share nine ideas or tactics that’ll help you get this done right.

Book Cover Idea 1: Browse Covers of Bestsellers in Your Niche

Before you hire a professional book cover designer, you need to learn what the state of the art is in your own niche.

Begin by doing the following search on Google: Amazon bestseller books. Then, select the category the best aligns with your niche in order to display a list of bestsellers sorted numerically.

Click on each cover and when you get to the book detail page, right-click on the larger cover image and save it to your computer – you might want to create a new folder on your desktop and save them there since you’ll be pulling down lots of covers.

Finally, using PowerPoint or a similar tool, create a new file and insert three images per page side by side. Print this file and then use the margins to make handwritten notes about what you like most about each cover.

You’ll be passing these notes later on to your book cover artist when you discuss your design.

Book Cover Idea 2: Speak to an “Audience of One”

A very important aspect for nonfiction book writers is to understand the motivation of your readers.

While fiction readers are motivated by a need to be entertained, by the need to find a respite from the daily realities of life, nonfiction book readers are motivated by the need to solve a pressing problem that’s afflicting them.

Therefore, the question that nonfiction readers will ask themselves at every step as they go through your book’s content is: What’s In It for Me? (It’s often said that the only radio station nonfiction readers are tuned into WIIFM).

For your book and by extension for your cover to be effective, you’ll have to tailor them to an audience of one. Each reader will want your book to be addressed specifically to them. Not to a group of people, not to a “generic” reader, just to them.

In fact, whenever you read a great nonfiction book to solve a problem you’re having you’ll invariable feel that the writer is talking to you, and by the end of the book you’ll feel that the author is like a friend who’s trying to help you.

That’s your goal with your nonfiction book and especially your cover: making your readers feel that you’re there for them.

Book Cover Idea 3: Less is More

As stated before, nonfiction book covers have a simple mission: to reflect the aspirations for your readers. In order to be effective in your visual messaging, you need to eliminate any type of distracting elements that can clutter up your cover.

In this context, less is more. The fewer elements that you use in the design, the more impactful that your cover will be. This is an area that your professional nonfiction book cover designer will help you nail down.

They are experts in reading the psyche of nonfiction audiences and in knowing how to capture their hopes and dreams in a visually compelling way.

Book Cover Idea 4: Use Professional Photography that’s Unique

Nonfiction books must be professionally executed from the ground up, because they will become a proxy for your expertise and your level of excellence. This includes any photographic images on the cover.

Your photography must also be unique. If you choose to go with a cover photo from a stock photo site you run the risk of overexposure – perhaps other books have used it before or perhaps it appears repeatedly on various websites and blogs.

So, make the investment to hire a professional photographer in order to create the required photo art for your cover, and make sure that you have a written contract that stipulates that the copyright of the photograph will transfer to you on payment.

Book Cover Idea 5: Use Professional Illustrations

The same applies to cover illustrations. Don’t but images from public sites, even it they’re professionally produced. Instead hire a graphic designer to create unique art the represents the aspirations of your readers in relation to the topic of your book.

As is the case with photographic images, make sure the copyright transfers to you contractually and make sure this document contains your graphic artist’s signature.

Book Cover Idea 6: Use Colors That Resonate With Your Niche

Nonfiction book covers need to use a color palette that’s in line with your niche. Different niches have different expectations when it comes to colors. For instance, many wealth management titles favor the use of green and gold.

To find out what works in your niche, observe the color schemes on the book covers you captured in Idea 1. Also consult with your cover designer to find out what works best based on their experience.

Using the wrong colors for your niche may have negative consequences for your sales. For example, most wealth management books tend to stay away from the color red.

Book Cover Idea 7: Make Your Book’s Title Your Cover’s Focal Point

Unless you’re a widely recognized author coming up with a new book, your title will have to take center stage on your book cover.

Always reserve the biggest font size for your main title and make it the focal point of your cover. This is of particular importance as shopping continually moves from the desktop to the mobile world, where real estate is very limited.

Make sure that your book title is highly legible and compelling enough to get your readers to click on your book’s thumbnail when doing a search.

Book Cover Idea 8: Make Your Title a Single Word

This is an idea that has been gaining in popularity as some one-word titles have achieved blockbuster status, such as Quiet, Outliers, Becoming, Blink and Fury.

The goal with single-word titles is to choose a word that evokes the desired feeling from your readers based of the subject of your book, which can then be expanded upon by your cover’s imagery and your sub-title.

Book Cover Idea 9: Make Your Cover Impactful Even as a Thumbnail

Since book discovery migrated from the world of physical bookstores to the online world, covers have been reduced to the size of a thumbnail.

As a result of this seismic change in shopping behavior, book covers have had to adapt to the real-estate limitations of this tiny digital representation of your book.

So publishers have had no choice but to adapt to this new reality by making important adjustments to how book covers are designed.

For example, in the past book titles could be long enough to explain the entire thesis of a book while the sub-title was there as an afterthought – e.g. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.

Nowadays, titles need to be short and intriguing, often three words or less, and a much longer subtitle is needed to complete the thesis – e.g. The Mindfulness Code: Keys for Overcoming Stress, Anxiety, Fear and Unhappiness.

In the world of thumbnail covers, you title has to be shown in a very large font so that it can be fully legible in the tiny image, whereas subtitles will be illegible until readers click on the thumbprint to expand it.

3 Book Cover Mistakes to Avoid

The nine ideas shown above take care of many of the variables that come into play when designing a nonfiction book cover, however, there are three key design areas that you must stay away from at all cost:

Book Cover Mistake 1: Using Pixelated Images

Many cover designs use photographs and images that are made to wrap around the entire book, so they must contain a very large amount of fine visual information to cover the front and back covers plus the spine.

But the fact that those images look sharp on the computer screen doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll show well in print form.

The advanced digital printing presses that are used to print book covers today can print very fine pixels and need a lot of information in order to produce a smooth image that doesn’t look pixelated.

Your cover designer will be able to advise you on the resolution and size of files that are required to print a professional-looking cover.

Book Cover Mistake 2: Using Gimmicky Fonts

In keeping with the professional image that your nonfiction book must convey, stay away from using gimmicky fonts that could make your book appear amateurish in any way.

Nonfiction fonts must conform to the expectations of your niche. What works in one niche can bomb in another. Rely on the expertise of your cover designer when it comes to cover fonts and try to keep them simple and niche-friendly.

Book Cover Mistake 3: Using Too Many Cover Elements

We briefly talked about this subject before, but it bears repeating one more time. Nonfiction book covers have one job only: to reflect the aspirations and hopes of your target audience.

You want to produce a book cover that clearly and cleanly achieves this objective. Too many elements will simply obscure this important goal cluttering your visual message.

Even if you feel that certain images or graphic elements need to be on you cover because they have a personal meaning, remember that your book cover isn’t about you but about the state of mind of your readers.

In other words, the meaning that you ascribe to those images or elements will not be shared by your audience, so might as well keep them out of your cover so as not to clutter your key visual message.

In Conclusion

In the world of digital shopping you need to make sure that your nonfiction book cover is able to compete with the pros.

The above nine book cover ideas show you foundational design tactics that are necessary to compare favorably with other professionally-produced books in your niche that’ll appear side-by-side with your title in book searches.

