Before you embark on your nonfiction book project, you need to learn the best writing strategies in the genre to ensure that you don’t spin your wheels in unnecessary rewrites and instead create a solid manuscript that closely aligns with the needs and desires of your target audience.

If you’re a first-time author, the 5 strategies below will ensure that you stay on track on your journey while minimizing the chances of making rookie mistakes.

Let’s get started:

Strategy 1: Learn From the Masters

Nonfiction is a mature genre, which means that there are well-established success formulas that have been perfected over the years. While nonfiction content has evolved over time along with changes in society, the way that content is communicated to readers has not changed significantly.

Here’s the best part, you don’t have to go to school to learn these powerful formulas. All you need to do is learn directly from the masters by buying their books and reverse-engineering their techniques.

Your first task then is to do research on Amazon to find the bestselling titles in your niche. Once you have a short list of 3-5 books, buy them and read them cover to cover.

For your first pass, put yourself in the shoes of a reader looking for the solution to the problem that the book addresses. Make notes about how those books make you feel and about your emotional response to different chapters.

Also note the choice of language and the approach that different authors use to connect with their readers (e.g. are they using empathy? personal stories? supportive language?). When you finish reading the books, note if you feel you “know” the author, if you feel “connected” to them, if you feel like they’re your “friend.”

Chances are you will. Even though you never met those people, you’ll feel as if you knew them. This is the magic of good nonfiction and the effect that you want to emulate with your book.

Now reread the books through the filter of an author. Take a bird’s-eye view of the content and make notes about the different approaches used to elicit emotions (e.g. do they use personal stories? client stories? descriptive language? dialog?).

These are the techniques you’ll be emulating in your own book to create a compelling narrative that connects with readers, instead of dry informational text that’s devoid of emotional connection.

Strategy 2: Divide and Conquer

Once you’ve learned the tricks of the trade, it’s time to create your first draft. Now, sitting down staring at a blank page is not the best approach to writing a nonfiction book, even if your mind is overflowing with great ideas. In fact, it’s a sure fire way to becoming overwhelmed over time and to lose the joy of writing.

The best way to write a nonfiction book is to use the “divide and conquer” approach. Basically, you need to kick things off with a fully fleshed-out outline of your book (read this article on mind-mapping and this article on book outlining to get you on the right path). Your book outline is the precursor to your table of contents and it’ll show a breakdown of the different topics and subtopics covered in your book.

Then, simply choose the topic that you feel most inspired to write about that day and begin writing — don’t worry if the section in question is in the middle or even at the end of the book: order doesn’t matter at this stage.

Writing a book in strict sequence is usually not the best approach anyway. You could do it if you wanted to, but the end result isn’t necessarily going to your best writing.

On the other hand, writing about what most inspires you in that moment will result in much more compelling writing, even if it feels disconnected from the whole. There’s nothing wrong with skipping five chapters and then going back three, provided that the writing feels inspired.

What you want to avoid at all costs is making your writing feel forced into a strict sequence: in other words, to write for the sake of writing. Keep in mind that at the end of the writing process you’ll be enlisting the help of a nonfiction editor to polish your writing, help you with transitions, and even re-organize the order of your chapters.

Strategy 3: Write From a Stream of Consciousness

When you do sit down to write, guided by your book outline, don’t spend too much time thinking about what you’re going to be writing about. In fact, try to think things through a little as possible. Choose the section that inspires the most and begin to write from a stream of consciousness.

Remember that your nonfiction book is already inside of you. Even though it hasn’t been written yet, all of the content is stored in your brain. Your task at first is simply to channel that content out of your brain and onto the written page.

When you write based on inspiration instead of by force, you’ll find that your ideas flow effortlessly, without having to think much about what you’re going to write. At this initial stage, don’t judge your choice of words and don’t fall into the trap of self-editing as you write.

Don’t linger in thought trying to first formulate in your mind what you’re going to be writing about — that’s not conducive to the creative flow of ideas.

Will you make a lot of mistakes using the stream of consciousness approach? Most likely yes (unless you’re a masterful writer with decades of experience) and that’s totally okay. Your goal at the beginning is to write down your ideas. You’ll have plenty of opportunities later on to shape your writing, but not before you have a solid body of text to work with.

Strategy 4: Create an Advance Reader Group

Nonfiction books should never be written in isolation. Unlike fiction, you’re not writing a made up story for the purpose of entertaining your audience. You’re writing to problem-solve, and for your solution to work it must align with the needs and desires of your target audience.

Not only do you need to know what makes them tick and what keeps them up at night (which is part of your preliminary audience research) but you also need to check regularly with them as you write to ensure that your message resonates with your audience throughout your book project.

What you don’t want to do is to write your entire manuscript first and then give it to members of your audience to read at the end of the process, because if it went off track early on you’ll find yourself rewriting a big chunk of your book, which is not only inefficient but also frustrating and demoralizing.

Instead, establish an advance reader group before you begin your book project, made up of members of your target audience that you know and trust, and enlist their support to help you along your writing journey.

Then, as soon as you finish each chapter, pass it along to them for feedback and comments (the chapters don’t need to be in sequence for this approach to work). What you’re looking for is first impressions — is your writing connecting with your audience at an emotional level? — and also for fit — is the content resonating with your audience, their needs and desires?

If you find a disconnect you can then react and adjust your course early on. In fact, you may find that this approach may even alter the flow that you had initially anticipated for your book into one that’s better aligned with the needs of your audience.

Strategy 5: Hire a Professional Editor

After your manuscript is completed to the best of your ability – that is, you’ve written all the required sections, you’ve incorporated your audience’s feedback and you’ve made a sufficient number of rewrites to improve the flow and quality of the text – it’s time to hire a professional editor.

When readers have a need and search Amazon for books, the majority will search for a solution to their problems and not for a specific book title. Therefore, it’s quite likely that your book will come up in the search results along with traditionally published books on the subject.

And guess what? Every single one of those books will be professionally edited! So, in order to compete you’ll need to establish a level playing field by having your book professionally edited as well.

In fact, the use of an editor is a staple for all professional authors. Even recognized authors with a long history of success would never dare publish an unedited book.

The book you’ll be publishing will act as an extension of your professionalism, credibility and reputation, so this is an area where you can ill afford to cut corners by either self-editing or outsourcing the editing job to a friend or a relative.

Nonfiction professional editors are not only great wordsmiths but also have a deep body of knowledge about the art of persuasion, winning sales and marketing copy techniques as well as reader psychology. They’ll become a crucial ally to generate success on your publishing journey.

In Conclusion

A nonfiction book project can be a very rewarding experience because you’ll be capturing your life’s work into a format that’s easy to consume, highly ubiquitous and broadly accessible to the masses.

By following the above five strategies, you’ll be laying out a foundation of success for your book project that’ll ensure that your message closely aligns with your audience, that’s based on best practices and that’s on a level playing field with popular books in your niche.

All the best on your publishing journey!

If you enjoyed this article and are considering creating 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 to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

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

 

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.

When it comes to nonfiction, there are many different types of writer, depending on the niche. Nonfiction is a very specialized genre, and even though the common thread is telling the truth and focusing on facts, the delivery of content can be very diverse.

You may have some writers who choose to focus on problem-solving, others who prefer to focus on teaching, then others who like to entertain, or inspire, and so on.

The type of nonfiction writer you want to become will depend on what drives you inside, what you’re passionate about and what your skill-set and specialized training look like.

In this article I’ll share the characteristics of the different types of nonfiction writers that exist out there, their strengths, and the type of writing category that they best fit, along with examples of bestselling books in every listed category.

The 8 Types of Nonfiction Writers

Although nonfiction is a very broad genre (Amazon lists more than 3,000 nonfiction categories and sub-categories), there are primarily eight different types of nonfiction writers that you can aspire to become. No one type is better or worse than the other or has more or less chances of success in the market.

Naturally, some types of writers choose to work in very large niches, which command much larger audiences, but they’re also subject to a lot more competition.

Some cater to narrower niches and as a result they’re subject to lower competitive forces. In the end, the writer that you want to become (incidentally, you don’t have to be limited to a single type) will depend on your personal interests.

Here are the eight different types of writers in the world of nonfiction:

1) The Scientific Writer

The scientific writer is someone who typically has a professional accreditation and has trained for many years on a specific profession: e.g. lawyers, academics, physicians, engineers, scientists, economists, etc.

The type of books that they write need to be thoroughly researched, since often times they’ll be based on studies and research that needs to be portrayed with 100% accuracy. These books tend to be more complex and therefore require multiple editing and proofreading passes before they’re published.

Scientific writers tend to be highly educated and have a thorough grasp of the facts in their field of study. They also tend to be perfectionists and pay attention to every detail, which often results in longer publishing cycles.

They usually need to enlist the help of and work in partnership with scientific book editors who understand their area of expertise.

Often times, these types of technical writers come from fields where it’s common practice to publish articles in peer-reviewed publications as part of day-to-day work, so they tend to be very well equipped to make the transition into a nonfiction author.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for scientific or technical writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Health (e.g. Eight Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weill)
• Medicine/Therapy (e.g. The Body by Bill Bryson)
• Science (e.g. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson)
• Academic/Textbooks (e.g. Basic Nursing by Caroline Bunker Rosedahl & Mary T. Kowalksi)
• Technology (e.g. Web Analytics by Avinash Kaushik)
• Economics (e.g. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner)

2) The Business Writer

The business writer is someone who typically has many years of experience working in a large business, often times in a leadership position, as business owners, or even as academics who teach in business schools.

These writers tend to be less rigid and yet still fact-based, although often times their facts are more experiential than scientific. Since they deal in many cases with human behavior, these books tend to be based on observations and experience rather than hard facts and they can also be more inspirational in nature.

Business writers typically use their books to help and support their public-speaking careers, which in many cases can command substantial fees, especially if their books have achieved bestseller status. Also, business books are often purchased in large numbers by corporations to be used for personnel training purposes.

Many times, business writers, especially those with busy schedules, will compile notes for their book, create the main outline and then give the writing task to a ghostwriter. Those who are avid bloggers will often compile their books by threading together multiple blog posts.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for business writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Business Management (e.g. Double Double by Cameron Herold)
• Leadership (e.g. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell)
• Finance/Investment (e.g. Financial Statement Analysis by Byron Lund)
• Corporate Culture (e.g. It’s Your Ship by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff)
• HR (e.g. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni)
• Business Training (e.g. New Conceptual Selling by Stephen Heiman & Diane Sanchez)

3) The Spiritual Writer

The spiritual writer is someone who has studied and practiced in a spiritual field for many years and has developed their own interpretations or techniques that they feel are well-suited to their target audience.

