How to Write a Book in Five Easy Steps
Because I've written more than a 100 books and even been a book
publisher, people regularly ask me how one writes a book. I
always shrug and say it's not that hard. But this little article
attempts to provide a better answer to the question by
describing the easy five-step approach that I use and that I
recommend you use.
Step 1: Research Your Topic
Your first step in writing any book is to research your topic.
Obviously. To begin any constructive development work on a
book--that early thinking about what might make for an
interesting book and that planning about what should go into a
book--you need to know your topic very well.
This situation leads to a pretty interesting conclusion if you
gnaw on this idea a bit. How do you know what you should
research if you haven't yet actually come up with the idea for
your book.
Here's the reality: You can't know. You can't practically know
what you should research until you possess a pretty good idea
about what you should into the book. And yet you can't have a
good idea about your book--a professional quality idea-- until
you have your research done. It's another Catch-22.
Which means that economically, practically, emotionally, the
next book you write needs to be one for which you've already
completed the basic research. You're only going to be able to
come up with a good idea for a book on something when you know
the topic well. And you're only going to be to organize the
book's material into some structure that really works when you
know the topic well.
The good news is that for many types of writing--and I argue for
anything you should write about--you have largely completed your
research. If you're going to write fiction and use a collage of
the people and places and ideas that you've collected over your
life, your research may be essentially complete. If you're
writing an autobiography, you have completed your research. If
you're going to write about something that's been part of your
work for years, again, you probably have completed your
research. The same thing is true if you're writing about
something you teach in college.
Step 2: Come up with the Idea
The second step in the process of writing a book is coming up
with an idea for some really useful or interesting book. Based
on your research and creativity, you need to come up with a good
idea. Here are some tips for how to do this:
Don't pick something big and obvious...
The first thorough book on any important topic--the last war,
the current big business success, the next medical
breakthrough--can be a good book that succeeds even to the point
of becoming a bestseller. But I respectfully suggest that you
leave the big topics to the big writers. The problem with big,
well-known topics is that they are well-known. And that means,
very probably, that big publishers are already talking to big
authors about writing books.
Find your own space...
A related point to this idea of staying away from the really big
topics is that you need to find your space. You will find it
very hard to succeed--especially as a new writer--if you're
doing what's already been done. Publishers, booksellers and
readers will too easily respond to your book or book idea with
the feeling, "Well, yes, but hasn't [insert name of well-known,
bestselling writer here] already done that?" By innovating,
however, you may be able to find your own empty space--a niche
that isn't already occupied by some successful book or series or
author.
Test the market appeal of your idea...
Here's another technique for filtering and refining your ideas:
You ought to write a press release for your idea to verify that
the ultimate book sells well as a concept. A press release is a
one-page news story that touts your book and proves to people
who will help sell and promote your book--distributors,
wholesalers, booksellers and magazine editors--that your book is
special and unique and worth looking at. Your press release
gives your book a chance to break out from the pack of other
books and get noticed. Any idea that can't be distilled into a
great press release is risky. (You can see what book press
releases are by visiting publisher web sites.)
Build a list of periodicals that will blurb your book...
If you're considering a nonfiction book, you ought to be able to
come with a list of a handful of special interest periodicals
(magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and so forth) that prove
people are interested in the topic of your book. If you want to
write a book about raising Guinea pigs, conspiracy theories
concerning the last president, or monetary policy in emerging
economies, for example, one of the best ways you can confidently
predict people will buy and read your book is to verify that
people are already buying and reading periodicals about the
topic.
Try to fit your idea into an existing series...
Here's another technique. If you can fit your idea into a
publisher's existing series, you ought to try that approach.
While of course, we writers find it most satisfying to go our
own way creatively, you'll find it much easier to sell another
idea that fits in an existing successful series.
I've always written about how to use technology for business and
for personal finance. That's my space. And I've got lots of good
interesting ideas for books. But my bestselling book has been
Quicken for Dummies (Hungry Minds 1993-2005). Would I like to
write a different sort of personal financial management book?
Yes. But to date Quicken for Dummies has sold one million copies
in its numerous editions. The royalties on those salve away any
creative disappointment.
Focus on a small niche...
That last number I mentioned, the one million copies of Quicken
for Dummies, raises an interesting point. Should you go for a
big niche with big sales potential? Well, maybe. But don't lose
sight of the fact that you can make good money on a book that
sells ten thousand copies. Maybe as much as $15,000. A book that
sells twenty thousand copies or more is a big hit for both you
and your publisher. And that means your best bet is often to go
after niche. Don't just write another whodunit mystery, write a
whodunit for children. Or better yet, write a whodunit mystery
for Christian children or Muslim children or Jewish children.