By developing your knowledge around these rules of cover design, you’ll be able to have more in-depth discussions about your cover with your designer.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

Write Your Own Book and Become an Expert: 11 Reasons Why You Should

The Ultimate Print On Demand Guide for Nonfiction Authors

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Print on Demand

Prior to the development of high-speed, print-on-demand digital presses, the only way to produce print runs cost-effectively was using the more traditional offset presses.

Offset printing had been perfected over the decades to squeeze out as much unit cost as possible from book production by increasing economies of scale (mainly through achieving very high operating speeds).

But the only way to get low costs per unit was to commit to a high volume of books per print run. Now, when it came to authors with an existing following and sales history from previous books, print runs were quite easy to predict.

But when it came to new authors, this printing technology resulted in a huge waste of book stock as publishers were required to print too many copies without having clear sales forecasts.

The Print-on-Demand Revolution

With the popularity of the nascent self-publishing industry in the early to mid-90s, as well as the increased profile of smaller indie presses, equipment manufacturers realized that a new solution was needed.

Even though digital printing technology was well-developed at the time, it was mainly targeted at the photocopy business, which was too high-cost/low-speed for volume printing applications.

However, through research and development, manufacturers were able to create higher and higher speed digital presses with progressively better and better quality. By the end of the 90s, the first large-scale, high-speed, digital printing presses began to appear.

The book distributor Ingram was one of the first companies to install large banks of high-speed digital presses to produce short print runs cost-effectively, followed a few years later by Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), a subsidiary of Amazon. Many traditional printers also invested in digital presses.

Today, digital technology has improved to the point of being able to produce high-quality images that are cost effective at low volumes and nearly indistinguishable from the quality standards of offset printing.

Introducing the Two Main Players

There are currently two large players in the print-on-demand arena who’ve developed not only global print-on-demand networks with facilities around the world, but also the software platforms necessary to distribute titles globally at a very low-cost for authors.

The first player is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which is the portal for self-publishers and small indie presses to have their books appear on Amazon.

KDP has on-demand printing facilities in North America, Europe and Japan, so when a reader in any of those markets purchases your book on Amazon, a copy is printed in near-real time and then shipped domestically to the end user at the lowest possible cost.

The convergence of technologies of the internet, eCommerce and distributed print-on-demand facilities managed to remove the biggest barrier to global book sales – the high cost of shipping pre-printed book stock around the world.

The second player is IngramSpark, a subsidiary of book-distributor giant Ingram. What KDP does for online book distribution, IngramSpark does for brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries.

IngramSpark also operates print-on-demand facilities in multiple countries through Ingram’s Lightning Source subsidiary. Specifically, they operate high-speed, on-demand digital presses in the U.S., the U.K., France and Australia, offering similar coverage as Amazon’s KDP.

As a self-published, nonfiction author your best approach is to self-publish on both platforms simultaneously in order to the get best of both online and offline worlds.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Amazon

Let’s look at the approximate costs of self-publishing on the KDP platform.

KDP has no initial publishing fees, although I highly recommend that you purchase your own ISBN, or book identification number. If you use the free ISBN supplied by KDP, you’ll be blocked from co-publishing your paperback with IngramSpark, which will lock you out of physical bookstores (which seldom order books from KDP due to their low wholesale discount).

Book Printing Cost

KDP won’t charge you in advance for the cost of the books sold through Amazon. When a sale is closed, they’ll simply deduct their printing cost from the amount collected and forward you the remainder minus a distribution fee (more on this later).

The actual printing cost will depend of the type of paper you choose, your book’s trim size and the number of pages.

Bookstore Discount

KDP only offers a flat 25% discount to brick-and-mortar bookstores, whereas the expected industry discount is 40%. As a result, bookstores don’t typically order books from KDP because most would be doing so at a loss.

Royalties

KDP will take pay you 60% of your book’s list price minus the printing cost as a royalty and keep the rest as their commission for distributing your book through Amazon.

Volume Discounts for Author Orders

Although KDP allows authors to purchase books at cost, they don’t offer volume discounts. So, if you purchase a large order to fulfill back-of-the-room sales for a number of speaking events, you’ll get no break on your order.

(Note: this is the downside of KDP, however, there’s a workaround that I’ll cover later.)

Expanded Distribution

This is a feature where you can enable KDP to distribute your title to the book trade outside of Amazon. If you do, your royalty decreases from 60% of your list price to 40% minus the printing cost.

Out of the remaining 60% that KDP retains, they extend a 25% discount to bookstores and keep the remaining 35% as their own distribution fee.

Now remember that bookstores will not order from KDP at this low discount rate, so make sure that this feature is disabled for your title to prevent KDP from selling to physical bookstores.

IngramSpark

Unlike KDP, IngramSpark does have a small cost when you upload print files. Specifically, they’ll charge you $49 per book format. But they do have a significant upside: they can print both paperback and hardcover formats (KDP only supports paperbacks), which gives you the ability to offer your title at two different price points.

(Note: you’ll to supply a separate ISBN for each book format.)

Book Printing Cost

IngramSpark deducts the printing cost from sales after receiving payment from customers. This amount will depend on the type of paper you choose, your book’s trim size, the number of pages and the book’s format (paperback or hardcover).

Bookstore Discount

Ingram offers brick-and-mortar bookstores the standard industry wholesale discount of 40%, which makes them their preferred choice for book distribution.

Now, over the years, they’ve come up with a flexible discounting scheme that allows you to set a lower bookstore discount and keep a higher royalty, mainly to offer a competitive counterpart to KDP’s approach. However, any discounting below 40% will result in bookstores not ordering your title, so make sure you always set your title’s discount at the expected 40%.

Royalties

IngramSpark offers the following royalty scheme:

You can choose a bookstore discount of between 30% and 55%.
Out of the above range, IngramSpark keeps 15% as their distribution fee so bookstores will get an actual discount of between 15% and 40% (as stated before, a bookstore discount lower than 40% will result in no book sales due to a lack of margin).
You get paid the remainder, between 70% and 45% as your royalty minus the printing cost. Again, for all practical purposes, the only figure that’s meaningful is a royalty of 45% of your list price minus the printing cost.

Volume Discounts for Author Orders

This is the area where IngramSpark really shines: the generous volume discounts they offer to authors. Not only will you be able to buy books at cost, but they also offer volume discounts that make ordering through KDP unnecessary.

Here’s an example:

Say that you’re printing a 200-page black and white paperback. Your IngramSpark printing cost will be approximately $3.69 for a single copy, but if you order 1,000 copies you’ll get an additional 40% discount off the unit cost.

So, let’s assume that you pay the same unit cost of $3.69 per copy both with IngramSpark and KDP (their pricing structures are quite competitive). Instead of paying $3,690 at KDP ($3.69 x 1,000) you’ll only pay $2,214 at IngramSpark ($3.69 x 1,000 x 60%).

That’s a savings of $1,476!

Online Bookstore Distribution

Although IngramSpark will also distribute your title to online bookstores including Amazon, you still also need to publish directly to Amazon through KDP.

First of all, you’ll get a higher royalty for Amazon sales if you go through KDP (60% minus printing cost vs. 45%), but also, Amazon is known for prioritizing KDP-distributed books over other competitors.

Although they’ve never publicly admitted to this practice, it’s been observed over the years that KDP books always show up on Amazon with a status of “Available Immediately” whereas IngramSpark-distributed books often appear with a status of “Not in Stock,” even though they print books on demand as well.

In Conclusion

As a self-publisher of nonfiction, you always want to gain the maximum possible exposure for your book.