Often times, the spiritual writer is someone who has studied a philosophy from outside their own culture for many years and writes a book to introduce it to their own culture in a way that’s easy to understand.

Other times, they take on a difficult philosophy or practice and choose to also write a book in order to break it down in a way that the lay-person can easily digest without requiring years of prerequisite study.

Since many spiritual books are based on philosophical concepts, they aren’t as hard-fact based as the prior examples, but this type of writing still needs to abide accurately by every tenet of its spiritual discpline. Keep in mind that spiritual authors write books only after several years of concentration in their spiritual practice.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for spiritual writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Religion (e.g. The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel)
• Spirituality (e.g. The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle)
• Meditation (e.g. The Mindfulness Code by Donald Altman)
• New age (e.g. A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson0
• Mysticism (e.g. The Essential Kabbalah by Daniel C. Matt)

4) The Problem-Solving Writer

Problem-solving writers are the most widely published types of nonfiction writers. The vast majority of nonfiction books are written by problem-solving authors because they cater to a broad range of needs of the reading population.

Problem-solving writers focus their energies on helping their target audience resolve a long-standing, typically painful problem that has afflicted them for a long time and for which they haven’t found a solution yet.

These types of writers typically have a private practice where they see clients on a personal basis, and choose to write books that are based on their client experiences in order to expand their reach. In this way, they’re able to help people who aren’t in the same geographical area and thus are unable to attend a live session.

Like business writers, problem-solving writers tend to become highly sought out public speakers and many become favorite guests of TV and radio producers.

The problem-solving nonfiction field is very broad and it encompasses a very large number of subjects, from self-help to psychology, to parenting, to fitness, to how-to, and so on, catering to the many needs of the population at large, addressing personal needs as well as consumer needs, business needs, organizational needs, and many others.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for problem-solving writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Self-Help (e.g. Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins)
• Weight Loss (e.g. Dash Diet by Marla Heller)
• Fitness (e.g. Yoga Fitness for Men by Dean Pohlman)
• Relationships (e.g. Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix)
• Parenting (e.g. Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Laura Davis & Janis Keyser)
• Psychology (e.g. Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young & Janet Klosko)
• Personal finances/Money management (e.g. The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton)
• How-to (e.g. How to Make it In the Music Business by Ari Herstand)

5) Journalistic Writer

The journalistic writer tends to be someone who developed their literary chops working as a journalist for a mainstream publication, or sometimes has been elected to public office. They tend to focus on subjects that are controversial or highly charged, whether in politics or in the court of public opinion.

Journalistic writing requires a significant amount of fact-checking, especially when they’re basing their books on evidence from others that needs to be corroborated. This can be a painstaking process, especially when their evidence-based facts are not easy to check.

Although there are exceptions (e.g. Ronan Farrow), most journalistic writers tend to be older since it typically demands a long career in their fields in order to build the relationships and connections that are necessary to develop trusted sources that can provide valuable information when reliable facts are hard to come by.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for journalistic writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Politics (e.g. Let Me Finish by Chris Christie)
• Opinion (e.g. Fear by Bob Woodward)
• Expository books (e.g. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow)

6) Biographical Writer

The biographical writer includes people who focus their writing on memoirs, biographies and autobiographies.

A memoir is a historical account of a particular personal experience, therefore it’s usually written in the first person. Examples of popular memoirs are Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and Becoming by Michelle Obama.

A biography is an account of someone’s life, as told by someone else. When the subject of the biography commissions the work and actively participates in the production of source materials, it’s considered an authorized biography. An unauthorized biography is created without the involvement of the subject, and often times against their wishes.

An autobiography is the account of a person’s life written by the subject (or ghostwritten on behalf of the subject). The difference between a ghostwritten autobiography and an authorized biography is that the former carries the name of the subject as the author (e.g. The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump, which was actually written by Tony Schwartz) and the latter carries the name of the writer, not the subject (e.g. Bill Gates: A Biography, by Michael B. Becraft).

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for biographical writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Memoirs (e.g. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight)
• Biographies (e.g. Good Neighbor by Maxwell King)
• Autobiographies (e.g. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama)

7) Narrative Writer

The narrative writer is a cross between a nonfiction and a fiction writer. while the focus is on facts and truths, it’s told using the power of narrative and storytelling. The most popular styles of narrative nonfiction writing are creative nonfiction, historical nonfiction and true crimes, although there are others as well.

Creative nonfiction writers focus on true events that are told in a way that reads like fiction, with compelling imagery and sensory detail. The goal of creative nonfiction is to make factual stories as interesting and rich in the eyes of readers as fiction can be.

Like creative nonfiction writers, historical nonfiction writers focus on actual events re-told in the style of fiction, except that those events are from the past, sometimes recent and sometimes distant. Since historical nonfiction is rooted in fact, it can be much harder to write than historical fiction, where the writer has much more creative freedom.

True crime is a style of writing that borrows from the narrative of fiction to examine an actual crime that has taken place in the near or distant past.

The aim of these types of writers is to capitalize on the public’s thirst for the motivations of the criminal mind. True crime is not only highly popular in written form but also on television and film.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for narrative writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Creative nonfiction (e.g. The Girls are Gone by Michael Brodkorb, Allison Mann et al.)
• Historical nonfiction (e.g. The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre)
• True crime (e.g. The Pale-Faced Lie by David Crow)

8) Lifestyle/Entertainment Writer

The lifestyle and entertainment writer type is also very popular in the book industry. This category includes writing about food, hobbies, travel, fashion, home, and so on. This is another broad category of writers that covers a large variety of interests.

Lifestyle/entertainment writers don’t require years-long careers specializing in one area in order to succeed. Instead, they need to be engaging, humorous, candid, and offer real value to their readers.

In fact, many writers of this type are quite young in relation to the first seven types of writers, and in many cases are also avid bloggers with a significant presence online as well as a large following on social media.

This is also a great area in the world of nonfiction where one can turn a long-standing hobby into a business by teaching other people who practice the same hobby the tricks of the trade that you’ve learned over time to make their lives easier and more enjoyable.

For instance, if you’ve been developing recipes for a specific type of diet for many years, you can turn them into a cookbook that’ll be of interest to those people who follow the same diet but who don’t have the time to experiment.

Of perhaps you’ve developed gardening techniques to create the perfect rose garden or the perfect vegetable garden and you can now turn this knowledge into a book that will help fellow hobby gardeners by saving them precious time and aggravation.

Nonfiction categories that are ideal for lifestyle/entertainment writers, with some bestselling book examples, are shown below:

• Wine & Drink (e.g. Wine Simple by Aldo Sohm & Christine Muhlke)
• Cookbooks/Food (e.g. Half-Baked Harvest Cookbook by Tieghan Gerard)
• Home Decor (e.g. Inspire Your Home by Farah Merhi)
• Gardening (e.g. Peonies by Jane Eastoe)
• Home improvement (e.g. Household Hacks by Ace McCloud, Joshua Mackey, et al.)

In Summary

The world of nonfiction writing is extremely diverse and can be very creative as well. There’s a sub-genre for almost every possible area of endeavor. As stated before, Amazon has over 3,000 categories and sub-categories of nonfiction books in their online store, and every area affords nonfiction writers with countless opportunities to express themselves.

Nonfiction is also one of the most profitable types of writing, not necessarily due to high book sales – at least, not immediately – but because of the many other streams of revenue that a nonfiction book can generate for its author.

From opening doors to great opportunities, to launching highly-paid public speaking careers, to acting as a great funnel for new leads for a service business, to becoming a calling card to land new clients, to establishing your bona fides as an expert in your field, and so on, nonfiction writing can be a huge career boost.

Becoming a nonfiction writer is also very rewarding because you’ll be helping other people improve on an aspect of their lives, you’ll open their minds to new and exciting knowledge, and help them solve deep-seated problems that seemed intractable before they got their hands on your book.

This article has shown you the main types of writers that are prevalent in the nonfiction genre to give you an idea of the different styles of nonfiction that are popular in the market, but don’t feel that you have to limit yourself to just a single type. In fact, many authors will move between types depending of their book ideas.

For example, a business writer may write one book about effective management techniques in the corporate setting, and later on may write a self-help book to inspire people to better manage their time and get more enjoyment out of life.

All you have to do is to focus on an area you’re passionate about and learn about the type of writing that best fits your publishing goals, keeping in mind that your ultimate aim is to be of service to others. You’ll be able to do so by informing them, teaching them a skill, entertaining them or using creative nonfiction to tell them a powerful story.

But above all else, whatever types of nonfiction writer you wish to become, make sure that you have fun in the process!

If you enjoyed this post and would like to learn more about how to excel in the writing craft be sure to check out my free nonfiction writing 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 expert status as well as 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 to Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

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

 

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.

If you’re writing a nonfiction book for the first time, you need to know what to do as well as what not to do in order to succeed.

Book writing is a multi-faceted endeavor with a lot of moving parts. The lack of understanding of this complexity is partly at fault for the 97% of people who start books but don’t finish them.

To make sure you become part of the remaining 3%, follow the dos and don’ts shown below to build a strong foundation for a nonfiction book that can be of service to your audience as well as to your business or career.

Do #1: Create a Mind Map of Your Book

Creating a 200-page book from scratch may seem like a daunting task, and it will be if you don’t have a clear roadmap. Willing a book into being armed with laptop and staring at a blank page is one of the most difficult ways to write a manuscript.

Fortunately, as a nonfiction author you don’t have to follow this painful path because you have a secret weapon that’ll make your book come to life organically.

This secret weapon is effective due to a simple premise: your book is already inside of you, ready to be typed out word by word. It’s just sitting in your brain with content based on your many years of professional experience.

All you have to do now is to find the right methodology to download this information from your brain and onto the written page in a structured way. This is where your secret weapon comes in.

This weapon is called the Mind Map, popularized by British author Tony Buzan. This is a simple yet powerful technique for mapping information from your brain onto a chart, in this case the entire structure of your upcoming nonfiction book.

Mind mapping is so effective because it mimics the way your brain stores and retrieves information. How does it work? In simple terms, you begin by writing the main idea of your book in the center of a large piece of paper (or a whiteboard, if one is available).

Then you break down your main idea into its components, and for each one you draw a branch going radially out from your main idea. You’ll draw as many branches as you have components.

