How to write your damn book

Get your first non-fiction book written in nine easy steps

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Introduction

For many people, writing a book seems like a distant dream. Statistics show that 67% of the general population wants to write a book, but for some reason, only 3% actually do. Why is that?

It used to be that traditional publishers were the gatekeepers to the book publishing world and many people weren’t able to publish their book if it wasn’t accepted by a publisher. Now that we have Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon, the gatekeepers are gone, and the only thing stopping you from writing a book is you.

I have published many books and helped others to do the same. In my experience, there are three main reasons why people don’t write their book.

1. One is that they don’t know where to start.
2. The second is that they don’t have enough time.
3. The third reason that stops people writing their book is imposter syndrome.

I have developed a simple system which works with all three of these reasons and excuses.

The good news is, you don’t need a PhD in a topic to write about it. You just need knowledge and experience, or access to people with knowledge and experience. In this blog post, I will introduce you to techniques which will get your first draft written in one-tenth of the time and a failsafe way to organise and outline your content so that you know exactly what to write and when.

I have compiled everything I know about the book writing process into this 5000-word blog post. Let’s dive in and find out how you can package your knowledge, experience, or expertise into your first non-fiction book, in just nine easy steps.

 

Step One: Start with a rock-solid book topic

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“We are all experts in our own little niches”—Alex Trebek

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Decide on the right topic and craft your book promise

Writing a book takes a significant amount of time and effort. By addressing these three questions now, you will begin your journey on the right foot and save time down the track.

Start with your expertise and experience
The best place to start, when deciding on a book topic, is with your knowledge and expertise. However, you don’t need to be an expert at something to write about it. This misconception is often what stops people from writing anything.

Don't be overwhelmed by the fact that you think you need a PhD in something before you can write about it. Many a useful book has been written by someone with an interest in a topic and through the process of researching and writing about it, they develop knowledge and expertise. It is also possible to interview people who have the expertise and ask questions from the perspective of the novice reader.

Draft a list of broad topics that you have an interest or expertise in. Spend some time exploring Amazon to see what subtopics emerge. Take your list of twenty topics and niche each one down until you have a list of twenty subtopics which interest you more than the broader topic.

Find out if there a demand for your topic
The next part of the process is to find out whether there is a demand for the topic you plan to write about. If you are writing a memoir or a life story, then your focus is to make it engaging and entertaining. You might also want to share a life lesson or a key message.

If you are writing a non-fiction, business or instruction book; then you should hone in on a specific topic. One that you know is in demand.

Once you have a list of twenty possible niche topics to write about, use Google and Amazon to search your keywords. Decide which of your list offers the best balance of reader interest and minimal competition.

Make a promise to your reader
Most people decide whether they are going to buy and read a book based on two things: the cover and the blurb. This blurb might appear on the back cover or on the download page, depending on whether they are holding the printed copy or buying the book online.

If your audience is going to decide whether to buy your book based on one or two paragraphs of text, it is a good idea to write them first. This way you can test out interest in your content before writing a single word. More importantly, it keeps you focused and on track when you get into the messy middle of writing a book.

Imagine if someone turned your book into a movie. What would the voice-over say during the trailer that would make your audience think, "wow I have to see that"? That is your “book hook” or book promise.

Now that you know what type of book you plan to write and on what topic, it is time to craft your title, subtitle, and book promise.

There are six possible ways you might choose to name your book.

1. The “Result is in the Title” naming strategy
2. The “Guides, Secrets, Blueprints” naming strategy
3. The “A to B” naming strategy
4. The “Signature Solution” naming strategy
5. The “Easy-peasy”naming strategy
6. The “Say it like it is” naming strategy.

Try naming your book using each of the six naming strategies listed above and see which one you prefer. Make sure your keywords are included in the title or subtitle. Try them out on other people and see which is most effective.

Once you have your title and subtitle written, you can write the back cover blurb. You only have a short time to communicate the value of your book, and get them hooked.

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Here are some tips to help you start with a rock-solid book topic:

1. Write from your own expertise and experience, or interview people who have the expertise if you don’t
2. Do your keyword research and make sure there is a demand for your content
3. Draft your title and promise before you start writing and keep it somewhere visible throughout the writing process.