Both IngramSpark and KDP have created powerful distribution platforms to help you achieve this goal, but they have different strengths and weaknesses.

Fortunately, these platforms happen to be complementary and by self-publishing your book on both you’ll get the best of both worlds – global reach through online bookstores and brick-and-mortar bookstores for a very low cost of distribution.

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of publishing a nonfiction book be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

20 Powerful Ideas to Promote Your Nonfiction Book

Write Your Own Book and Become an Expert: 11 Reasons Why You Should

10 Great Book Launch Ideas for Nonfiction Authors

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Launch Ideas

If your nonfiction book is near completion, the following 10 book launch ideas will come in very handy to ensure that your event is successful.

Why Book Launches are Important

Let’s begin with some background.

In the world of eCommerce, human gatekeepers have been replaced by software algorithms – more specifically, the product-ranking algorithm of the largest online bookseller in the world: Amazon.

This algorithm has been designed to gauge interest in your title from the minute that it’s posted on their website for the following 30 days. The more people that buy your book and leave you book reviews within this timeframe, the better the chances of getting a high ranking.

What this means is that Amazon will push your book higher and higher in the search results when readers look for titles in your subject area plus their algorithm will begin cross-promoting your book with similar titles.

They’ll do this through cross-marketing mechanisms, such as:

“Customers who viewed this item also viewed”
“What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?”
“Customers who bought this item also bought”
“Features recommendations”

Now, in order for this juggernaut of bookselling to work for you, you’ll need to have a strong book launch where a larger number of people get exposure to your book and feel compelled to buy it and leave you positive reviews on Amazon.

That’s the essence for this article – to give you ideas to drive as much traffic as possible to your book launch event.

What to Do Before You Launch Your Book

Book launches are multifaceted and require a lot of advance preparation. You’ll need to create a book launch calendar that contains the critical path of tasks that’ll need to take place for your book launch event to succeed.

This includes things like booking the event venue, which often needs to be done months in advance. You’ll also have to attract the attention of your local media so that they’ll cover your book launch, organize a book launch team, have printed copies of your book ready to go and start blogging regularly.

All these activities require advance preparation, so make sure that you allocate sufficient time between the initial planning stages and the actual event.

Book Launch Deadlines

Book launch planning involves the cooperation of many busy people and you’ll find that things always take longer than you originally anticipated.

So, the best way to maximize your chances of success is to schedule your book launch event no less than 6 months in advance or more if you can. A longer time frame gives you a chance to recover should something go sideways.

What To Do After You Launch Your Book

The day after your book launch is the beginning of your author career, so you need to have a marketing plan in place for the first 4-6 months after your launch.

This is outside the scope of this article, but you can read my companion article “Write an Effective Nonfiction Book Marketing Plan in 5 Simple Steps” to get you started.

10 Great Book Launch Ideas

When it comes to book launch ideas, there are so many possibilities that listing them all would create an overwhelmingly long article. So, below I’ve distilled the top 10 ideas that’ll create the most bang for your book-launch buck.

Most of the ideas are free to implement, requiring just an investment of your time, while others will have a cost.

Idea 1: Book a Public Speaking Event with an Organization that Aligns with Your Book’s Subject

A public speaking event is one of the best ways to launch your nonfiction book. Look for a trade, professional or other type of non-profit organization that caters to your audience, and reach out to their event managers.

If the subject of your upcoming book aligns with the type of content that they are looking for, there’s a good chance you’ll be considered for their speaker line-up.

You’ll have to provide them with your bio and preferably evidence of other public speaking experience.

These organizations are constantly looking for speakers, and book launches are a great opportunity for introducing a new author/expert to their members.

Now, keep in mind that most event managers make their schedules six months in advance or longer so you need to plan accordingly and to make sure that printed copies of your book will be ready in time for the event.

Idea 2: Schedule Media Appearances Around Your Planned Book Launch

Media Appearances

If the organization’s event is open to the public, you’ll want to promote your event through local media outlets. Reach out to them as soon as your book event is firm since they also plan their content schedule ahead of time.

Your goal is to schedule all of your media appearances the week of the event, preferably within 3-5 days so that the information is fresh in the minds of their audiences.

Focus all of your efforts on local media since they’ll be the most inclined to promote a local author.

Be Well Prepared for Your Media Outreach

For audio-based interviews, producers will want to conduct a pre-interview on the phone to ensure that you’re a good match.

For video-based interviews, producers will request you send them a video sample of a previous interview or a public speaking appearance.

Make sure you have an up-to-date bio, listing your experience and any other prior media of public-speaking appearances. Also, make sure you send them a pre-publication version of your book as soon as it’s available.

Finally, do your research on each media outlet to ensure you’re targeting the right audience/show/segment for your new book. Then pitch stories that you feel would be of interest to their audiences.

Don’t make your pitch about the book (or you), make it about your ability as an expert to help their audiences solve a problem they have.

Idea 3: Schedule a Book Launch in a Public Library

Public libraries are always keen on being the launching pad for new local authors, and they’ll promote your event using all their means available, from profiles on their website to event posters in high traffic areas.

Contact their event planners weeks or months before publication to set up a launch date. They’ll want to see your bio and they’ll also want a professional headshot and other relevant photographs.

You’ll have to coordinate your local media appearances for this event as well in order to drive traffic, following the same approach described in Idea 3.

Remember that event managers need lots of time to prepare their schedules so always plan your media promotional activities several weeks or even months in advance, depending on the size of your local market.

Idea 4: Organize a Book Launch in a Coffee Shop

Popular coffee shops, especially of the indie kind, can be great venues for book launches. Naturally, you’ll have to scout for locations that can hold a large number of people. Some establishments will even have a separate room for special occasions.

These types of book launches tend to be more casual but they have big upside since you can arrange for food to be served to your guests without having to put in the work to find and hire a caterer.

The coffee shop will also promote your event in-store and possibly on their website if they do regular events. Like with any other book launch venue, make sure to promote your event ahead of time in the local media.

Idea 5: Offer Your Book at a Volume Discount During Your Book Launch

This is a great idea if you’re holding your book launch in any venue other than a bookstore. Since you’ll be bringing your own copies to sell directly to the people in attendance, you get to set the selling price of your book.

Now, you can expect that anybody who made the effort to attend your event will pay the full list price. But, you can offer a book-launch discount to encourage the attendees to buy additional copies for friends and family.

For example, you can offer to sell the first copy at list and then offer the second and subsequent copies at a 30% discount. This is better than the 40% discount you’ll have to extend to bookstores if you hold your event there.

Idea 6: Build a Book Launch Team

Most of the sales success of your nonfiction book will come down to a single platform: Amazon.

This giant of retail marketing has changed the rules of how products are sold. As of late 2018, Amazon has surpassed Google when it comes to product searches, including books.

Amazon operates the largest dedicated book search engine on the planet and the most direct way to get to the first page of results in this powerful engine is via user reviews.

In fact, the number of positive book reviews you can get in the first 30 days from the time your book goes up on the Amazon bookstore is the most critical for training their algorithm.

So, how do you ensure that you have a large number of positive reviews for your book in the first 30 days? By assembling a book launch team.

These is a group of people who have a clear interest in your upcoming book and wish to help you out by leaving you well-timed book reviews on Amazon. But there’s a catch: they can’t be family members.

Also, they can’t be roommates and they can’t be business associates. Amazon has been gamed excessively in the past with purchased reviews and fake review farms and as a result they’ve set a lot of rules to weed out bad reviews.