Next, you take each component and break it down into its sub-components, drawing sub-branches in the same fashion. If needed, you can repeat this process for the sub-sub-components.

As an example, here’s the mind map of one of Tony Buzan’s nonfiction books:

For detailed instructions on creating your mind map, read this article:

“How to Use a Mind Map to Create a Great Book for Your Business”

Do #2: Create a Book Outline

Once your book’s mind map is drawn, what you have to do next is to turn it into your book outline. This is a simple process that ultimately generates a fully fleshed out table of contents.

In order to create your book, all you have to do is to write prompted by each section and sub-section in your table of contents, and before you know it you’ll have a manuscript on your hands without ever experiencing writer’s block.

For detailed instructions on converting your mind map into a book outline, read this article:

“How to Create a Book Outline Step-By-Step: A Guide for Nonfiction Writers”

Do #3: Write For An Audience of One

If you’re writing a nonfiction book to enhance your business or your career, chances are that you’re writing it to solve a problem for your audience. You’ve been solving problems for clients face to face for years and now you want to expand your reach.

Problem-solving nonfiction books tend to be very personal in nature because they address personal problems. For this reason, your book needs to be targeted to each member to your audience.

Whenever you read a nonfiction book that truly resonates with you, you’ll find that the entire book is actually addressed to “you.” In most cases you even feel a direct connection with the author, as if they know you and have decided to write their book to help you.

This can only be achieved when you use words such as “you” and “your” to address your reader. If instead you address readers as being part of a group (“us”, “we”, “our”, etc.) your message will become anonymous and your connection will get diluted.

Write your nonfiction book as if you were addressing it to each reader individually and your message will be delivered much more effectively.

Do #4: Write to Connect First, Then to Communicate

When you write a problem-solving nonfiction book, you’re doing more than just communicating your ideas or teaching new techniques to your readers. You’re creating a bridge of knowledge between their minds and yours.

The reason you want to build this bridge is that you want to establish a relationship with your readers that’s more than just academic.

You want them to know that you can feel their pain – perhaps you’ve been in their position before – and that you’ll help them overcome it. Your ultimate goal isn’t just to each your readers something new but to entice them to take action.

For this to happen you’ll need to gain their trust. Knowledge without trust leads to suspicion, not action. Write your book primarily with the intent to connect and with the intent to communicate as a secondary goal.

You’ll need to establish these links of trust through:

1. Your authenticity: always be yourself in your writing
2. Your compassion: make your readers know that you’re on their side and aren’t there to pass judgement on them
3. Your selflessness: you’re writing your book as an act of service and you don’t expect anything in return

Then weave your knowledge and your message through this connective tissue. For instance, you could teach new concepts using storytelling techniques or anecdotes from clients that readers can easily relate to.

Do #5: Have Your Manuscript Professionally Edited

Finally, when you complete your manuscript, make sure you hire a competent nonfiction editor to polish it and make it market-ready.

Follow the example shown by accomplished nonfiction authors who still hire editors even after years in the book publishing business.

The thing is, you’re an expert in problem-solving while editors are experts in written communications. These are two very different skill sets.

When you ally yourself with a professional nonfiction editor, you’ll get the best of both worlds: great content and great delivery. And in the competitive nonfiction market this collaboration is critical for success.

As a nonfiction author, you’re expected to be an expert in your field. Therefore, you’ll be measured against a high bar for quality. If you self-edit your book or farm out the job to an English major you risk being perceived as amateurish.

Even if they do a “good” job in your eyes, when compared to the work of expert editors with years in the book business it’ll come across as sub-standard.

Editing is not just about fixing typos and grammatical errors; it’s also about:

• Knowing what works and what doesn’t with nonfiction audiences
• Creating an optimal flow of ideas
• Understanding your readers’ psychology
• Knowing what makes readers engage and disengage
• Knowing how to connect effectively with them

Only experienced professional editors are trained to fulfill all of the above requirements.

Don’t #1: Begin Writing Your Book Before Researching Your Target Audience

Once you decide to write a nonfiction book, it’s very easy to get carried away by the excitement and begin writing as soon as you’re capable of (e.g. once you have a completed book outline).

You have a great idea and you’re certain what you want to write about, so what’s stopping you? The advice from every major nonfiction author!

Never invest time on a book-writing project before you take the time to fully understand your market. Specifically, you need to understand your audience and their needs. Otherwise, you’ll be shooting darts while blindfolded and spun around.

If you’re extremely lucky you may land one dart on the board, but it’ll be a totally random and unrepeatable shot.

Before you put pen to paper, you must first understand:

• Your audience’s likes and dislikes
• Their hopes, dreams, challenges and fears
• What keeps them up at night

Once you get to know your target audience intimately you’ll be able to identify the most pressing problem that your book can help them solve. You’ll also know what to say and what not to say to keep them engaged.

Don’t #2: Write Without a Book Outline

We’ve already stated the importance of creating a book outline before you start writing your manuscript. But this takes a fair amount of effort to achieve and it might be tempting to start writing your book without one.

While you might feel motivated to start writing right away, you’ll find a number of significant roadblocks with this approach.

Some days, you’ll know exactly what you want to write about, while others you’ll come up empty. But writing a book requires consistency day in and day out and it’s hard to write when you’re not inspired.

When ideas simply refuse to come up, you’ll either try to force yourself to write something, which will likely not be your best work, or you’ll end up frustrated and give up for the day, chalking it to writer’s block.

The reason you’ll hit regular “dry spells” is that even though you know that all the information for your book is somewhere in your brain, by using the blank-page approach you’re going about accessing this information the wrong way.

Your brain doesn’t store information sequentially but rather by association, and the most efficient way to retrieve it is by mapping it out on paper using rules of association.

By using the mind-mapping approach, you’ll be able to create a book outline that’ll contain the entire structure of your book.

Once your book outline is completed, you’ll have all the writing prompts that you need to create your entire book without ever experiencing writer’s block.

Don’t #3: Be Inauthentic – Try to Be Someone You’re Not

If you’re a first time author, you may find it challenging to find your voice right away. Unlike working in your business, where you deal with clients face-to-face, writing a book provides you with a shield of anonymity.

At first you’ll be tempted to try to be someone you’re not simply because you don’t yet know how your “written” voice is supposed to sound – this isn’t your default mode of communication.

While this is normal, it’s not conducive to creating a strong connection with your audience. The information in your book may be 100% correct, but your delivery will feel too technical and uninspiring.

What’s the solution? Be willing to become vulnerable in your writing as a pathway to your authenticity. Your audience craves connection because they’re in a vulnerable place, and they need an author who’s willing to be vulnerable as well.

Write from the heart, not the mind, and your message will truly connect with your audience.

Don’t #4: Self-Edit As You Write

For your writing to be fresh and exciting, you need to allow yourself to write from a stream of consciousness. The goal with this approach is to generate as much text as you’re inspired to write, without judging it.

While this style of writing will generate lots of ideas, it’ll be a bit messy as well. But this is a fine trade-off because you want to edit from a position of abundance and not lack. The more information you can produce, the better the final edited product will be.

Having said that, what you don’t want to do is to self-edit as you write (i.e. write a sentence then edit it immediately), because this is highly disruptive to the way your creativity flows.

Creative writing is mostly ruled by the right side of your brain and it requires continuity without interference from your critical left side.

My best advice is to complete an entire section of a chapter before you do any self-editing.

Don’t #5: Write in Isolation

The process of book writing is solitary by nature – it’s just you, your thoughts and your laptop or your notebook. Therefore, it can be tempting to want to write and then rewrite your entire manuscript before showing it to anyone else.

Sometimes this may be motivated by perfectionism – you don’t want to show your writing until you feel it’s ready, other times it may be motivated by self-consciousness – you’ve never written a book before and you don’t feel that your writing is good enough to show to others.

In either case this is a mistake, and the reason for it doesn’t have anything to do with the way you feel about your writing.

If you don’t involve your target audience in your writing from an early stage – even if your writing isn’t your best – you run the risk of creating an entire manuscript that, although on point in terms of content, completely misses the point in terms of audience alignment.

If your audience doesn’t connect with and resonate with your text in its entirety, your book will have a very short life in the market.

The best way to ensure that your book is ideally written for your target audience is to use your network to recruit an advance reader group of people made up of its members.

Every time you finish a book chapter you’ll email them a pdf copy and ask for feedback.

This way you can make the necessary changes in your manuscript to keep your audience engaged as your book develops, without having to backtrack and do major multi-chapter rewrites later on.

Next Steps

Now that you know the dos and don’ts of nonfiction book writing, you’re ready to embark on the exiting world of book publishing To make this ride more enjoyable, I’ve written a companion article that shows you the roadmap you need to follow to go from book idea to printed books: “How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors”.

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 Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

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

Learn 10 Powerful Writing Habits to Fast Track Your Nonfiction Book

 

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.

In this article, you’ll learn the best book writing advice available for new nonfiction authors. You’ll learn how to develop consistent motivation, how to ensure quality writing throughout your book project and how to get to the finish line with a product to be proud of.

1- Set a Firm Publishing Deadline

When it comes to writing nonfiction books, one of the hardest things for authors to do is to achieve a consistent level of motivation throughout the project.

While time always seems to fly at the beginning, driven by the excitement of writing a new book, things can become more complicated as the writing drags on and you reach the dreaded “middle” of the book.

This is the place where most authors lose steam and become demotivated. In fact, it’s estimated that 97% of people who start books don’t publish them, with many giving up halfway through.

So, how can you keep yourself out of this conundrum? By learning from the pros.

Let me explain: traditionally published authors are required to sign a publishing agreement, part of which sets a clear timeline to deliver a manuscript.

Since they’re legally bound to a deadline, they don’t have much of a choice when it comes to finding motivation when they don’t feel like writing, because there are clear negative consequences to their inaction.

This is what you have to emulate in your own book project. By self-publishing, you won’t be subject to a deadline, unless you impose one yourself. How? By scheduling an event with a firm date a year from now where you’ll be unveiling your book.

Examples of Firm Deadlines

Here are some examples of events you can arrange for your book:

• A public-speaking engagement with a professional or trade association
• A seasonal event in your industry
• A trade show panel or workshop
• A conference
• A professional gathering

In some of the above cases you’ll have to sign an agreement, especially if there are speaking fees involved, so you’ll be in the same boat as professional authors.

And even if you’re not required to sign a formal agreement, now you have a public commitment to fulfill with a third party. That’ll become the driver for your motivation to complete your project within the right time frame.

