Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction

by Rob Fitzpatrick

A major theme of this guide is to stop writing your manuscript in secret and start exposing it to — and learning from — real readers as quickly as possible.

A major theme of this guide is to stop writing your manuscript in secret and start exposing it to — and learning from — real readers as quickly as possible.

shine a light on a path that leads reliably toward creating nonfiction that is successful, impactful, and recommendable.

shine a light on a path that leads reliably toward creating nonfiction that is successful, impactful, and recommendable.

The solution to this conundrum — and the whole premise of this guide — is to design something so useful that readers can’t help but recommend it.

The solution to this conundrum — and the whole premise of this guide — is to design something so useful that readers can’t help but recommend it.

Savvy authors have recently been choosing to self-publish their first 10,000 copies and then transition afterwards into a publishing deal.

Savvy authors have recently been choosing to self-publish their first 10,000 copies and then transition afterwards into a publishing deal.

By still remembering how it feels to stand in the shoes of a beginner, you’ll write with an empathy and understanding that is impossible for the “natural expert” or “world’s best” to match. That’s a real edge.

By still remembering how it feels to stand in the shoes of a beginner, you’ll write with an empathy and understanding that is impossible for the “natural expert” or “world’s best” to match. That’s a real edge.

Authors tend to view reader recommendations as a bit of a happy accident. But you don’t hope for recommendations; you design for them.

Whereas problem-solvers ought to be designed and built like products, through a reader-centric process of testing and refinement.

The word “problem” in “problem-solver” is being used somewhat loosely, and could include helping a reader to receive any sort of tangible outcome, such as to: Achieve a goal or undergo a process Answer a question or understand a concept Improve a skill or develop a toolkit Resolve a fear or inspire a change Adjust their perspective or improve their life

Confusingly, nearly all of the advice you’ve ever heard about “writing a book” is actually about writing a pleasure-giver, and is at best irrelevant and often harmful when applied to a problem-solver.

Make a clear promise and put it on the cover

Here’s the secret to a five-star Amazon rating: be clear enough about what your book is promising that people can decide they don’t need it.

good books receive bad reviews after making too broad of a promise and luring the ...

Your book’s promise should appear in (or at least be strongly implied by) its title and/or subtitle.

Are you able to judge its relevance to your needs and goals? Do you know which of your friends might enjoy hearing about it? Absolutely.

When someone asks what you’re working on, attempt to describe the book in just one or two sentences. And then you need to do the hardest thing of all: to shut up and listen to them completely misinterpret and misunderstand what you’re trying to do.

Each time you try describing it to someone, you’ll get a little bit closer. And once people are immediately getting it — without requiring you to clarify or correct anything substantial — then you’ll know you’ve found the words. Put them on your cover.

every chapter that the amateur adores, the expert endures,

My book was going to be the book about how to actually do it.

in order to make something valuable for somebody, you must be willing to define and defend what your book isn’t.

Throughout the writing process, you’ll receive a bucketload of well-intentioned criticism, advice, and suggestions from all sorts of people. Before allowing those comments to take hold of your soul, take a moment to reflect on who your book is really for.

And the easiest way to manage that is by speaking directly to their situation and context by excluding everybody else.

Pick the piece you’re best at, for the people you care most deeply about serving, at the moment in their journey where you can really help them, and forget about everything else.

The scope of a useful book is like the executive summary of a new business. It’s an as-brief-as-possible description of what it is, who it’s for, and why they’ll pay for it:

Scope = Promise + Reader profile + Who it’s not for + W...

I didn’t fix the scope by figuring out what to add (or how to write it more beautifully), but by figuring out what to delete. The path became clear after asking one crucial question: What does my ideal reader already know and believe?

This allowed me to cut all the early theory and justification and begin with what I actually wanted to say, which was about how to do it.

If you’re a tech entrepreneur struggling to run useful customer interviews, this book will help you understand why the conversations are going wrong and how to run them properly.

It allowed me to start with a bang, delivering real value from the first page of the first chapter.

Your book’s scope should also be guided by your own goals and interests as its author. An important moment for The Workshop Survival Guide was deciding that our ideal readers would already have a workshop to teach, and that we could therefore skip all discussion of selling tickets, negotiating with clients, building a reputation, and the rest of the “business” side of workshops.

what are they trying to achieve or accomplish with it? Why are they bothering?

What does your ideal reader already know and believe?

Who is your book not for and what is it not doing? If you aren’t clear on who you’re leaving out, then you’ll end up writing yourself into rabbit holes, wasting time on narrow topics that only a small subset of your readers actually care about. Deciding who it isn’t for will allow you to clip those tangential branches.

Desirable — readers want what it is promising (Chapters 2 and 3) Effective — it delivers real results for the average reader (Chapters 3 and 5-6) Engaging — it’s front-loaded with value, has high value-per-page, and feels rewarding to read (Chapter 4) Polished — it is professionally written and presented (Appendix)

the second requirement — Effectiveness — is where nonfiction most commonly misses the mark.

The fatal flaw of ineffective books isn’t the writing. They’re generally well-written, well-edited, well-proofed, and well-styled. But they don’t work. Six months later, if you ask a reader what they’re doing differently because of the book, you’ll see that it failed to make even a drop of difference in their lives.

In the world of education, there’s a phenomenon called “pseudoteaching.”

students fail to actually learn.

the teacher has first spent the time ensuring that the underlying lesson works.

it’s so rare for a book to deliver on its promise that readers will adore you for doing just that one thing.

the misguided author begins by writing, rewriting, and editing a full manuscript, and only then starts figuring out whether readers want it and whether it works.

solving a problem, making a promise, targeting a specific type of reader, and ensuring that the knowledge works — we’re finally ready to untangle the mystery of recommendability.

So they try, but it’s harder than it sounds.

This narrative represents a sort of “recommendation loop” that gets triggered by someone complaining about (or seeking a solution to) a high-priority “problem.”

You can — and should — write out this sort of recommendation story for your own book idea.

Is your book’s promise Desirable enough that people will readily complain about, receive advice, give advice, and search for solutions to it?