For instance, they’ll remove reviews from people whose Amazon accounts use the same credit card (this takes care of family members). Same street addresses are out too, and they can even somehow detect co-workers or business associates.

Make Sure You Comply With Amazon’s Review Rules.

Read up on their rules here and then set up your book launch team in a way that complies with then.

Now, how many people do you need on your team?

Well, let’s work the numbers backwards. You want to get between 20 and 50 book reviews right after your book launches on Amazon.

Now, considering that about a third of the people on your team will actually leave you a review on Amazon, you’ll then need between 60 and 150 people on your team.

How do you recruit that many people? By using your extensive personal and professional network. We’re talking family, friends, business associates and present and past clients.

While direct family members and other close personal and business relationships are tracked by Amazon, their friends and family members aren’t because they are considered to be at arms-length with you.

So make use of their networks to expand your own.

Offer Value to in Exchange for Participation in Your Book Launch Team

The best team members will be people who also happen to be members of your book’s target audience because they’ll have the most to gain from reading your book.

What should they get in exchange? A free advance printed copy of your book as a gift (don’t send them a pdf that they’ll have to print themselves at their own expense). You can also sweeten the pot with other useful materials.

For instance, if you have a workbook that you’re planning to publish later to accompany the book, you can also make that available to them (you can send it electronically to save costs).

Or perhaps you have a relevant webinar for clients that you can make available to them as well at no cost.

Be creative. If you offer them valuable content in exchange for leaving you an honest book review on Amazon, they should reciprocate with their commitment to you.

Idea 7: Create a Book Launch Calendar

In order to maximize the chances of success for your book launch, you’ll find that there will be a lot of moving parts that need to be sequenced just right. You’ll have to deal with:

Booking a venue
Arranging for media coverage in all its forms: audio, video and written media, each with their own timelines
Arranging other promotional activities
Having printed books on hand for promotional activities as well as for the event itself
Blogging in preparation for your book launch
Organizing an email campaign about your upcoming book with your email list
Engaging with social media followers if you already have a presence
Connecting with book bloggers and other influencers to build momentum
Creating a book-marketing plan leading up to your launch and for the first 4-6 months after it.
Ordering other marketing materials (business cards, bookmarks, postcards, etc.)

Start your book launch calendar with your event date and work backwards to make sure that you allow for sufficient time to get each task accomplished in time for the next one on your critical path.

Idea 8: Connect with Book Bloggers

Connect With Book Bloggers

Book bloggers are always looking for new titles to write reviews about and they can become great allies to spread the word about your upcoming book.

Now, when it comes to approaching book bloggers, be mindful they’re extremely busy people and that they’ll have certain rules of engagement that you’ll need to follow.

Make sure that you read these rules before you contact them; for instance many specialize in certain genres, so make sure yours qualifies.

Also make sure that you have working links that point to your bio, high-res photos, your book description and Amazon bookstore purchase or pre-purchase links (if available). Also, and let them know your book launch date.

Idea 9: Start Blogging as Soon as Possible

Blogging with consistency is one of the best methods for building a devoted fan base before your book comes out. It’s a low-cost marketing activity that’s extremely effective if done frequently.

Ideally, you want to start blogging as soon as you start writing your book. You can use your inspiration as you write your book to cross over to your blog. In fact, you’ll find a synergistic relationship between your blog an your book.

Often times, you’ll find yourself re-purposing parts of your book content into your blog. Other times, you’ll take the seeds of a blog article and develop them into a full chapter in your book.

Books and blogs are close cousins and a creative extension to one another.

Plus, if you do your keyword research right and structure your blogs in response to burning questions (of burning searches) from your audience on Google, you’ll then begin ranking higher and higher on search results which will bring even more traffic into your blog.

Now Turn Your Readers into a Growing Email List

After you do this for several months, you’ll begin to slowly but surely attract a regular following that you can then turn into book fans.

How do you do this? By using a popup window on your blog offering a free report, a set of tips, guidelines, an infographic, etc., that offers high value to your audience in exchange for their email address.

Then you can begin nurturing these fans with regular thoughtful emails introducing each new blog post, and over time, by letting them into a little secret: you’re currently writing a book that’ll solve once and for all a key problem they have.

You’ll even learn what the best problem to solve for them is through the comments they leave you in your blog posts.

Finally, Leverage Your Email List to Get Amazon Reviews

If you use this powerful conversion technique, you’ll find that a high percentage of subscribers will buy your book when you finally send them your Amazon link.

They’ll be inclined to buy from you because they know you, like you and trust you. Your job now is to leverage this goodwill by asking them to leave you a book review on Amazon.

Idea 10: Set up a Seminar or Workshop Followed by Your Book Launch in a Bookstore

Set Up a Seminar

Another great venue for your book launch is large bookstores. They could be large independents or nationwide chains.

Since you’re a nonfiction writer, you’ll find that you have an upper hand.

As an expert in your subject, you can easily couple your book launch with a short seminar or workshop (say 45 mins) that you can put together by re-purposing existing materials from your business or your professional practice.

In this way you’ll be offering actionable value to your audience, which will result in the following benefits:

A large percentage of the people in attendance will likely buy your book (be prepared to autograph a lot of copies that day!)
You’ll have a large captive audience for an extended period of time, which bookstores love
You might even get new clients for your business or your professional services
You might get invited to give a talk to a number of organizations that cater to your audience
You’ll be increasing your chances of collecting emails for your list – people are more predisposed to share their email address with experts that offered them valuable advice

Although you’ll make less money in book sales from this type of book launch (bookstores will take 40% off sales for themselves plus they’ll pay you up to 90 days after the event), the side benefits are too great to pass up.

Plus, large bookstores have significant promotion budgets and will often place ads in the local papers announcing their line-up of upcoming authors/speakers.

Wrapping Up

Make sure you give yourself enough time to plan your book launch and be appreciative of other people’s time because most of your allies, from your book launch team members to book bloggers and media bookers, will be working for you at no cost.

Next Steps

Now that you’ve put together all the pieces for a successful book launch, it’s time to start piecing together a book marketing plan that’ll leverage this early success into multiple speaking engagements, multiple media appearances and more book sales.

Here are a number of articles that will help you in this task:

Ben

Here are some other related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

Write Your Own Book and Become an Expert: 11 Reasons Why You Should

5 Essential Book Writing Tips for Nonfiction Authors

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Writing Tips

The following book writing tips are essential to hone in your nonfiction skills and develop your writing muscle so that you can connect effectively with your audience.

Good nonfiction writing at its core is about creating a bridge with your readers’ minds so that you can transfer your knowledge effectively and with as little filtering as possible.

Your goal is to help them solve a problem that they have in a way that they feel understood and empathized with. It’s only when you achieve this level of connection that your solution will effect real change in their lives.

Nonfiction is a Genre that Requires Unique Strategies

Nonfiction writing is very different than fiction writing. The latter is meant to entertain, allowing us to live vicariously through its characters. Fiction is there to provide us with a temporary respite from the real world.

Nonfiction, on the other hand, is there to help us tackle those real-world issues that we know need to be dealt with. How do we know? Because they’re painful.

So, in addition to the standard writing strategies that apply to both genres, you’ll also require unique nonfiction strategies that you can use to communicate effectively with your audience and provide them with the solutions they seek.

5 Essential Tips:

The following five tips will help you develop the strategies that you’ll need to master in order to become a good nonfiction writer.