2- Write Every Day

Book writing, like any other creative endeavor, requires practice in order to get good at it.

In the same way that sustained practice with a musical instrument allows you to develop the muscle memory necessary to play it with mastery, sustained writing practice allows you to develop the writing muscle required to produce quality content at speed.

If you want to succeed as a nonfiction writer, then you need to train like the pros train. Even when they’ve been around for decades, professional writers still schedule time to write every day.

Why? Because, like any other muscle, the writing muscle needs to be exercised continuously to remain conditioned. This involves a period of exercise (a daily writing block of time) balanced by a period of rest and recovery.

Writing sporadically won’t allow your writing muscle to develop and, at the other end of the spectrum, going on writing marathons will lead to creative exhaustion.

The best balance is to find a length of time every day that’s sufficient for exercising your writing muscle but that also takes into account your other responsibilities in work and life.

The ideal daily block of time for a new nonfiction author is two hours, 6 days a week.

How Long Will It Take You to Write a Book?

At this rate, and making sure you don’t have any distractions, you’ll be able to produce between 400 and 500 words per hour of raw (unedited) text, or between 800 and 1,000 words per day.

If you write six days per week, you’ll be producing between 4,800 and 6,000 words per week.

If you’re aiming for a 50,000 book (approximately 200-pages long if you include images and other graphical elements), then you’ll require between 8.5 and 10.5 weeks to do all your raw writing.

Then you should double this amount to take care of self-editing and rewrites plus time to allow for holidays, illness, etc., and you’ll be now in the 17-21 week range, or approximately 4-5 months.

Beyond this range, you’ll need to allocate time for a professional edit and book production (typically another 4-5 months).

3- Protect Your Writing Time

The creative writing process requires a quiet environment. If you get regularly interrupted by either people or electronic devices, you’ll never be able to achieve cruising speed.

For thoughts to become ideas and for ideas to flow from your mind to the page, you need a continuous stretch of peace and quiet. Once you choose your 2-hour daily writing block, you’re going to have to take measures to protect it.

First off, you’ll need to enlist those around you to support your project by not interrupting you during your two-hour writing block, save for an emergency.

Any phone calls need to go to voice mail or be handled by someone else. You also have to refrain from checking, reading or answering any email, text messages, or any other type of direct communications.

For this purpose, you’ll need to mute all your electronic devices for the duration of your writing block so that you’re not disturbed by the sounds of notifications. Also, you’ll have to refrain from going online during this time.

Your writing time is strictly for writing, not for researching. Any type of online activity must be conducted outside of these hours. If you do need to check up on something that you’re writing about, make a note to do it later.

Why? Because the unending character of Internet searches makes it a rabbit hole, and it doesn’t take much for a five-minute search to extend to twenty minutes, or worse yet an hour, and all of a sudden half of your writing block is wasted.

Ideal Places to Write Your Book

Now let’s talk about your writing place. You may prefer the intimacy of a private location or perhaps you get more inspiration from a public space. Either is good, just make sure that whatever place you choose brings you an underlying sense of joy.

You want to use a space that’s conducive to creativity. For instance, having a nice view out of the window helps, or perhaps you have a favorite spot in the house you enjoy spending time in.

For those who like the outdoors, some people enjoy writing from a park bench or from the botanical gardens or other type of public gardens if there’s one near where you live. Some other people enjoy writing at their favorite coffee shop.

Once again, any place is good, provided that it brings you a sense of joy.

4- Assemble an Advance Reader Group

This is one of the best pieces of advice for nonfiction book writers: don’t write in isolation. Remember that you’re not writing a book for yourself but for your target audience, therefore it’s wise to enlist their help to give you feedback as you write your manuscript.

How? By assembling an advance reader group before you start writing. You’ll need to tap into your network to recruit these members from your target audience.

You don’t want to include your own family members or close friends in this group, but family and friends of your friends is okay. You’ll want between 5 and 10 people that are preferably at arms-length from you, but people that you can trust will commit to your book project.

You should thank them by giving them a signed copy of your printed book as soon as it comes out, and mention their name with some kind words in your acknowledgments.

The advance reading process is quite simple. Just email your readers a pdf of each chapter in your manuscript as soon as you finish it and ask them to give you feedback.

Then you need to take their feedback and implement the best ideas. Sometimes you’ll get a great comment from an individual and sometimes you’ll see a consensus pointing out the same issue. Use your best judgment – you’ll learn as you go.

Why not wait until your manuscript is finished before soliciting feedback? Because you want to ensure that every chapter resonates with your target audience.

You don’t want to finish all your writing only to find out then that in the middle of chapter 3 people started tuning out, forcing you to rewrite three quarters of your book in order to bring it back into alignment with your audience.

Your advance reading group may take some time to assemble, but it’ll be one of the best things you can do for your book.

5- Have Your Manuscript Professionally Edited

The final piece of book writing advice is to have your manuscript professionally edited. Every professional nonfiction author has an editor and so should you.

An expert nonfiction editor will help you not only gain perspective on your writing by bringing in a fresh pair of eyes, but they’ll also know the best practices for communicating effectively with nonfiction audiences.

They’ll know from experience what works for them and what doesn’t, helping you reshape your flow of ideas to pack more punch for your audience.

They’ll do all of the above in addition to making sure that your grammar and syntax is correct and that your text doesn’t contain typos.

Now, nonfiction editing is composed of a number of stages. Some editors may be able to perform all stages, but more often than not you may be required to hire different specialists.

The 4 Stages of Nonfiction Editing

Below, you’ll learn about the four stages of nonfiction editing, beginning at the highest structural level and ending with a final word-by-word quality check:

• Developmental Editing: This editing pass looks at the overall structure of your book. Its goal is to ensure that your message is being successfully delivered to your target audience.
• Content Editing: This editing pass has more to do with readability than structure. It ensures that paragraphs and sentences in your manuscript are well-constructed and that the flow of your ideas is clear.
• Copyediting: This editing pass is required to make certain that you’re using accurate language in your manuscript with no spelling, punctuation, capitalization, syntax or grammatical errors.
• Proofreading: This editing pass is the fine-tooth comb check that catches any typos that were missed in all prior stages to ensure your book is error-free before going to print.

Next Steps

Nonfiction book publishing is a very rewarding endeavor if done right, but it can become very frustrating if you don’t follow the best practices. The above advice will set you on the right path and make sure that you build a strong foundation.

To build further on that foundation, I’ve written a number of companion articles that’ll guide you through the publishing process and help you avoid costly mistakes:

• “How to Write a Compelling Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Nonfiction Authors”
• “The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Entrepreneurial Authors”
• “The 7 Most Effective Writing Strategies for Entrepreneurial Authors”

Best of luck on this exciting 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 Grow Your Business Writing a Nonfiction Book

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

How to Become a Great Book Writer in Business Nonfiction

The 7 Key Rules for Writers of Outstanding Nonfiction Books

Learn 10 Powerful Writing Habits to Fast Track Your Nonfiction Book

 

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.

If you’re looking for a set of book writing rules to improve your nonfiction skills, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, you’ll learn the five cardinal rules, or best practices, for nonfiction authors to ensure that your book has a solid foundation for market success.

Rule 1: Don’t Write Until You Know Your Target Audience Inside and Out

There’s an age-old saying in the marketing world: “Market to everyone and sell to no one.” Interestingly, this expression couldn’t be more apt in the nonfiction genre.

If you write a nonfiction book for a general audience, unless you’re already a famous author with a large built-in following, you’ll find it nearly impossible to find success.

For example, if you write a book with strategies for weight loss and market it to those in the general public who want to lose weight (hundreds of millions of people), you’ll encounter the following problems:

• What you’re writing about has been written about before by authors with much more credibility and name recognition than you
• It’s extremely expensive to market to a large and highly fragmented market with multiple and differing needs
• You’ll be out-competed by deep-pocketed behemoths in a $212 billion global market. For example, Weight Watchers alone spent nearly $200 million in advertising worldwide in 2018.

For new nonfiction books to find success, they must be written exclusively to help a specific “niche” audience. The more specific this audience and the more targeted your solution, the higher your chances for finding success in the market.

Thoroughly Research Your Target Audience

Once you find the right audience that could benefit from your expertise, your next job is to get to know them intimately.

Before you can define what your book will be about, you need to find out what’s the most painful problem for your target audience which is aligned with your area of expertise.

Your goal then is to create a unique solution for this problem.

But this isn’t enough to find success.

Once you’ve nailed down your target audience, their pressing problem and your unique solution, you need to be able to build a bond so they can trust you. And the only way you can gain their trust is by getting to know them at a deep level.

Once you learn what keeps them up at night, what they worry about and what they fear the most, you’ll be able to craft a message that truly resonates with them.

If you don’t take the time to do this preliminary research, you’ll have at best a 50/50 chance of connecting with your audience.

Where Do You Find This Information?

Start by interviewing your own clients. Tell them that you’re writing a book and what your subject is, and also tell them that their answers will be anonymous and only used for statistical purposes.

Another way to obtain this information is through online forums (if available in your niche). Forums often have an introductory thread for new members to relate their experiences, their key problems and their aspirations.

These threads can be a treasure trove of target-audience information. Many times you’ll find important demographic details, such as age, gender, profession, number of children, etc.

This aggregated profile information will be used in the following step.

Create Your Target Audience’s Avatar

Now it’s time to merge the above information into a single profile (or two if your target audience has members of both genders). This profile will represent your “ideal” client and you should complete it as follows:

• Make up a name
• Get a headshot from a free stock-photo site
• Pick the average age and most prevalent marital status
• Use the most common profession and income level if available
• Average number of children, their status and their living arrangements (single, married, working, studying, living at home, living away)
• Home ownership
• Any pets? Hobbies?
• Are there any common health or other issues?
• Is there anything they worry about?
• List their hopes, dreams, fears and challenges
• If available, list their main aspirations

This “avatar” of your ideal client will be whom your book is addressed to.

Rule 2: Don’t Write Until You Have Gathered Solid Social Proof

There’s an expectation from the market that all nonfiction authors are subject-matter experts. In fact, you’ll be granted this status the minute your book is published. However, you’ll also be expected to demonstrate your expertise.

Before you present your unique solution to your target audience, you have to make sure that you’ve thoroughly tested it with clients first. Unless you can show clear evidence of your results, your readers will dismiss your findings as unsubstantiated.

In preparation for writing your book, you’ll need to accumulate a significant number of testimonials from clients that you can then weave into your text as case studies, anecdotes and stories.

