How to Write a Non-fiction Book: Part 2

So: what do you write about? That shouldn’t be the main problem. Ideally you will want to write about something; you simply need to refine it to make it marketable. The key is to channel your passion. What is it? Leadership? Snow-boarding? Chinese Cookery? Writing your book, convincing a publisher and getting credible sales will be straightforward if you have passion for your topic. It will be tough if you don’t. I have no doubt many books have been written ‘mechanically’ e.g. 'we need a book on work-life balance'. But they will be hard work for the author and mechanical to read.
So: Stage 1 is what do you want to write about? Let’s move to Stage 2: making it a marketable idea. If you self-publish (and we’ll talk about that in another post) then you can write about what you like. But if you want a serious publisher to support you, then the submission must appear to be one which will sell plenty of books. Your passion isn’t enough and any publisher will have endless tales of us naive authors who thought passion was enough. You need to target and focus. I’ve found the best way to do this is to identify your book title.
Titles are very important with non-fiction books. Let’s use a few of mine as an initial example and then widen the discussion. Instant MBA: the title is short, strong and snappy. It suggests something we would all like: the knowledge, easily. We know it’s not truly possible, but the idea is attractive. The by-line helps clarify the position. By-lines are increasingly the norm and I wish I had used them on my earlier books; thus on Being the Best I now would like the by-line Being the Best Version of You. A publisher wants well-writen, well-researched and quality materials. But they also want a good title. When I submitted Get a Life I wasn’t the first to write on work-life balance issues but I had (1) a good title (2) a useful model I had created: Personal Compass.
There is no perfect title. It is well know that Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People title was not liked by his publishers; Covey insisted and of course the rest is history. The 4h Work Week by Tim Ferriss is a wonderful title because we would all like to work just 4h; in fact the book is really ‘lifestyle design’ but that would have been an awful title.
So: have a go: (1) what’s your passion and (2) what’s the title?
Tomorrow: the mechanics of generating words. And schedule some time at the week-end for writing!