Tip 1: Write Every Day

Nonfiction writing, like any other skill, requires continuous practice in order to get better at it. It is this continuity that will develop your writing muscle into a state where it’s conditioned for top performance.

This is no different than going to the gym to do weight training. If you only work your muscles once or twice a week, you’ll hardly notice any improvement.

But if you work out every day, you’ll soon begin noticing the changes and the more often you work out the easier it’ll get as the weights begin to feel lighter.

Eventually, out of sheer repetition you’ll get into a groove and you won’t be able to stop going to the gym. That’ll become your new default state.

This analogy is really not that different from nonfiction writing. Once you have your book outline completed and all you have to do is to begin writing sections based on your prompts, you’ll find that your words will naturally begin to flow out of your brain.

Yet, your writing style will only get better with practice. Your goal is to discover your writing “voice” and only a daily writing regime will help you achieve that.

So, choose a two-hour window at the same time every day and block it out from other activities.

You want to make sure that you aren’t disturbed by anyone during this time, so let your family, friends and your staff know that you’re not to be interrupted for any reason other than an emergency.

Now, if you can’t schedule a two-hour window seven days straight, then do six days, but not less if you want to get really good at it. Even professional writers who’ve been at it for twenty years or longer write every day.

Also, make sure you don’t exceed your two-hour block – you don’t want to write until you’re creatively spent. That’s a recipe for quitting prematurely.

If you still have plenty of ideas flowing after two hours, just jot them down in a notebook for your next writing session. Since you’re creating your nonfiction book based on your professional experience, you’ll never be at a loss for words.

Tip 2: Know the Rules of Grammar

This is a tip that’ll require you to invest some research time. In addition to your daily writing schedule, you need to learn the basic rules of grammar.

This is similar to learning your music scales. You can play music without knowing the scales provided you know how to read it, but try creating new music without deep knowledge of the scales – it’s extremely hard!

The reason is that after you write the first few bars and now you want to take your composition to the next logical place, you have to start randomly playing notes until you find the ones that sound good.

Similarly, if you don’t know the basic rules of grammar, you’ll have a lot of misfires in your writing and you’ll end up being frustrated by the experience. If you learn the rules first, good language will naturally flow out of your fingertips.

Here’s good online resource that you can use as a starring point:

https://www.grammarbook.com/english_rules.asp

Tip 3: Set Up An Advance Reading Group

This next tip is essential to ensure that you stay on message. Remember that although you’re writing your nonfiction book to enhance your career or your business, you’re addressing it exclusively to your target audience.

As they say in the world of marketing “If you market to everyone, you’ll sell to no one.”

Your nonfiction book must be addressed to a very specific audience, and in order to make sure that your message doesn’t fall on deaf ears, you need to enlist them early on so that they can provide you with feedback as you write.

What you don’t want to do is to write your entire manuscript and only then show it to your readers for feedback to find out that it doesn’t resonate with them.

It’s much better to enlist the help of an advance reading group made out of members of your target audience.

Every time you complete a chapter, email it to them to start getting feedback early on in the writing process. Then you’ll have a chance to make adjustments to your original book outline as you fine-tune it to fit the needs of your audience.

With the benefit of an active advance reader group, you’ll end up with a manuscript that truly connects with your readers without requiring extensive rewrites.

Tip 4: Write for an Audience of One

Audience of One

For nonfiction books to work they need to be written in the second person. Each reader must be able to assume that your book was written exclusively for them.

So instead of “we,” “I,” “us,” “our,” etc. you have to use “you” and “yours” whenever you’re addressing your readers (unless, of course, you are relating a story, an anecdote or a case study).

For example, you never want to write: “the next thing we must do is to…” Instead, you want to write: “the next thing you must do is to…”

Whenever nonfiction readers engage with a book that they feel might help them, the first question that’ll come to their minds is: What’s in it for me? They aren’t interested in something that works for you or for a group or people.

All they are interested in is how your book will help them. They’ll want to know what it is specifically that they will need to do.

This isn’t a matter of kowtowing to self-centered people, it’s about creating a deep connection with your audience, and given the impossibility of calling them by their first names the next best thing is to refer to them in the second person.

Whenever you read a well-written nonfiction book in a subject that you’re deeply interested in, you’ll find that you’ll invariably feel that the author is talking directly to you.

This is the feeling that you need to engender with your book. You have to make readers feel that they know you, almost as if you were a friend writing a book to help them in an area of their lives.

Tip 5: Don’t Write to Inform; Write to Connect

This tip is an extension of Tip 4. When you write a nonfiction book to solve a problem for your target audience, you can’t just open your knowledge tap and dump buckets of information on them.

Your content might be what they need, but unless you make every effort to connect with them first, they’ll eventually tune out and stop reading. Think about the difference between seeing a movie and a documentary.

Whether it’s fair or not, people like going to the movies because they want to connect with the emotional journey of the characters, whereas most people perceive documentaries to be vessels of information, therefore hard to connect with.

Readers crave connection and when you make an effort to bond with them, they’ll feel more invested in your solution and will be more likely to a) read your book in its entirely and b) take action on your solution.

How do you connect with your readers? By addressing them directly through the use of the second person and by sharing your knowledge through story telling. This could be done through personal stories or client stories.

The use of the “power of story” to connect with an audience is a tried and true nonfiction technique borrowed from the world of fiction.

The best nonfiction books are page-turners because they create a deep bond with their readers and then they use the power of story as a vehicle for delivering their message.

Next Steps

With the above five tips, you’ll begin to develop your nonfiction writing muscle. If you want to go a level deeper, then read my companion post: “The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills For Entrepreneurial Authors”.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

7 Book Layout Design Rules for Nonfiction Titles

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Layout Design

Book layout design is a key element in the visual appeal of nonfiction books. Unlike works of fiction, where endless streams of similarly laid out text are used to “lull” you into the story, nonfiction layouts respond to a completely different set of needs.

The goal of most nonfiction books is to solve a problem for an individual or a business. Therefore, they need to be laid out to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the author to the reader.

This requires your text to be compartmentalized in a way that’s simple for readers to process. For example, your nonfiction book layout may use charts, tables and images to bolster your thesis, and they’ll need to support your text.

As a result, both your text and your images will have to be laid out following certain rules of the trade so that they look professional. In this article, I’ll share seven basic rules for nonfiction layout design so you can develop a sense of the genre’s visual requirements.

The Importance of Book Layouts in Nonfiction

Nonfiction is a very particular genre. By the mere act of publishing a book, authors are assumed by readers to be instant experts in their fields. As a result, there’s always a high expectation of quality.

Also, by acting as a proxy for your experience, a nonfiction book will have a high reputational impact on your career. So, you want to ensure that your book layout is top-notch since this will reflect on your overall professionalism.

Why Hire a Professional?

The nonfiction genre is also a highly competitive. As a self-published author you need to be able to compete head-to-head with traditionally published books because they’ll appear side-by-side with your book on user searches.

Interestingly, nonfiction readers for the most part aren’t aware whether a book is self-published or traditionally published. But they’ll know an amateurish design when they see it and this is something that’ll always negatively affect your sales.

So in order to compete you’ll need to hire a professional book designer to level the playing field, and you’re going to have to budget for this expense.

Like any other profession, book design is something that requires extensive experience to get it right. As an analogy, a house renovation done by a professional contractor will always look better than a DIY job.