Not only will your audience need to see your social proof so you’ll be considered a credible expert, but also you want them to identify with your clients. If they can see themselves in your clients’ stories, they’ll be willing to believe in your solution.

Rule 3: Always Write for an Audience of One

Nonfiction readers get attracted to the genre because they’re seeking help. They’re afflicted by a painful problem and are actively searching for a solution.

Now, personal problems demand a personal solution. Therefore, when a member of your target audience picks up your title, they’ll expect that you’re addressing your entire book to them.

For example, when you read an excellent nonfiction book in an area of need or interest, you’ll invariably feel that the author is engaging with you directly. You’ll feel a direct connection with the author, almost as if they knew you.

The reason you feel this deep connection is twofold. First, it’s an indication that they really know their target audience (you) intimately. Second, it’s an indication that they’ve written their book for an audience of one (for your eyes only).

When you write your book, make sure that you don’t address it to an anonymous group of people by using words such as “we, our, us” but instead addressing your audience of one in the second person: “you, your.”

Rule 4: Use the Power of Story to Connect with Your Readers

Given the personal nature of problem-solving, nonfiction books require a high level of connection with readers. One of the most powerful devices for connecting with an audience is storytelling.

Our brains seem to be pre-wired to be susceptible to storytelling. When a story is well-constructed, it’s nearly impossible to not suspend our disbelief and become engrossed in it.

This human tendency has been the fuel that’s driven the tremendous blockbuster success of the fiction genre. For example, the stories told by its two most successful authors, William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie, have resulted in the sale of over 4 billion books!

In order to create a deep level of connection with your target audience, you’ll be taking a page from the world of fiction.

By using the power of storytelling to deliver your message, you’ll reach much deeper levels of connection than by using informational techniques.

The works well because storytelling allows you to connect with audiences at an emotional level, whereas the acquisition of information relies exclusively on the intellect which is much more filtered and constrained.

Rule 5: Be 100% Authentic

Finally, in order to enhance your connection with readers, you need to allow yourself to be vulnerable in your writing, because vulnerability is founded on authenticity, and authenticity is a magnet for human connection.

It’s nearly impossible to develop trust with an audience when you’re not being yourself. Inauthenticity is paper-thin – readers will see through it and be turned off by it. On the other hand, the most successful nonfiction authors have a level of authenticity that pervades their writing.

Authenticity will also bring out your authentic voice. When you use your own voice, instead of trying to sound like someone you’re not, you won’t be afraid to be yourself and your reading experience will feel like a breath of fresh air.

For example, if you weren’t authentic with your business clients you wouldn’t be in business in the first place. Your writing career should be no different.

Next Steps

By learning and applying these rules, you’ll be off to a good start in your nonfiction book project. Your next step is to complement the above rules with the writing skills nonfiction pros use to create great books.

My companion article “The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Entrepreneurial Authors” will teach you the skills you need to develop to become a top-notch nonfiction writer.

All the best!

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 Nonfiction Book in 12 Steps: A Must-Read Guide for Business Owners

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

Learn 10 Powerful Writing Habits to Fast Track Your Nonfiction Book

How to Come Up With Great Book Ideas For Business Owners

 

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.

By using a proven nonfiction book-writing checklist, you’ll be able to focus only on the aspects of book publishing that’ll increase your chances of success while saving you countless days, weeks and months spinning your wheels on strategies that don’t work.

In this article, I’ve compiled a checklist of specific questions that you need to answer in order to create a nonfiction book that gets traction in the marketplace.

Why Nonfiction Authors Need a Clear Checklist

Professional nonfiction authors succeed because they follow a clear formula developed and refined over the years. These seasoned authors have developed a clear understanding of the power of nonfiction to affect change in people’s lives.

In fact, they’ve proven over time that this process is repeatable. Once you learn the basics of what makes nonfiction so effective as a change agent, you’ll be able to replicate these strategies for the benefit of your book and your business.

Book Writing Checklist

The following checklist will help ensure that you produce a nonfiction book that has what it takes to succeed in this exciting and transformational genre.

Have You Thoroughly Researched Top Nonfiction Titles in Your Niche?

The power of nonfiction books hinges on their ability to connect with readers. The most successful nonfiction titles use best practices to achieve this key outcome.

They make use of “hooks” to engage the reader’s attention and keep them engaged. They make use of the “power of story-telling” to draw readers in and take them through an emotional journey of discovery and learning.

Above all, these authors are very good at addressing their books to an audience of one. Whenever you read a good nonfiction book, you almost feel as if the author was talking directly to you.

These are the types of best practices that you must learn from the pros by reading their books. But you have to read them twice, first as a reader and then as an author.

As a reader, you want to note on the margins whenever a section really draws you in, whenever you feel an emotional pull, whenever you experience sadness, joy, excitement, anger, etc.

As an author, use color-coded highlighters to identify the use of effective nonfiction techniques. For example, you could use a different color to highlight hooks, metaphors, analogies, anecdotes, rhetorical questions, etc.

Have You Thoroughly Researched Your Target Audience?

For a nonfiction book to succeed, it must be able to truly connect with its target audience, and in order to do so you’ll have to develop a deep understanding of their state of mind.

You’ll need to research what makes your audience stay up at night, what challenges they face and what their fears are, but also what their dreams and aspirations are.

This information is critical to understanding how the problem that you’ll help them solve with your book affects their lives and what level of pain it triggers in them.

Also, your unique solution must be something that resonates with your audience – it has to make sense based on their viewpoint.

If your solution is effective but doesn’t jive with your audience, they’ll simply dismiss it. This is why you need to know your audience intimately.

For example, using meditation techniques for weight control (by learning how to use your mind to ignore the hunger signals sent to your brain) won’t work on a demographic that doesn’t believe in or practice meditation.

Have You Clearly Identified the Problem You’re Going to Solve?

People’s problems have varying degrees of urgency, and this urgency is linked to the level of pain they experience as a result.

A problem with a pain level of 9 or 10 will demand immediate action and the expenditure of more resources than say a problem that registers with a pain level of 3 or 4.

If you want your nonfiction book to succeed in the marketplace, you’ll need to focus on solving a problem that triggers a high pain level in your audience.

If your book addresses a low to mid-level pain, your audience’s motivation to find it and then buy it will be much more subdued.

A weight loss book premised on how to lose weight to fit into last year’s clothes will never carry the same gravitas of a book premised on losing weight to help reduce mounting health risks for diabetes sufferers.

So always make sure to use your expertise to solve the problem with the highest level of pain for the audience in your niche.

Have You Established a Hard Publication Deadline?

Now that you know your audience intimately, identified the most important problem that your book can solve and researched the nonfiction books in your niche, it’s time to write your book!

But first, you’ll have to overcome the statistic showing that 97% of writers who start a book don’t finish it, or they finish it but never get around to publishing it.

In order to do so, and therefore become part of the remaining 3% who do publish their books, you’ll have to set a hard publication deadline.

Traditionally published authors negotiate a publication deadline with their publishers and then formalize it through the signing or a publishing agreement.

Self-published authors like yourself don’t have a publishing agreement to fall back on, so you’ll have to create this urgency by making a public commitment that’s firm and immovable.

For example, you can get yourself scheduled to speak at an industry event, a convention or a professional association keynote a year from now, when you’ll be unveiling your new book to colleagues.

It is by having a hard publication deadline that you’ll find the necessary motivation to soldier on when the going gets tough, which is bound to happen from time to time when life gets in the way.

Have you Created a Solid Book Outline?

Once you have your audience and message dialed in, you’ll need to begin the writing process in earnest.

Now, one option is to start with a blank page on your computer screen waiting to inspiration to strike. Most times this approach will lead to failure because you can’t just will yourself to be inspired on command.

A much more effective approach, which is in fact the approach used by professional nonfiction authors, is to create a thorough outline of your book.

How do you do this? By considering the premise that your book is really inside of your mind already. Its contents are informed by years of professional practice and skill development. They’re also informed by your professional as well as your personal experience, and by your experiences with clients, prospects and business associates.

In short, you’ll have to figure out a way to extract all this information from your brain and put it on a piece of paper so that you can shape it into a book.

One of the most effective techniques for achieving this goal is Mind Mapping. This technique emulates the way that our brains store and retrieve information to create a “mind map” of your book.

This mind map is a pictorial representation of the content tree of your book, which can then be easily shaped into an outline.

Once you have a solid book outline, showing all the main ideas to be covered in your chapters and sub-chapters, then you’ll have planted the seeds of your book.

Armed with your outline, you’ll now be able to pick any section that inspires you and begin writing about it immediately.

Triggered by the section’s headline, your brain will simply fill in the blanks by flooding your mind with recollections and ideas that will get your fingertips busy for pages on end.

To help you expedite this process, the articles below will show you how to create a mind map and an outline for your nonfiction book:

• How to Use a Mind Map to Create a Great Book for Your Business
• How to Create a Book Outline Step-By-Step: A Guide for Nonfiction Writers

Have You Set Up an Advance Reader Group?

Before you begin writing your book, you’ll need to enlist the help of people you trust who also happen to be members of your target audience to act as your Advance Reader Group.

As soon as you finish writing and revising each chapter, you’ll need to email them a pdf version of it so that they can read it and give you feedback before you get too deep into your book.

This powerful team will help you hone your message so that it continuously resonates with your audience. If something is off in a given chapter, they’ll let you know well before you start going down a rabbit hole.

Your book might be a compendium of your expertise, but it must written for your readers. If they can’t connect with your message, no matter how well-developed it might be in your eyes, your book is bound to fail.

The worst case scenario is that you finish writing your manuscript and then circulate it with a group of test readers, only two find out that you went off course in the middle of chapter 2 and that the only way to fix your manuscript is to do a complete do-over.

This is not only inefficient because you’ll almost be writing an entire new book as a result, but also very demoralizing. It may take you extra effort to set up an advance reader group, but it’ll be worth its weight in gold.

Have You Hired a Professional Nonfiction Editor?

Once your manuscript is completed, you’ll need to do what every seasoned nonfiction author does – hire a professional editor to polish it.

While you’re the content expert in your subject matter, you editor is the wordsmith who knows not only how words go together but also how certain combinations of words can affect your readers.

They’re part word artists, part marketing specialists and part students of human psychology, focused on understanding how readers interpret the written word.

This set of skills is very complementary with your subject-matter expertise, because while you may know your content inside and out, you may not know how to make your content compelling to your readers.