And then promote your book not just like all the other mystery
publishers do but also using religious education periodicals
that go out to churches or mosques or synagogues.
Verify your idea is big enough for a book...
One final idea and this is especially important for new writers.
You need to make sure that your idea is big enough for a
book--the content you'll create is big enough to fill 250 pages
or 500 pages or whatever. Experienced authors can do this
intuitively. I know which ideas of mine support two hundred
pages or four pages of writing. But new writers often can't
gauge this very well. Ever read a book where by the third
chapter the author just rehashes material already covered in
chapters 1 and 2? That's a book where the idea wasn't big enough.
Especially for nonfiction books, you ought to try writing a
couple of example chapters--maybe chapters 1 and 4--to make sure
you've got a big topic. Your chapters don't need to be pristine
or perfect. But make sure that you can write a couple of good,
rich chapters that aren't redundant. When you're done with those
chapters, look at what other topics you want to cover and make
sure that there's still stuff left for at least two or three
more interesting chapters. A bit of rehashing is okay, I think.
But you don't want people reaching for the television's remote
control in the second chapter.
Step 3: Create a Rough Draft Outline
After you have your idea, I'm going to argue that your third
step is to create a rough draft outline. This rough draft
outline isn't the detailed outline that your high school English
teacher talked about. A rough draft outline doesn't go into
exquisite detail about your book.
A rough draft outline, instead, just lists chapters and provides
some idea of what goes into each chapter. Perhaps the outline
includes just a few sentences about what you plan to stick into
a particular chapter.
Because this seems very strange to writers who have only written
short works, let me explain why the rough draft outline works.
At the point when you're ready to organize the content at a very
granular level--when you truly know exactly what you want to say
in a chapter--you might was well spend a few more minutes and
get down the words. The composing doesn't take much time at all.
You don't need to worry about redundancy across chapters as long
as you've got a good idea of the boundaries that separate
chapters.
Step 4: Create Your Rough Manuscript Draft
After you complete your rough draft outline, you should begin
writing the chapters of your book. Sometimes, you'll flesh out
the rough draft outline a little in order to begin writing.
Sometimes admittedly, you'll need to collect just a bit more
data or do a small amount of research to fill in some hole. But
don't delay. You want to get into a situation where you can
produce large chunks of writing as quickly and easily (and, yes,
as sloppily and slipshod) as possible.
The big challenge of writing a book is the book's size. What you
need to do first, therefore, is get your book in rough draft
form. Worrying about grammar and spelling and word choice at the
very least slows you down. At the very worst, this worry
prevents you from finishing your book. Therefore, write your
rough draft as fast as you can. Hurry along without concern
about whether you're being sloppy. Don't worry about spelling.
Don't worry about quality. Don't worry if you're redundant or
obtuse or meandering. You can and will fix all of this later.
What you have to do is get the rough draft manuscript done.
That's the Holy Grail. And, paradoxically, worrying about things
like grammar actually impedes your progress.
Step 5: Self-edit Your Rough Draft Manuscript
After you complete your rough draft, you need to ruthlessly
self-edit your rough draft. If you can cut some word or sentence
without changing the meaning, cut. If you can tighten some
description, tighten. If you can remove a section or a chapter
without taking away from the book's purpose, remove.
New writers commonly limit their self-editing. They've spent
perhaps months finishing up the book. Writing one hundred
thousand words has seemed like building the Great Wall of China.
The prospect of ruthlessly hacking away at all those words is
sickening. The effort of all those early mornings or late
evenings?
And yet you have to do this. The biggest mistake you can make in
your writing is thinking that everything you put down on paper
is worth some reader's time. It isn't. Some large percentage of
what you or I roughly draft is garbage. And if you or I don't
clean the garbage out of our books, it spoils the book.
One final tip about self-editing: Respect your reader. The point
of you writing a book isn't to express your feelings or share
your expertise or to (finally) impress your father. You might
get these things indirectly. But they aren't the point of a book.
The point of a book is to supply a reader with useful ideas or
information or literary art or good entertainment. It's all
about the reader. And when we writers lose sight of this point,
bad things happen to our writing. And our books aren't very
good. In our self editing, mostly what we're doing is making
sure that everything we put on the page is there for the reader.
Closing Comments
When you distill it down to just its core ideas, this article
doesn't actually say that much. I suggested that you write about
something you already know. I suggested some tips for
identifying which of your ideas is good enough to turn into a
book. And then I provided some advice about how to grind out a
book--advice which largely boils down to outline very roughly,
write very quickly, and ruthlessly self-edit.