Although a contractor will cost you more, the resale value of your home will be higher. A DIY renovation may cost you less, but chances are it’ll also depress the resale value of your home.

The 7 Book Layout Design Rules

All professional book designers will follow the layout rules shown below. I’m including them in this article so that you’re well informed when you discuss different options with your designer.

Rule 1: Always Justify Body Text (with Very Few Exceptions)

The first layout rule for nonfiction books has to do with the most basic text-formatting element: alignment. The four options for text alignment are aligned left (a.k.a. ragged left margin), aligned right (a.k.a. ragged right margin), centered and justified.

The vast majority of nonfiction books are justified, that is, evenly aligned to both the left and right margins. This makes text easier to read and it also makes books look professionally laid out.

The exceptions are very few. Poetry books, art books and cookbooks tend to use a ragged right margin because when used in short bursts this type of text alignment is said to improve reader retention. But in long bursts, ragged edges make reading more difficult.

A technical exception is text laid out in a narrow column (e.g. text that surrounds an image). In this case, justification can sometimes look funny, so a ragged margin is used instead.

Rule 2: Begin All Chapters on an Odd Page

This is a stylistic rule that applies to most nonfiction books: you have to make sure that all your chapters start on an odd page number.

In other words, the first page of every chapter must be on a right-facing page. If your previous chapter ends on an odd-numbered page, then you must add a blank page in between.

Incidentally, this blank page must have no text on it whatsoever including no headers and no footers.

Nonfiction books that don’t follow this rule are perceived to be amateurish. The reason is that chapters in this genre are considered to be units of knowledge, where a full theme is developed from beginning to end.

The first page of each chapter indicates to readers that a new unit is about to begin, which requires the consistency of a similar look.

To help with this transition, the text in the first page of a chapter typically begins anywhere from one-third to half the way down from the top of the page and a large drop cap is usually used as the first letter of the first paragraph.

Rule 3: Use Between 3 and 5 Sentences per Paragraph

Each paragraph in your nonfiction book should only contain a single controlling idea or topic. This idea should be mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph and must be able to stand on its own.

The rest of the paragraph needs to expand on this idea and the final sentence should be used to sum it up and to transition the reader to the paragraph that follows.

Never introduce a new idea at the end of a paragraph or use the last sentence to give a preview of the next paragraph. Otherwise, the opening of the new paragraph will feel redundant.

Rule 4: Don’t Place Any Front Matter Between Your Book’s Introduction and the First Chapter

In nonfiction, the job of the introduction isn’t to ease the reader into the book’s subject matter but to act as a marketing “sales letter.”

Here’s the basic structure you’ll need for your book introduction:

Draw your readers in by showing them the problem your book will solve and then by showing them the expected end result
Reveal your solution without giving any details (readers must be compelled to read your book to find out)
Show them why they should listen to you
Reveal the roadmap that’ll take them from problem to solution
List the benefits they’ll receive
Give them social proof (testimonials of your solution in action)
Address any known objections
Compel them to take action
Transition them to your first chapter

Now that your readers are sold, you don’t want to interfere with this transition by placing, say, your acknowledgements or a preface between your introduction and your first chapter.

You want to have a clean transition into the body of your book to allow readers to carry their excitement from your introduction into the roadmap to your solution.

Rule 5: Use a Single Font for Your Body Text (with Very Few Exceptions)

Your goal with the typeface of your book is to allow for consistency in the reading experience. Once you’ve settled on your body font with your designer, you want to stick with it all the way through the end of the book.

If you have multiple fonts in your body, you’ll “break the spell” of your writing by adding unnecessary distractions.

It’s as if you were immersed in a movie and all of the sudden they change the lighting dramatically for a minute or two for no reason. That would get you temporarily out of the story and make you wonder what happened.

The only exceptions are words or phrases that don’t interfere with the flow of your text. For example, image captions may use a different font (usually smaller). Words inside images may also look different.

Rule 6: Don’t Use Images with a Resolution Below 300 dpi

If an image looks okay on your computer screen, there’s no guarantee that it’ll look good when printed. Many images that look fine onscreen will look pixelated and “low-quality” on paper.

The reason for this is that digital printers can output pixels of a much smaller size than most computer screens.

The recommendation from the two largest on-demand printers in the world (Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark) is to use a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for all images that will be shown in the body of the book.

Rule 7: Use Healthy Margins

Finally, don’t reduce the size of your margins to fit more words per page in order to lower your unit printing cost.

Books that have thin margins look amateurish, and even from a practical standpoint they don’t allow enough space for the thumbs of a reader’s hands to hold it open without accidentally covering the text.

To choose the right margin size, seek the advice of your layout designer since there are standard formulas that apply to margins based on the trim size of the book.

In short, your margins need to look balanced – an excessively thick margin will look as amateurish as a thin one.

Next Steps

This article was meant as an introduction to the basics for professional nonfiction book layout. If you’d like to learn more, read my companion article: 10 Nonfiction Book Layout Tips That Will Glue Your Audience to the Page.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

Write Your Own Book and Become an Expert: 11 Reasons Why You Should

5 Book Cover Design Principles for Nonfiction Authors

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Cover Design

The bar for nonfiction book-cover design is much higher than that for most other genres. Unlike works of fiction, where the primary goal is to entertain a general audience, nonfiction books are much more serious in nature. Whether your goal is to help your audience at a personal level or in their business, your book will position you as an expert in their eyes.

Therefore, the quality of your book’s presentation will have to meet a high standard: that’s the natural expectation readers have from experts. Specifically, your book cover design is an area where you can’t afford to cut corners by going for the lowest available cost from a gig website, because your professional reputation will be riding on your book.

This article will teach you five guiding principles of good nonfiction book-cover design so that you can have an educated discussion with your designer and understand their constraints in the choice of fonts, colors and other cover elements.

Principle 1: Use the Highest Resolution Images Allowed by the Printing Equipment

When it comes to nonfiction books, there’s nothing that screams “amateurish” more than pixelated, blurred or otherwise low-quality images and photographs.

Advanced digital printing presses require files with high-resolution images – the fact that an image looks perfect on your computer screen doesn’t mean it’ll look good when printed.

Before acquiring or producing your images, make sure to check the specifications from both Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark, the most popular on-demand printers for self-publishers.

The minimum resolutions accepted by both platforms is 300 dpi, however, you should strive to supply the highest resolution you can obtain from your graphic designer, image creation software or photographic equipment.

For the full print-file specifications, check the following links:

KDP: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201857950

IngramSpark: https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/file-requirements-for-print-books

Principle 2: Never Use Gimmicky Fonts

Dont Embelish

Since there are thousands of font families to choose from, it may be tempting to want to experiment with “unique” fonts to make your book cover stand out from the crowd.

But you need to consider that although the creative possibilities may be endless, the expectations from your market niche will not. Simply put, choosing the wrong font from the standpoint of your market will hurt your book cover’s appeal.

The problem is that you have no way of knowing which fonts will work in your niche and which won’t. This is the reason why you need to enlist the help of a professional nonfiction cover designer, because they’ll know from experience the fonts that’ll work best with your target audience.

Principle 3: Always Reserve the Largest Font for Your Book Title

Unless you’re a famous author with an established personal brand, you’ll want to showcase your book title, not your name, with the largest font size on your cover.

This is an important design decision since your book will most likely be discovered online and all that readers will have to go by is a small thumbnail image of your book.

Due to this real-estate limitation you also want your title to plant a question in your audience’s mind that can only be answered by clicking through the cover thumbnail to read the subtitle.