That’s where professional nonfiction editors come into the picture. They’ll help you shape your message to ensure that it really connects with your target audience. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t.

Then, they’ll make recommendations so that you can make the necessary fixes to make your manuscript shine.

Here’s another consideration. By the mere act of publishing a nonfiction book, you’ll be assumed to be an expert in the eyes of your readers. Therefore, your book will be expected to meet a high bar for content quality and execution excellence. There will be simply too much on the line for you to risk doing a low-quality editing job.

But this expectation will also work in the other direction: if you make an extra effort to produce a premium product, your cachet will increase.

For example, you’ll be able to attract media attention, you’ll be able to attract higher paid speaking gigs, you’ll be able to convert more prospects into clients and you’ll be able to take your business to a new level.

Next Steps

If you’re now itching to get started, here are additional articles that’ll help you develop good nonfiction writing habits:

• Learn 10 Powerful Writing Habits to Fast Track Your Nonfiction Book
• The Most Effective Writing Exercises for Busy Business People
• The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Nonfiction Authors
• The 7 Key Rules for Writers of Outstanding Nonfiction Books
• The 7 Most Effective Writing Strategies for Entrepreneurial Authors

Good luck!

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?

How to Become a Great Book Writer in Business Nonfiction

 

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.

You need to follow a clear writing plan in order to write a nonfiction book to increase the profile of your business or your career. The right writing plan will allow you to develop the discipline and focus necessary to get the job done in the most efficient way, eliminating unnecessary time wasters and frustration.

Not surprisingly, 97% of people who start a book never complete it. Now, there are many reasons why this happens and they vary from person to person. But if you were to look for patterns you would find that the lack of a proper writing plan had a lot to do with it.

In this article, I’ll show you a three-part plan to develop good writing habits that’ll enable you to continuously generate content for your book, day in and day out.

I’ll also show you how much time your book project should take, so that you can set the right expectations for yourself from the get-go.

Part 1: Plan Your Writing Space

The first part of your writing plan consists of setting up your writing space. We’re creatures of habit, so in order to develop consistency in your book writing, you need to surround yourself with an environment that is conducive to a positive outcome.

You want your writing to be something that you look forward to every day, not something that is a drudgery you’d rather avoid. Therefore, you want to choose an environment that makes you feel good to be in.

Some people feel most inspired in an atmosphere of peace and quiet. If you’re one of those people, then you’ll likely choose a space with privacy. Some others need the constant buzzing of life around them in order to get inspired. If you’re one of those folks, then a public place will be more ideal.

Writing at Home of in the Office

If you work best in a private space, choose a place at home or in the office that you really enjoy hanging around in. Here are some options:

• Choose a space with window views that are aesthetically pleasing, like a beautifully landscaped garden or the view of a treed park.
• Choose a room where the color of the walls is calming and where the decor is uplifting.
• Or maybe you have a great writing desk with a high-quality chair where you can sit for hours on end with no discomfort.

Just make sure that you choose a place that feels inviting. For some people, it’ll be their home office, for others it’ll be a nook in the kitchen or a small sitting area off their bedroom. Or perhaps it’ll be a glass enclosure in the back patio or, weather permitting, a space out in the garden under an atrium.

Writing in Public Places

If you’re the kind of person who can’t write in total silence, then you’ll be joining the throngs of writers armed with laptops calling their favorite coffee shops home. Here are some options:

• Patronizing your favorite coffee shop
• Going to a public library
• College libraries can be very inspiring when you’re surrounded by beautiful architecture
• Some people like to write sitting on a park bench at their favorite city park or at the botanical gardens.

In all cases, make sure you find seating that’s comfortable, an electrical outlet nearby in case your battery runs low and a location with little glare so you don’t strain your eyes looking at your screen.

Part 2: Plan Your Writing Time

The second part of your writing plan is to select the amount of time that you’ll be devoting to writing your manuscript. Since you’re already busy running your own business, writing your nonfiction book will have to adapt to your primary work schedule.

The ideal writing block for most people in your circumstances is two hours long. Writing for less time won’t allow you to get up to “cruising speed,” and writing for longer may lead you to creative fatigue.

What’s important is that you don’t try to bank hours by writing for, say, five hours straight one day because you feel inspired, and then skipping the next day. This won’t lead you to success because it lacks the focus that can only be achieved with consistency.

Also, you want to make sure that your writing blocks always start and end at the same time. A killer of discipline is to write one day in the morning, the next day in the evening, and the next day in the afternoon.

Developing your writing muscle is no different than developing any other muscle in your body. After you exercise it intensely, you need a period of rest and recovery before you exercise it again.

Translating Your Writing Plan to a Word Count

Once you get into a routine, you’ll find that you’ll be able to write between 400 and 500 words per hour for a daily total of between 800 and 1,000 words. Writing for six days a week will translate to between 4,800 and 6,000 words per week.

Now, if you’re aiming for a 200-page book, with an average word-count per page of 250 words to account for images and other white space, you’ll be writing 50,000 words in total.

At 4,800-6,000 words per week writing two hours per day, six days per week, it’ll take you between 9 and 10 weeks to complete your manuscript.

To be conservative, let’s add a safety factor of 50% to allow for disruptions, illness and holidays and you’ll be finishing your manuscript in 13-15 weeks, or approximately three months.

Part 3: Plan Your Writing Schedule

The final part of your writing plan is to set up your writing schedule. Ideally, you’ll want to write for two hours every day including weekends. Your goal is to carve out two hours outside of your daily responsibilities.

If you have young kids and you need a full family day set aside for activities, then it’s perfectly fine to bring your daily writing schedule down to 5 days. But don’t make it less than 5 days, otherwise it’ll become difficult for you to fully develop your writing muscle.

Professional authors follow a daily writing habit for this very reason. They know that if they stop exercising their writing muscle it’ll lose strength. When it comes to writing, repetition and consistency is key.

Another key is to eliminate any type of distractions that could interrupt your creative flow. When you set your writing schedule, it’s imperative that you enlist the support and cooperation of your family, friends and work associates.

If you choose to write at home or in the office, make sure that no one comes in the room during your two-hour writing block for any reason outside of an emergency.

The same applies to your friends. Let them know that you’ve set up a protected schedule to write a book and that during those times they’re not to reach out to you through texting, phone calls or any other type of direct messaging.

Writer Distractions You Need to Avoid at All Cost

As stated above, when you sit down to write it’s imperative that nobody can disturb you outside of force majeure. But while those are external distractions, there are internal distractions that you need to avoid as well.

Here’s a list of things to avoid:

• The beeps and dings of notifications: set your phone to do-not-disturb and mute the sound on your laptop.
• The ringer on your phone: turn it down so that you don’t get startled if someone tries to contact you in case of emergency.
• Checking your email or your text messages: if someone must reach you right away, they can call you or simply walk in the door. Make sure people always know where to find you.
• As an extension of the above: don’t reply to emails during this time! If you promised someone a reply earlier in the day, then wait until after your writing block ends to do so.
• Browsing the Internet when you’re writing: if you need to do some research for your book, do it outside of your writing blocks. The last thing you want is to fall into a Google search rabbit hole that ends up eating half your writing time.

Next Steps

The worst enemies of writers are lack of consistency, lack of focus, lack of discipline and external and internal distractions, which includes the most powerful time sinkhole of all time: the Internet.

Whenever you work on your book, you have to make sure that you go “off the grid” during your writing blocks. Short of an actual emergency, you need to set up your schedule so you can eliminate all disruptions to your creative flow.

Professional writers swear by this writing plan because it works. Remember that when you complete and publish your nonfiction book and you begin to leverage it to get paid public speaking gigs plus back-of-the-room and bookstore sales, you’ll be a professional author too.

So, make sure to follow their best practices well before your book begins to generate revenue!

If you’d like to develop an expanded set of writing habits, I have a companion article that you might find beneficial: Learn 10 Powerful Writing Habits to Fast Track Your Nonfiction Book.

Good luck!

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 articles I highly recommend:

How to Come Up With Killer Book Titles for Your Nonfiction Book

How to Write a Compelling Book Introduction That Will Move the Needle

How Much Does it Cost to Self-Publish a Nonfiction Book?

 

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.

If you research what the basic rules for writers are, you’ll read about proper punctuation, proper use of adverbs and adjectives, sentence and paragraph length, and so on. While these mechanical writing rules are all valid and must be observed, I’ve chosen to focus today on the behavioral rules of writing instead.

On the surface, the job of the writer is to create helpful content that readers will consume and enjoy. But the true job of a writer is much deeper than that. Stephen King put it very eloquently when he said: “The job of a writer is to transfer the ideas inside your head into the heads of your readers.”

Let’s explore this further. People like to compartmentalize things in order to make sense of the world, so we create labels – you’re a writer and I am a reader. As a writer you’ll decide what you’re going to write about, and as the reader I’ll decide what to read. But when you think about it, while labels may make for a nice intellectual construct, they’re not very useful for describing human connection. If anything, they’re more about separating than unifying.

At its core, writing fulfills the much deeper need to learn from each other, to enrich each other’s lives and to be of service to others.

#464545;”>This is what writing really is at its foundation: a vehicle to create a deep connection between human beings – one the writer, the other one the reader.

So, let’s now focus on the type of “human” rules for writers that’ll help you create a nonfiction book for your business or career that strikes a deep bond with your readers.

Rule #1: Write Every Day

This is the cardinal rule of successful writers, whether they have 5 books to their name or 50.

Developing writing mastery is no different from developing mastery in a musical instrument. Very few professional musicians people born with a gift – the vast majority are people that worked really hard at it, practicing every single day.

You have to create a daily writing routine that’s independent from your work life and your family life. If you’re running your own business and want to write a book to establish yourself as an expert in your field, create a two-hour writing block 6 days a week where you’ll be able to write without interruption. Enlist the help of your family and/or staff to make this possible: no phone calls and no one walking in on you.

Rule #2: Write Honestly and Authentically

Now you’re ready to begin your journey. Here’s my advice: it’s critical that you learn to communicate in writing in the same way that you communicate directly with your clients. In all your interactions, you must have a foundation of honesty and authenticity; otherwise you wouldn’t be able to stay in business, right?

Let me re-frame it this way: writing your book is really an extension of your business. You’ll be communicating in a different medium and to a much larger audience, but your goal remains the same – you have to be transparent and you have to be yourself at all times.

Readers can sense dishonesty and a lack of authenticity from a mile away. It won’t take long for them to sense that something is “off” with the author.