 

Step Two: Generate your content quickly

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“A brain dump is where you let all that’s on your mind
flow freely onto the page”—Katherine Fusco

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Get all of your content out of your head and onto the page

You will be surprised how much knowledge you already have about your topic. By doing these three exercises, you will empty it all out onto the page, ready for sorting and structuring into your outline.

Empty everything you know onto paper
Once you have decided on your topic, it’s time to get everything you know about the subject down onto paper. It’s very tempting to start writing, but if you do this without a structure, you will get lost or omit something. By using a mind map technique, you can trigger a memory of topics for linking each one to the next. There is also the less elegant “brain dump” where you write a long list of everything you can think of.

Grab a large sheet of paper or a pad of post-it notes or 4 x 6 cards and write each topic down on a new card as you think of it. Don’t analyse them at this stage; focus on emptying your mind. We will rearrange and structure the cards in the next step.

Content Scraping
It might sound a little unpleasant, but “scraping” other non-fiction books can also be useful. You don’t want to plagiarise the content but looking at the tables of contents can be very helpful.

Once you have completed your mind map or brain dump, spend some time Googling your topic. See if there are any subtopics or content ideas that you might have missed. If you spot any, add them to your brain dump or mind map. You can also look through the tables of contents in Amazon books.

Ask Questions
A more primary research source is to start with questions. If you have a mailing list or an online community that you can ask, send them a survey about your topic. Finding ways to discover what your audience already struggles with is the best way to ensure that your book is relevant.

Head over to www.answerthepublic.com and type in some of the topics in subtopics you’ve identified in your brainstorming session. This is the easiest way to see what common questions people are asking about these topics. If you can think of solutions to these questions and you haven’t yet included them in your brain dump or mind map, you can rework the answers as chapters or sections in your book.

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Here are some tips to help you brain dump your content:

1. Get all of the material out of your head before you start
2. Conduct research to fill in the gaps
3. Look for questions that need answers.

 

Step Three: Create a kickass book structure

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“The structure of a story is how it is organised.
You can think of this as the framework of the writing”—Katie Surber

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Build the framework of your book before you start writing

A solid framework is the key to your success as an author.

Typical Book Lengths
One of the main reasons we need to structure a book before writing it is so that we know how to pace it to achieve the target word count.

By generating a book structure first with an ordered list of topics and bullet points of things to cover, you can work backwards and plot how many words to write for each section.

The average non-fiction or business book is usually quite short these days as attention spans reduce, and the average price on Amazon for an e-book is $2.99. If you’re writing a step-by-step or how-to guide, aim for between 20,000 and 30,000 words.

A more general business book that covers a broader topic can scale up to about 50,000 words. If you plan to get it printed aim for the upper range, otherwise your spine will be too thin to print the title of the book. Most people are looking for something short and to the point that they can read in between one to two hours in an e-book format. For paperback business books, think of the types of books that you might find at the airport bookstore and will take you up to three hours to read.

If you are writing a memoir, aim for between 50,000 and 70,000 words, as a full life has more significant amounts of detail to share. If you’re writing a juicy work of fiction where you need to build a story arc and get your audience involved, you might need to write 80,000+.

Content Hierarchy
Another reason it is useful to structure your content out before writing your book is to establish contact hierarchy. When you’re designing and laying out your book from a manuscript, it is much quicker and easier to break up the text if written to a pre-ordered structure.

Whenever I write a non-fiction book, I like to develop a custom template first. After I’ve brainstormed all of the content, I sort the content into groups. I use post-it notes to rearrange the content. I use one colour of post-it note for the chapter titles, and I stick them in a row on the wall. Then underneath each colour chapter post, it notes I arrange all the pieces of content in different colours.

Outlining
The tool we use to structure the content before writing your book is known as an outline. In my opinion, it is one of the essential components of getting your book written.

How you create your outline is up to you and your working methods, but as a rule of thumb, you should have between 9 to 12 chapters. You should also know what word count you are working towards. Now that you have your number of chapters, you can divide your word count and break it down into segments.

Your content should dictate your overall book structure.

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Here are some tips to help you create a kickass book structure:

1. Decide on your book-length before you start
2. Map out a content hierarchy
3. Draft your outline using a template.

 

Step Four: Smash out your first draft quicker than you thought possible

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“By speaking your book, I estimate you will cut down the writing process
to a tenth of the time”—Natasa Denman

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You need to find the quickest way to extract the content from your head and get it out onto the page

Believe it or not, the key to getting your book written is by smashing out your first draft as fast as possible.