Here are some popular examples of online-friendly titles:

Title: Blink, Subtitle: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Title: The 4-Hour Workweek, Subtitle: Escape 9-to-5, live anywhere and join the New Rich
Title: Brotopia, Subtitle: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley

Principle 4: Make Your Book Title Short (Ideal Length: 3 Words)

I believe that the shift of book discovery from offline to online bookstores is behind the current trend for shorter book titles.

When you think about it, the main job of your book cover is to be the backdrop for your title, both stylistically and in terms of the visual content of your graphic elements.

Your cover tells a story and your title gives it a name. For example, the cover of “The 4-Hour Workweek” shows the outline of someone lounging on a hammock tied between two palm trees with the sun in the background.

Although your title needs to be long enough to be compelling for your target audience, given the natural size limitations of book covers and the additional visual constraints of thumbnail images, you should ideally aim for 3-5 words maximum.

Whereas in the past (before thumbnail images ruled book discovery) titles used to be much longer and subtitles shorter – e.g. Title: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Subtitle: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change – this formula has now flipped.

In fact, now 1-3 word titles abound and authors are getting very creative with them. Often, even a one-word title can be alluring enough to make us click on the thumbnail to find out more about the book.

As they say necessity is the mother of invention, so get creative! Now, since the shorter the title the higher the chances someone else may have come up with it first, make sure to search it on Google before committing resources to it.

Principle 5: Avoid Flashy or Intense Colors

As a final tip, although the goal of your cover is to stand out from the crowd, the excessive use of color will more than likely become counterproductive. Colors need to meet the expectations of your target audience in the same way that fonts do.

If a certain color palette is considered to be loud, amateurish or otherwise inappropriate by your audience, it’ll be a turn-off for sales even if it achieves the goal of making your book stand out from the rest.

Since the range of available colors is virtually unlimited, this is another area where you’ll need to enlist the help of an expert for advice.

A professional book cover designer will know what colors work for what audiences and will be able to make a good recommendation informed by their experience.

Your color palette must both appeal to your target audience and also align with your book’s niche. Otherwise you risk creating confusion in the minds of your readers.

For example, if you’re publishing a cookbook with a color palette that isn’t typically associated with food, you’ll have a hard time convincing someone to buy it.

Or if you publish a book on how to make money in the stock market but your main cover color is red, you’ll create a subconscious disconnect with your audience (hint: green is a much better choice for this niche).

Next Steps

Now you have a foundation for the basic principles behind good nonfiction cover design.

Before you hire a professional cover designer, it would be a good idea to do some research on Google and Amazon to find the top-selling books in your niche over the last 10-15 years.

This research will allow you to see not only what works in your market right now, but also how design has evolved over the years as book discovery transitioned from brick-and-mortar to online bookstores.

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

Write Your Own Book and Become an Expert: 11 Reasons Why You Should

5 Book Title Ideas to Rock Your Nonfiction Sales

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Book Title Ideas

If you search Google for “book title ideas” you’ll find that most results point to book-title generators. The problem with these tools is that although they can do a decent job coming up with titles for novels, they do a poor job for nonfiction books.

The reason is that nonfiction books aren’t meant to entertain but to problem-solve, and as such they must have titles that are specifically created to address the needs of the book’s target audience.

Book title generators don’t know who your target audience is and they certainly don’t know what their needs are – only you do. Therefore, you’ll be much better off if you use your own creativity aided by a set of best practices for coming up with your ideal book title.

What Best Practices Should I Follow to Title my Book?

What makes a great nonfiction title is its ability to attract our attention, intrigue us, elicit our interest, persuade us to browse the book and compel us to open our wallets.

When naming a book, be careful not to create a title that makes sense only to you but not your readers. For instance, if you settle on a clever play on words that readers can’t relate to, your book title will likely fall on deaf ears.

Readers are constantly tuned into WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?), so you have to make sure that your title is always written with them in mind. Your title can be playful, intriguing and even controversial, but it always needs to be clearly understood.

Having said that, you don’t want to use a plain vanilla-title that has a clear message and does the job but that’s also boring and uninspiring.

For example, if the perennial bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People had instead been titled Things People do to be Highly Effective, the results would have been quite different, right?

Word choice matters a lot, and while the choice is nearly unlimited there are some best practices for nonfiction books that work time and again.

Below, I’ve compiled five book title ideas that you can use for inspiration, plus some examples of popular nonfiction books that have taken advantage of them to great effect.

Idea 1: Consider Using Numbers in Your Title

It’s been known for a long time in marketing circles that the human psyche finds lists of items alluring. This is the reason why so many articles have headlines like “The 7…”, “The Top 5…”, “The 3 Best…” and so on.

Nonfiction books are no different. For instance, here’s a list of popular titles that just use the number 7:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom
The Seven Mysteries of Life
Seven Steps to Oneness

Idea 2: Make Your Title Intriguing or Controversial (And Then Explain it)

This idea is the classic 1-2 punch: show the reader something intriguing or controversial to get their attention (your title) and then explain what you mean in the subtitle.

Here are some popular nonfiction titles that make use of this technique:

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counter intuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Idea 3: Make Your Title Counter-intuitive (And Then Explain it)

This is an extension of Idea #2. Use a counter intuitive message in your title and then explain what you mean in the subtitle. Here are some examples:

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-to-5, live anywhere and join the New Rich
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America
The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

Idea 4: Consider Making Up A New Expression

Generation X

Some authors have found success making up new words by mashing up two words that align with their book’s subject. In some cases, the made-up word has even become part of our modern lexicon. Here are some popular examples:

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains the Hidden side of Everything
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley
Buyology: Truths and Lies About Why We Buy

Idea 5: Use a Single-Word Title And Then Explain it in the Subtitle

This is another very effective technique for coming up with nonfiction titles. Choose a single word that summarizes your book’s thesis, and then proceed to explain in detail in the subtitle.

Ideally, you want to use imagery on your cover that aligns with the basic meaning of this word. Here are some popular examples:

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking
Outliers: The Story of Success

Here’s an example of a nonfiction title that makes use of ideas 1 and 5:

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Next Steps

Creating a title that inspires you is the first step. Next, you need to come up with two or three other alternatives that you can test with a select group of members from your target audience to find the one that resonates the most with them.

For example, Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, tested a number of titles using Google ads before he published his book. He wanted to find out which of his title choices would get the most clicks.

Whether you do this testing with Google or through people you already know, make sure that you pick the title they gravitate the most to (incidentally, The 4-Hour Workweek wasn’t Tim Ferriss’ preferred choice).

In short, be creative but let your test data drive your final decision-making.

Good luck!

Ben

Here are some related posts I highly recommend:

How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors

How to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book to Help Grow Your Business?

5 Book Cover Maker Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Nonfiction Cover

Write Your Own Book and Become an Expert: 11 Reasons Why You Should

5 Benefits of Self-Publishing on Amazon for Nonfiction Authors

by Bennett R. Coles Leave a Comment

Self Publishing Amazon

Self-publishing on Amazon is the most cost-effective way for nonfiction authors like yourself to make your book available to a global audience.

This article will showcase the main benefits you’ll enjoy by using this powerful distribution, marketing and sales channel to bring your nonfiction book to market.

5 Amazing Amazon Benefits for Self-Publishing Nonfiction Authors

Amazon has truly changed the book market in ways that were unthinkable only a few years ago.