On the other hand, when authors use their authentic voice and aren’t afraid to be themselves, warts and all, the reading experience becomes refreshing and the connection with the reader becomes much deeper.

You can’t really connect with someone who’s trying to be someone else – this is what the second rule for writers is about.

Rule #3: Don’t Hold Anything Back When You Write

As an extension to Rule #2, once you’ve decided to write a book to support and grow your business or career, you have to go “all in.” Don’t try to protect your ideas from theft by just offering a teaser of your knowledge.

To write truly successful nonfiction, you have to be able to bare your soul on the page. Don’t hold back any information that could be of help to your readers.

The more you give they more you’ll get in return. Your book’s word of mouth marketing will be stronger, you’ll attract more readers, you’ll get better reviews, and in the end, more doors will open for you.

Authenticity in your writing is a great selling tool. But if you combine it with the generosity and selflessness from rule for writers #3 you’ve now created a game changer.

Rule #4: Do Your Writing off The Grid

We’ve already established in Rule #1 that you’re not to be interrupted when you sit down to write. Now, those are external interruptions. Equally critical, however, are internal interruptions.

Having so much technology packed into your laptop or tablet, it’s tempting to regularly switch away from our writing app whenever we hear the ding of a notification – perhaps an email you’ve been waiting for, a new post that caught your eye, an incoming text, etc.

All of these distractions, even if you don’t act on them immediately, disrupt your creative flow – the direct link between your mind and your typing fingers. You need to learn to treasure this connection because it’s from this state of creative thinking that your best writing ideas will come.

My suggestion is to go “off the grid,” on your device, and what I mean by that depends on your writing tools. If you’re using a native app like Word, which doesn’t need to be connected to the Internet in order to operate, then turn Wi-Fi off for the entire duration of your two-hour writing block. This will stop all notifications from popping up.

If you’re using an online writing app like Google Docs, then mute the sound on your computer instead. In either case also set your smartphone to “do not disturb.” If there’s an emergency that requires your presence, just make sure people know where you are.

Rule #5: Focus Just on the Text In Front of You

When you work on a project as complex and multi-faceted as writing a book, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So when you’re sitting down to write, you need to put the blinders on and focus exclusively on only what you’re writing about at that moment.

You can’t be thinking about the other 200 pages you still need to write and you can’t be thinking about whether the chapter you wrote yesterday needs more work.

Now, this will take some discipline and you’ll have to go through a bit of a learning curve. But you can’t write well and have distracting thoughts at the same time. Worrying about a past or future event will take you out of a state of presence and your writing will suffer as a result. Why?

Because creativity requires a state of presence in order to achieve flow. And this flow of thoughts and ideas from your mind down to your fingertips gets blocked if you’re focusing on the past or the future.

Rule #6: Don’t Write to Exhaustion

Never exceed your two-hour writing limit. If you push yourself to write until you’re creatively spent, say for 3 or 4 hours straight, you’ll begin to resent the act of writing because you’ll be setting an impossible expectation for the future.

It’s much more effective to write for two hours and leave behind a ton of ideas to write about another time. Just capture these ideas on a notepad in bullet form and use them as a seed for inspiration the next day.

Also, you don’t need to worry about ever running out of ideas, because as a nonfiction author writing about your professional life experience, you’re not creating an entire new premise from scratch like a fiction author. You’re simply downloading information you’re already familiar with from your brain onto the written page.

Rule #7: Whenever You Write, Always Go With the Flow

Finally, your book needs to be written with a sense of “flow.” Everything you write must flow because readers don’t sense “writing” – they sense flow. Author Elmore Leonard once said: “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.”

If all readers “see” is just the writing, they won’t feel a connection with you. If you use words that aren’t essential to the text, words that don’t add anything to your message, then remove them.

How do you know if you’ve written a non-essential word? Here’s a simple test: if the passage retains its full meaning after removing that word, then it’s not needed.

Also, don’t be afraid to cut out writing that took a lot of effort to create but that doesn’t feel right. Usually things that are hard to write tend to go against the flow. On the other hand, things that are easy to write, where your fingers seem to be moving on their own, tend to flow naturally.

From experience, I can tell you that trying to rewrite something that clearly doesn’t fit the narrative will hardly ever make it fit. If it’s proven hard to write, it’ll prove hard to rewrite – you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole.

Bonus Rule: Don’t worry about quality – at least at first

I’ll leave you with a bonus rule for writers that works wonders, especially for first-time authors. Now, what I’m going to say next is definitely going to sound counter intuitive: to produce a quality book you can’t focus on quality while you’re writing it!

The reason is that when you sit down to write you’re working from a stream of consciousness. You may already know what you’re going to be writing about – today’s section will be about the X, Y and Z lessons you learned working with one of your clients – what you don’t know is what you’re going to actually write.

Your goal in this initial writing stage is to establish a direct and unfiltered connection between your brain and your fingertips so that you can capture this “torrent” of information on the printed page. You goal isn’t to give it shape yet.

So if you’re thinking, “I need to write something with quality,” then that’s a sure-fire way to turn off your creative tap. You’re now letting your critical thinking get in the way of your creativity and your writing will become stale.

Leave the quality control for the multiple rewrites you’ll be doing after you’re done with the initial creative phase. When you switch hats and become your own editor, your critical thinking will step in to give your creative writing the shape and the quality it needs to pass muster with your readers.

Practice these seven rules for writers plus the bonus rule every time you sit down to write your book and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with your end product!

All the best!

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 generate additional leads for their businesses.

 

Here are some related articles I highly recommend:

The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Nonfiction Authors

How to Become a Great Book Writer in Business Nonfiction

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

How to Come Up With a Killer Title for Your Nonfiction Book

The Most Effective Writing Exercises for Busy Business People

 

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.

Hiring a writing coach is not that much different than hiring a sports coach. People who play competitive sports recreationally, like ice hockey, soccer or basketball rarely (ever?) hire coaches to help them improve their game. Yet every single professional athlete who participates in the same sports does – without exception. Why is that?

Because no matter how good an athlete may be in their mastery of the sport, their complete immersion in playing the game prevents them from taking the necessary distance from the field to assess how they’re playing. It can be hard for them to see where they’re getting stuck, what could be improved, how to play faster, with more accuracy, with better angles of attack, etc.

The same applies to nonfiction writers – especially those who are writing a book to improve their career or business profile, to reach out to more clients or to be recognized as experts in their field.

If you’re such a writer, your book will become an extension of your professional life, a calling card that’ll communicate your skills, your experience and your subject knowledge to the world – and above all, it’ll become a proxy for your personal reputation.

For this reason, it’s imperative that your book be the best possible quality you can produce, in the same way the professional athlete is expected to always be on the top of their game.

This is where the writing coach comes in: to help establish a routine that is conducive to producing good results with consistency, to help shorten the learning curve in order to perfect new skills faster, to offer new perspectives and to help develop the focus and discipline that is necessary to succeed.

What Is a Writing Coach?

A writing coach, not unlike a sports coach, is there to help you develop a writing routine that works for you based on your personality and your style. Their goal is to help you reach a stage where you can consistently write from a place of joy without experiencing drudgery.

A writing coach will offer you ideas and tools so that you can create a personal structure that allows you to stay focused as you access the creative side of your brain. They’ll also help you develop techniques to speed up your writing while at the same time enhancing the quality of your output. In short, they’ll help you get better at your game.

A Writing Coach Is Not The Same as an Editor

What a writing coach is not there to do is to edit your manuscript. What they do instead is help you gain clarity on what you’re trying to achieve with your book, fine-tune the message for your target audience, find the right tone and style to communicate and organize your book project.

An editor, on the other hand, will focus strictly on your manuscript. In addition to taking care of the basic tasks of checking for your grammar and spelling, they’ll also make recommendations about your book structure from top to bottom, will take care of the overall flow, developmental issues, word choice and sentence construction.

The editor focuses on the product. The coach focuses on the process and the person.

Fiction Vs. Nonfiction Writing Coaches

Now, if you’re writing nonfiction, it’s really important that you work with a nonfiction writing coach. Although a coach that specializes in fiction writing will have certain elements in common with a nonfiction coach, what they won’t have is a deep understanding of the psychology of nonfiction audiences.

The audience for your book will be motivated by the need to solve a problem or challenge that they have, which your book will address with your unique solution. They’ll have certain pain-points that they’re seeking to eliminate and are actively looking for relief.

In order to work in this field, the writing coach needs to have not only a deep understanding of the market forces in the genre, but also compassion and empathy for an audience that is seeking to move away from that pain.

A writing coach that specializes in fiction may lack these skills, because their focus is on creating a product meant to entertain and to help readers experience a break from reality by becoming immersed in the lives of the book’s characters. This is clearly not in your best interest as a nonfiction writer.

How Do You Find a Good Nonfiction Writing Coach?

Writing coaches work in an industry that isn’t regulated and you need to be very alert when you research candidates. To make sure you find legitimate writing coaches that fit your requirements, you need to look not just for nonfiction experience but also for a long resume.

In the world of sports, coaches are always older than the athletes because it takes a long time to develop strong coaching skills. In fact, it’s quite common for coaches to have been athletes in their youth.

It’s no different in the world of writing. You’ll find that many of the best coaches are authors themselves who have spent years guiding and mentoring younger authors (not necessarily in age but in experience) to become better writers.

Check the coaches’ websites and read all the testimonials. A good writing coach will list 10 or more testimonials. Learn about what those authors say about their coaching experience. Check what kind of books they’ve written to make sure that they’re in the nonfiction genre (in most cases the titles will be listed along with their full names in the testimonials), and finally visit the authors’ websites and get in touch with them to find out more about how the coach works.

Writing Coach Rates

Rates for writing coaches vary quite a bit, based on demand, experience and genre. Most coaches will charge you an hourly rate, but many offer multi-hour packages at a discount, provided you pay in advance.

A good nonfiction coach will charge anywhere between $100-$125 per hour and a highly sought-after one will charge between $200-$300 per hour. A typical engagement can range anywhere from a single one-hour session to five or more sessions, depending of the writer’s needs.

What Questions Should You Ask Before Hiring a Writing Coach?

Most writing coaches will agree to meet you for a free initial consultation, usually lasting fifteen minutes. This can be conducted over the phone or via teleconferencing. Use this time to assess rapport and to ask questions.