Write, type or speak?
When you think about writing a book, most people think you have to write it. There are technologies and services available now; however that allow you to dictate your text.

Most people, especially first-time authors, are much more experienced at talking than writing. The benefits of speaking your book are that you can do it a lot faster, the writing sounds much more natural and conversational, and it's also a lot easier to hear if your content makes sense when you speak it out.

If you plan to type your book, there are many programs and apps available, depending on whether you are going to use a computer or a tablet. If you plan to dictate your book, surprisingly many of these same programs and apps offer that option. If you plan to record your audio and pay for transcription services, you can also use apps on your phone, or send the files via a website.

Transcribe or dictate?
If you like the idea of speaking out your book rather than typing it, you’re then faced with another two choices. Do you dictate it or send the recording away to someone who offers transcription services?

If you plan to dictate your book you can also use your word processing software for this. You might need to configure your Macintosh to allow for dictation first, but once set, the dictation function works on any word processing program.

You can also record the audio files for now and decide where you’re going to send them later. Again, use a microphone and an audio app on your phone or tablet.

Get it out fast
No matter which method you choose, your goal with the first draft is to get it out of you as quickly as possible. Rough and ready is what we’re going for here.

Avoiding perfectionism and analysis paralysis are the main reasons why we want to get the first draft out as quickly as possible. This is another benefit of speaking rather than typing. When typing words on the screen for the first time, it's far too easy to go back and polish those words. However, when you're in the flow of conversation, you tend to push through and keep going.

The other tip is to avoid fact-checking when you are in this stage of the process. Keep going and skip over any facts, figures and references which need checking. You will have a chance to check them later and they tend to slow you down.

Once you have decided on the method that you’re going to use, it’s time to make some decisions about the target word count and set up a daily routine or ritual around achieving that word count.

I usually schedule three 20-minute writing sessions every day—one with coffee in the morning, one during my lunch break, and one at night on the couch. In each of the sessions, I aim to dictate 600 words. These three 600 word sessions add up to an 1800 word mini-chapter every day.

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Here are some tips to help you smash out your first draft:

1. There are many ways to get our first draft written, including dictation and transcription
2. Use technology or other people to help you
3. Get it all out without thinking about it.

 

Step Five: Review your writing

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“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story”—Terry Pratchett

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Review your first draft three times using three different methods

Now that your first draft is written, it is time to read and tidy. Your focus in this stage of the process should be on removing glaring errors and mistakes. The good news is there are free digital tools you can use to help speed up the process.

Read and tidy. Auto edit
When you read through your first draft, it pays to use a writing aid. My two favourites are Grammarly and Hemingway. I start by pasting my raw chapter text into Grammarly and let its assistant guide me through the book, looking for mistakes and suggesting improvements. I find this much more comfortable and more accurate than reading through the text by myself. Then I paste it into Hemingway for suggestions around line length and complexity.

Paste your first draft of your first chapter into Grammarly. The basic account features are available for free Work through a section at a time. Grammarly will prompt you to tell its artificial intelligence what type of writing this is. It will modify its changes and suggestions based on the answers that you give.

If you have Hemingway, paste your edited text in there and make more refined edits to your sentence structure.

Create a Reverse Outline
Once the text has been through an auto-editing process, you can use a procedure called a reverse outline. If you have made thorough use of subheadings throughout your outlining and writing methods, this part should be easy. If you’ve engaged in free-writing, this will be slightly trickier.

Your goal with this second read through is to read each paragraph or block of text and distil the essence into a single sentence. If you can’t extract the meaning quickly, it highlights the fact you’re waffling, or off-topic. Rewrite these sections to be more explicit, or remove them altogether.

Look for Gaps
This final read through is where you look for holes in the text. It is tempting to get hung up on examples, names, facts and figures when writing your first draft. When free-writing your first draft, a pro-tip is not to allow these road bumps to slow you down. If you write your first draft quickly, chances are all of these facts, figures, examples, and references need to be added in now before you forget what you were talking about.

For the third and final read through, you are skimming the text looking for facts and figures that need checking and gaps where you might have missed references, examples and links.