Below you’ll find the 5 most amazing benefits that will allow your self-published nonfiction title to compete head to head with the most popular books in the genre:

Benefit 1: Worldwide Reach

The global ubiquity of the Amazon brand has truly leveled the playing field for nonfiction self-publishers.

In short, Amazon managed to change the shopping behavior of buyers from offline-bookstore discovery, where shelf space is highly coveted and tightly guarded, to online discovery, where shelf space is virtually unlimited.

With gatekeepers gone, publishers of any size – including single-book publishers like yourself – can share the same shelf space, and with some digital marketing savvy (which you can learn or hire for) you can even become as discoverable.

What this bookselling revolution has achieved for nonfiction self-publishers is something that just twenty years ago was nearly impossible: reaching a global audience.

Up until the late nineties, if you wanted your book to cross borders you would have had to engage an international rights agent, and if you were lucky enough to land one you then had to deal with reams of complex legal contracts.

And even then, there was no guarantee that your book would appear on bookshelves in international markets.

Nowadays, more and more nonfiction self-publishers are fielding business inquiries for services from places as far away as South East Asia and South America as a result of their book appearing on Amazon.

Benefit 2: Worldwide Book Printing

As if global reach wasn’t enough, Amazon also implemented distributed on-demand printing technology to make it possible to print one book at a time cost-effectively and ship it locally soon after an order arrives.

This game-changing development allowed Amazon to free up large amounts of space from their warehouses by not having to inventory the majority of titles they carry, while eliminating costly shipping expenses.

With several plants serving North America, Europe and Australasia, your nonfiction book is now printed upon the arrival of a paid order and shipped to the end user at low domestic rates (or free depending on their level of service).

This means that you no longer have to invest in costly inventory before any books get sold, plus it allows you to make quick changes to your book’s content at any time (e.g. fixing typos) without having to throw away misprinted books.

With this new distribution paradigm, you get to receive payment for every book sold on Amazon without ever having to write a check to cover costs.

Upon receipt of payment, Amazon will take 40% from the top as their commission (this amount is taken off your list price), they’ll then deduct their printing cost and pay you the balance as a royalty.

Benefit 3: World’s Biggest Book Search Engine

But the story keeps getting better. On top of the above two amazing benefits, Amazon also happens to operate the largest dedicated book search engine in the world.

In fact, as of late 2018, Amazon surpassed Google in the number of product searches conducted globally every year (including books), and they haven’t looked back since. This is another game changer in the industry.

Before Amazon, readers had to visit a physical bookstore and browse the aisles in order to discover a new title, with premium shelf space being restricted to titles that had a history of moving product for the bookseller.

Now, all readers have to do is to enter a search into Amazon about a problem they want to solve, an area of interest, or simply a question like “how do I lose 10 pounds in 10 days” and Amazon will oblige with the titles that most closely address the user’s search.

And unlike the past, you can’t pay your way into this virtual shelf.

All publishers large and small have to do the exactly the same work: conduct keyword research on their target audience to find the keywords that match the most searches in their niche.

Even if you don’t really know how to do this (you probably won’t), you can always hire a book-marketing professional for a few hours to help you find the best set of keywords for your book.

But here’s the best part, the vast majority of self-publishers choose the keywords themselves without doing the proper research. So, just by doing this work right you’ll be creating a tremendous competitive advantage over your peers.

Benefit 4: Low Self-Publishing Cost

All of the above benefits can be achieved at a very low cost. As a matter of fact, the creation and set-up of a new self-publishing account is actually free of charge.

It’s just mind blowing to have free access to the untold millions of dollars that Amazon has spent over the years developing the largest online bookstore and the largest dedicated book search engine in the world plus a global network of on-demand printing facilities. This was completely unthinkable before Amazon.

Having said that, you have to consider that if you want your book to be successful in the marketplace, you’ll have to incur expenses above the free self-publishing setup.

At the low end, you’ll have to purchase an ISBN for your title ($125 for a single number or $295 for a block of ten). In addition, you’ll have to hire a book-marketing professional to properly set up your book in your Amazon account.

But beyond that, you’ll have to hire one or more editors, a book designer and a cover designer. These costs are a must for nonfiction authors (think of it as an investment, because you’ll obtain a return from these expenses).

There’s no point in launching a new nonfiction title on Amazon if you can’t complete on quality with traditionally published titles, which are all designed and edited by professionals.

How much will all of this work cost you? Depending on the level of experience of the professionals you hire, between $5,700 and $11,500.

Now, this may sound like a lot of money on the surface, but consider that your business or you career will truly get to a new level by leveraging the “expert” status you’ll gain by publishing a top-notch nonfiction book.

For example, many nonfiction authors have turned their books into magnets to land lucrative contracts worth tens of thousands of dollars that would be very difficult to land without the cachet of being a published nonfiction author.

Many others have launched highly profitable public speaking careers because of their books, regularly attracting fees anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000 per talk (depending on the scale of the event and their public-speaking experience).

And most report increasing the size of the businesses as their books become profitable prospect-conversion machines.

Benefit 5: Lower Barriers to Entry for Bestseller Lists

The final benefit is another game-changing feature offered by Amazon for the benefit of self-publishers: lower barriers to entry into bestseller lists.

Amazon’s massive library of nonfiction titles is organized into a tree of categories, sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, etc. As of right now, there are over 3,000 different nonfiction categories available on Amazon.

Each of these “tree branches” has its own bestseller list. Now, top-level categories will naturally always be highly competitive, requiring a large volume of sales in order to qualify for entry.

But lower-level branches require a much lower number of sales to be considered a bestseller. So, if you choose the right tree branch for your nonfiction book, you’ll be able to be included in its bestseller list at a relatively low volume of sales.

Once you do, you’ll get full bragging rights as an Amazon bestseller, which is marketing gold regardless of the category!

This new bestseller status will, among other things, attract media attention, command higher public speaking fees and increase demand for your business or professional services.

How do you find out what the best categories are among the over 3,000 tree branches, in order to maximize the chances of your book being included in a bestseller list?

This can be quite complex and may require that you hire the services of a book marketing professional (which you’ll be needing already in order to select your book’s search keywords as stated in Benefit 3).

But the investment of a few hours of time from an expert will make a huge difference in the ultimate success of your nonfiction book.

If you’d like to familiarize yourself with the basics of this work, you can read my companion article: “How to Promote Your Nonfiction Book to Rank High on Amazon.”

In Conclusion

Amazon has completely reinvented the way books are distributed and sold by disrupting and reinventing the book industry. This has leveled the plaiting field for nonfiction self-publishers in ways unimaginable in the not-too-distant past.

As a result, the only thing stopping your book from reaching a global marketplace is no longer a multiplicity of gatekeepers, but your own passion and drive.

Now, I don’t want to imply that this is a cake walk, because you’ll have to do the best you can to complete in the marketplace (hence the need to hire a team of experts to help you get there). But this was no different before the advent of Amazon.

What’s different now is that you can enjoy the same access that used to be restricted to traditional publishers. By hiring a few key professionals, you’ll be able to develop the necessary competitive advantages to thrive in the nonfiction book market as a self-publisher.

Best of luck!

If you enjoyed this article and are in the process of self-publishing a nonfiction book, be sure to check out my free nonfiction success guide, drawn from years of experience editing books for bestselling authors (including a New York Times bestseller) and ghostwriting for CEOs and politicians. Simply click here to get instant access.

Ben