To make your job easier, here are some handy questions that you may want to consider asking during your interview:

• What is your past training as a coach?
• Do you have experience with nonfiction books written by professionals, consultants or entrepreneurs?
• What is your coaching style? How do you work with writers?
• How do you communicate with writers? Phone only, video call, both?
• Based on my goals, how many coaching sessions do you recommend?
• Do you provide a contract outlining your services, fees and terms?
• Could you provide me with two references I can talk to?

Next Steps

The best time to hire a writing coach is at the beginning of your book project. This will allow you to develop a game plan for the entire project, discuss the project details before you put pen to paper and create a writing routine that works best for you.

If you’re at the beginning of your book project, I have a companion article entitled: The 10 Must-Have Writing Skills for Nonfiction Authors that might be of help. In it, I’ve compiled a list of skills from successful nonfiction writers that you can borrow from to craft a great nonfiction book.

Also, if you enjoyed this article 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.

Best of luck in your search!

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 generate additional leads for their businesses.

 

Here are some related articles I highly recommend:

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

You’ve decided to write a  book to support your business and you’re now looking for effective writing exercises since you’ve never written a nonfiction book before.

So you do an online search to learn what the best practices are for effective nonfiction writing, because you don’t want to spend a lot of time with countless rewrites until you’re happy with the end result.

But there’s a problem. Nearly all the search results that come back show writing exercises for fiction writers or for creative nonfiction. There’s next to nothing for entrepreneurial authors like you who want to write a practical nonfiction book with strategies to help your readers solve a problem.

Most writing exercises out there will teach you how to use creative prompts or how writing about an experience from your youth will help you develop your writing muscle. However, little of that will be of much help to you.

What you need are clear strategies and the right guidance to help you develop the writing chops necessary to create practical, compelling nonfiction for your target audience.

This is the reason why I felt the need to create an article specifically for entrepreneurial authors like you, so you can calibrate your existing and diverse writing experience towards the task of writing your nonfiction book effectively.

Instead of spending time doing exercises that have little relevance to the content of your book, I felt it would be much more effective to break down the key teachings of most writing exercises into practical strategies that you can use right away.

How Do I Write Effectively?

The main goal of entrepreneurial nonfiction books is two-fold:

1. To identify a core problem with your target audience
2. To provide clear, actionable strategies to solve that problem

In order to do this effectively, your writing must be able to:

• Communicate
• Persuade
• Train
• Compel readers to take action

Also, you want to achieve all of the above by using a personable, engaging and clean writing style, while staying away from impersonal, academic and complex language (the later can work very well for textbooks and professional journals, but it ‘s detrimental for practical nonfiction books).

The good news is, if you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, professional, practitioner or coach, you’re already naturally conditioned to communicate, persuade, train and compel people to take action, except that you’ll typically do that through direct contact with your clients.

So, all you have to learn how to do now is to transfer these abilities into your writing.

How Can I Improve My Writing Style?

As mentioned above, the best style for the type of nonfiction book you’re writing is conversational.

Whenever a reader picks up a nonfiction book written by a specialist who can help them solve a problem they have, they expect to develop a close relationship with the author. In fact, they subconsciously expect the book to be written exclusively for them.

If you, as the writer, use language that is addressed instead to a group of people (your target audience as a whole), then your book will lose its effectiveness.

Why do readers expect problem-solving books to be written just for them? Because most problems are personal by nature and as such they require a personal approach to solving them. Perhaps your target audience is ashamed of their problem, or feels self-conscious about it, perhaps they haven’t told anyone about it, or a myriad other reasons.

So, what you have to do, whenever you sit down to write, is to always think “one-to-one.” In other words, you need to frame your writing as if you were sitting down to work with a client without anyone else present in the room.

Now, how do you reconcile the fact that you’re actually alone when you write? You have to represent both your own voice as well as your client’s voice in your writing.

In essence, your own voice becomes the voice that communicates, persuades, trains and compels, and your client’s voice is symbolized by the use of statements of acknowledgment followed by rhetorical questions (e.g. you would first write: “Healthy fats eaten in moderation actually condition your body to burn fat at a much faster rate,” and posing as your client you would then write: “This is a radical idea, isn’t it?”).

Your ultimate goal is to develop a close one-to-one relationship with your audience to the point where each reader thinks that you’re just talking to them and no one else.

How Do I Improve Clarity In Writing?

Since the entire premise of your writing style is to have a personal conversation, you have to avoid obscuring this conversation with the use of writing crutches that muddy the waters.

For example, don’t over-explain things. Since writing is such a solitary endeavor, without having your subject in front of you giving you visual cues that they “got” what you just said, it’s common to make a point and then to keep remaking the same point again and again from different angles. When you’re alone with your thoughts, there’s no one there to stop you but yourself.

So, what’s the strategy to improve clarity when you write? By writing your sentences as they comes to you (even if you over-explain things) and then reading them back to yourself but switching hats as your client. It’ll become obvious pretty quickly if you’re overwriting.

Here’s another example. Sometimes writers confuse clarity with communicating like an instructor. The danger is that this style, though clear, can easily be perceived as condescending. This will break the one-to-one bond with your readers because no one likes to be talked down to, especially about their problems.

What’s the counter strategy? Seek to write with compassion – always put yourself in the shoes of your reader whenever you’re communicating your solution.

Final example. Some writers are so passionate about their solution that they unknowingly try to evangelize readers – don’t fall into this trap. In order to communicate effectively in written form, you always need to position yourself at the same level as your target audience.

If you position yourself high up on the expert’s podium, your audience will feel that you’re so much more evolved than they are that they’ll never be able to get there on their own and give up reading your book.

Remember, clarity has two sides. On one hand, you have to be clear when you convey your thoughts and ideas in writing. On the other, you have to meet your reader at the level where they are because clarity is also in the eyes of the beholder.

How Can I Write More Concisely?

A more technical extension of clarity is conciseness, or the ability to communicate clearly by using an economy of words. Sentences that are too wordy can become a big turn-off to readers.

Now, you do want to convey your thoughts in a personable, conversational way which sometimes requires the use of casual expressions, but you want to stay away from:

• Using “flowery” language (e.g. “There’s no doubt in my mind, or for that matter in the minds of most other people, that…” instead of “It’s obvious to most people that…”).
• Making excessive use of adjectives (e.g. “This approach is clearly and absolutely more advanced than…” instead of “This approach is clearly more advanced than…”).
• Unnecessarily embellishing sentences (e.g. “This is a mighty problem that is faced by the vast majority of people out there” instead of “This is a big problem that afflicts countless people”).
• Making unnecessary use of metaphors. If you can state matters clearly, you don’t need to use metaphors. Use them only if you have to mention a complex concept that is necessary for your thesis but which is unrelatable to the reader. You can then choose a metaphor that they can relate to.

How Do I Become More Eloquent?

To persuade your target audience to take action, you need to be eloquent in your message. Your book won’t be very effective if your calls to action aren’t compelling enough.

Here are some techniques you can use:

Paint a Clear Picture

Describe what your reader’s future will feel like when your solution is in place. Focus on their feelings and not just on the surface changes they’ll experience.

Teach by Telling Stories

Our brains are pre-wired to respond to storytelling – that’s why the most successful authors the world has ever seen are all fiction writers (the top three alone, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie and Barbara Cartland, sold a combined 7 billion books!).

Since you’ve been helping clients for so long, you’re bound to have a lot of really good stories you can share with your readers. Just remember that unless you’re re-telling a story that’s in the public domain, or you have written permission from a client (rarely granted), make sure to fictionalize your client stories to disguise identities, places and events in order to protect their privacy.

What you want to do is to communicate the spirit of the story and its lessons for your reader – you’re not required to document the facts.

As an extension of the above, make sure that you choose stories that reflect the current state of mind of your readers (i.e. use client stories that will resonate with the way your readers feel right now).

Address Objections Effectively

Your readers do want to hear about your solution – otherwise they wouldn’t have picked up your book. But they’ll likely have lingering objections in their minds and will read your book through a filter of skepticism. This is because there’s a good chance that they’ve already tried something else in the past that failed to produce results.

To be persuasive, you’ll have to show them clearly why your solution is different from the others, and one of the best ways to do so is to address and refute the most common objections one by one.

How Do I Write With My Voice?

Since the most effective nonfiction books are written in a personable and conversational tone, you’ll need to master your ability to communicate with your own voice.

What you don’t want to do is to stand on the lectern and become an orator, a professor or a guru. These are all labels that will disguise your true voice, which is the voice your readers want to hear. Remember that all readers of nonfiction want to develop a one-to-one relationship with the author.

How do you write with your own voice? By being authentic and sincere in the way that you communicate through the printed page, which incidentally is no different than the way you already communicate with clients.

If you were unauthentic and insincere with them, you’d be struggling in your business because problem-solving relationships only work when they’re built on trust.

You’re not selling an entertainment product so people can live vicariously and forget their problems. You’re selling a solution that addresses people’s problems head on.

Your strategy is to always think deeply about your relationship with your clients as you write your thoughts down for your readers. Always write with empathy and your sincerity and authenticity will automatically come forward.

Writing Strategies

Now we’re going to get a bit more technical. Aside from writing using a personable and conversational style, while writing with clarity and using your own voice, you have to develop a good writing technique.

To be quite honest, this is something that can only come with practice and there are no shortcuts for spending “time at the wheel.” However, to help you along the way, here’s a short list of writing techniques you want to keep in mind:

• Avoid using phrases such as “literally, ” “I mean,” “You know,” “It’s like…” Let’s call them “lazy language.”
• Use contractions as much as you can, otherwise you’ll sound less conversational and more academic.
• Don’t make excessive use of exclamation marks to make a point or you’ll risk being perceived as too “pushy” or “salesy.”
• Minimize the use of expressions that can “clutter” your writing (e.g. “In actual fact…,” “First and foremost…,“ “Needless to say…”).
• Minimize the use of the passive voice (e.g. “It was decided by our team to…” instead of “Our team decided to…”).

What’s Next?

If you’re writing your first book, you may encounter some challenges as you embark on this uncharted journey. To help you navigate these waters problem-free, you’ll need a solid map that removes much of this uncertainly and safely guides you from beginning to end.

For this purpose, I’ve written a companion article entitled: Learn 10 Powerful Writing Habits to Fast-Track Your Nonfiction Book. In it you’ll find solid techniques that successful nonfiction writers use to create great products.

Last but not least, I wish you the best on your exciting 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 generate additional leads for their businesses.

 

Here are some related articles I highly recommend:

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

How to Come Up With Killer Book Titles for Your Nonfiction Book

How to Write a Compelling Introduction that Will Move the Needle

 

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.