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Here are some tips to help you review your writing:

1. Read through the words and tidy as you go
2. Create a reverse outline to confirm the structure
3. Do a word count and fill any gaps.

 

Step Six: Turn your draft into a manuscript

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“Revision means throwing out the boring crap and
making what’s left sound natural”—Laurie Halse Anderson

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Write the second draft, polishing as you go

The second draft is where the magic happens.

Restructure
When you drafted your first outline, you were taking your “best guess”. As you wrote your first draft, no doubt you realised that some things are in the wrong place, or perhaps unnecessary in the overall structure of your book.

There are two ways you can restructure your reverse outline.

One way is to type all your sentences in a word doc and number each line, or you can do the same in an Excel spreadsheet.

The other way is to print out your reverse outline, number the sentences, and then cut them up. That way, you can physically rearrange the pieces of paper. Sometimes it’s less confusing to have your entire book spread out in front of you on the table.

Research
Once you are happy with the overall structure of your new document, you can work through the process of fact-checking, and adding examples and references.

When you affect checking, a great place to start is Wikipedia. While Wikipedia might not be top of any academics go-to reference list if you’re looking for a date or name, it is usually reasonably accurate.

Rewrite
By the time you reach this point, your first draft will have been read three times. It has been checked for grammar, structure and accuracy. Most of those read-throughs are done in skimming mode because you are looking for specific issues. In this final read through, your goal is to be thorough.

I prefer to get away from the computer for this final read through. The first three skim read-throughs were all done on a computer, so I like to change my setting and editing mode and then it becomes like I’m reading the text for the first time.

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Here are some tips to help you turn your draft into a manuscript:

1. Restructure your content using the reverse outline
2. Research missing content and confirm facts
3. Rewrite the second draft using a computer.

 

Step Seven: Read it out loud

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“Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, a time when no phones are being checked,
when the distractions of the world are put aside”—Neil Gaiman

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Your final read through should be with your ears, not your eyes

By reading your book out loud, you will quickly discover where sentences don’t make sense. It is easy to skip over grammar and phrasing issues if you read it in your head.

Grammar and Sentence Structure
Reading your text aloud is the best way to break through the blindness you are probably now feeling by reading your manuscript over and over. Step away from the computer and spend an afternoon reading the text out loud. This process helps to pick up several issues that reading through in your head will miss.

When reading your text aloud, make sure you do it on a computer or some digital device so that you can be making the changes and updates as you go. It might be easier to walk around with pen and paper, so if you prefer to do this, make sure that you have enough room in the margins to write down your changes as legible notes.

Rhythm and Cadence
The other benefit from reading your text out loud is that you get a feel for the rhythm and cadence. This final read through picks up the types of things that automated tools really can’t. You are aiming for your text to be smooth and comfortable to read, so if you stumble through reading it out loud, chances are people will find it difficult to read as well.

There’s nothing worse than scribbling changes in the margins on the fly and then when you sit down to make the changes; you’ve no idea what your scribbled notes mean. Make the edits as you go.

Pacing and Flow
The final thing you are looking for is pacing and flow. The good news is that all of these things can be picked up and corrected in the one read through.

These are all intangible issues that cannot be automated or detected in on-screen read-throughs. They are also the sorts of problems that you can’t outsource. You are the author of your book, so you are the only one who knows the intention with which the words are written.

Your book has been written from your structure, And in your words. This final read through is your opportunity to make sure that it sounds like your voice.

If you want extra brownie points, then you would do a final read through out loud once you have made all the edits and changes. However, that is going above and beyond. A more straightforward method is to make sure that when you are making the edits, make sure you read your alternative sentences out loud as well.

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Here are some tips to convince you to read your book out loud:

1. Reading aloud helps Grammar and sentence structure
2. Reading aloud helps rhythm and cadence
3. Reading aloud helps pacing and flow.

 

Step Eight: Solicit feedback

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“I’m a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in”—Sarah Vowell

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Get fresh eyes onto your content

You are probably sick of reading through your manuscript at this stage. The good news is, it’s time for someone else to read through it. No matter how many times you read your manuscript and how skilled you are as a writer, it always pays to get other people to look at it as well.

Professional Editing Services
There are several ways that you can go. One way is to send your manuscript to an editor at a publishing company to get your book published. Most commissioning editors like to see potential in a manuscript, but also have the opportunity to put their stamp on it. This method is somewhat hit and miss, because if the commissioning editor is not interested in publishing your book, then you can guarantee they’re not going to edit your manuscript.

The second way is to commission a freelance editor. This is most useful if you are planning on publishing the book yourself. There are different types of editing, including copyediting, proofreading, and structural editing. You can send a sample of the manuscript to any editors that you are planning on trying out. They will give you an appraisal of the types of editing they think the manuscript needs.

Head to upwork.com and look for editors. Narrow your freelance editing shortlist down to three people and send all three of them a sample chapter to edit. This will cost you some money upfront because you will have to pay for all three. However, from there you can make an informed decision about which editor you prefer to work with, and then you can commission them to do the rest of the book.

Friends honest opinions
If you have literate, well-read, academic friends, you might be able to persuade them to read through your manuscript as well. I have a manuscript exchange program with several of my academic friends, and if I buy my mother a nice bottle of wine, she can often be persuaded to read my manuscript as well.

Send your document to your friends for editing. In most word processing software, there is the ability to turn on tracked changes. Make sure you use software that has this capability and make sure the person editing your manuscript keeps tracked changes turned on.

Reviews for the cover and promos
The final group of people that you will need to persuade to read your manuscript are reviewers. If you have friends in high places, this is your chance to get a pithy quote from them to include on the back cover as an endorsement. You might also ask someone relevant to write a foreword or introduction for you.

The other types of review we are looking for here are book fans. There are entire books devoted to strategies for getting advanced reader copies into the hands of interested people. So I won't try and cover too much here, suffice to say that the more genuine five star reviews your book can garner on Amazon in its first few days of publication, the better.

Create an Advance Reader Copy of your book to send out for reviews. This has a cover and everything. When you are preparing your manuscript for reviews and endorsements, you might need to work with the designer or someone familiar with book publishing. Grab three non-fiction books off your shelf and take a look at all of the additional pages.

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Here are some tips to help you solicit feedback:

1. Send it to an editor for professional service
2. Ask friends to read it for an honest opinion
3. Ask reviewers to read it for social proof and endorsement.

 

Step Nine: Putting it all together

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“When a book leaves its author’s desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creators have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become a book that can be read, that no longer belongs to its maker”—Salman Rushdie

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Finish your manuscript ready for publishing

Your manuscript really only becomes a book when you add all the additional material, such as forewords, imprints, covers and so on. There is a lot more involved to publishing a manuscript than simply writing a book. The process doesn’t finish when you hit publish, in fact, it’s only just begun.

Publishing Options
At the start of the writing process, you defined your audience and the purpose your book was intended to serve.

For some authors, securing a traditional publishing deal is the ultimate definition of success for their book. For others, the book is intended to establish their expertise or authority. Smart marketers, know that a book based on their signature solution is a gateway into their online business. Understanding the purpose of your book is the first step when deciding whether you should self-publish, or look for a publisher.

Once you finish your manuscript and you have a marketing strategy in mind, it’s time to get your book formatted and designed. An engaging book cover is also a core part of your marketing strategy, and believe it or not even the way the book is laid out and formatted.

Book Marketing
One of the changes to the publishing industry brought about by the Internet and Amazon, as well as Kindle Direct Publishing, is that authors are now required to be marketers. This might explain why so many marketers have started becoming authors.

Bookfunnel is a service which makes this process easy for authors.

Think about a reader magnet as your first step. What would be a bonus that someone reading your first book would be interested in? If you’ve written a novel, then it might be something like a prequel novella. If you’ve written a step-by-step instruction book, the reader magnet might be something like free downloadable resources or worksheets.

Once you have created your lead magnet, load it up to bookfunnel and start collecting email addresses.

Levering your content
Once you do embrace marketing, you can start to have fun with your content. If you have a blog or a podcast, you can focus on individual chapters from your book. With a small amount of restructuring, you will have original content you can publish for months. This starts to take off when you have multiple books in the series. If your book is instructional in some way, you might also want to build a course based on the material in the book.

Before you publish your book, think of ways that you can leverage the content. You might want to include links to your free resources in your book before you upload it to Amazon.

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Here are some tips to help you put it all together:

1. Look back at your original purpose for the book
2. Authors need to be marketers as well
3. Now that you have your book look at ways to repurpose the content.