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November 13 - November 19, 2021
If your book could have several possible promises, does one have more “hair on fire” urgency for a certain type of reader?
Of your several potential reader profiles, does one more actively search for (or give) advice and recommendations? Do any feel the pain more sharply? If so, they’ll fuel a stronger, faster recommendation loop.
A book’s organic growth will live or die based on its recommendation loop.
The recommendation loop for The Workshop Survival Guide is triggered by the stressful preparation before an important workshop or presentation.
At some point during those tense days or weeks, the soon-to-be-facilitator mentions their stress to a friend or colleague (triggering the loop) and gets pointed toward the book as the best available solution (fulfilling the loop).
According to author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, back catalog books are responsible for 90% of the publishing industry’s profits while requiring only 2% of its marketing budget.[5]
Pick a promise that will remain relevant and important for 5+ years Avoid overreliance on temporary tools, trends, and tactics that are likely to become quickly dated
Plus, sometimes, as an author, you’ll really need to mention a particular tool or technology, and being overzealous about avoiding these references can make a book feel frustratingly abstract. Overall, the bits that date should be brief, infrequent, valuable for today’s readers, and easy for tomorrow’s to skip.
To create a book that lasts and grows, the formula is simple: do the best job of solving an important problem for a reader who cares, without anchoring yourself to temporary tools, tactics, or trends.
what most authors do with books. They write in secret, piling up a manuscript’s worth of beautiful words and only then start figuring out whether people want it and it works.
A guiding principle of product design is that the more iterations you can do — while in front of real users — the better the product will become.
The most impactful reader conversations happen early in the process, while you’re still figuring out the scope and ToC and are free to make big, sweeping changes without rewriting anything.
This sort of “reader empathy” allows you to escape the curse of knowledge as well as to anticipate common questions, objections, concerns, and confusions.
Plus, you’ll be able to see which types of readers care most deeply about which issues (i.e., finding a Desirable scope), and these friendly first contacts will often develop into your earliest beta readers, testimonials, and evangelists.
You said you’ve always wanted to write a book — what’s getting in your way?
The resulting conversations would open a window onto my readers’ worldviews, perspectives, and current behaviors, revealing how they saw the issue and how I might be able to help them.
For The Workshop Survival Guide, Devin and I asked where people were getting most stressed or stuck while preparing their workshops. We asked which parts were hardest, and where they felt that they were wasting the most time. We asked if anything had gone wrong at their previous workshop, and if anything was scaring them about the next one. And then we tried our best to write the book in a way that would speak to their context, soothe the...
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This over-the-top descriptiveness is enormously helpful while testing and refining the book’s structure and contents, since it allows you to visualize exactly what (and when) a reader is learning.
treat your ToC as what it really is: a detailed blueprint of your book’s education design, learning outcomes, and takeaways.
Before each of his fifteen HBO comedy specials, George Carlin would spend an entire year, in front of real audiences, distilling his new ideas down into a single hour of refined brilliance.
Instead, isolate one or two chapters that offer a desirable outcome for the particular person you are chatting with. Sit down and attempt to teach that slice of the ToC to them.
Asking potential readers for these sorts of conversations is fairly straightforward. After all, you’re basically just volunteering to give them free, expert guidance about an outcome that they care about:
Hey, I remember that you were thinking about doing X a while back. Is that still on your mind? If so, I’d love to grab some time, answer any questions, and help you think through how to approach it.
You’ll sometimes be lucky enough to find a potential reader who cares so deeply about your book’s outcome that they will be willing (and delighted!) to spend considerable amounts of time with you.
Devin and I each “adopted” one aspiring facilitator, spending somewhere between twenty and forty hours with each throughout the book’s creation.
teaching conversations can also cure imposter syndrome. Instead of attempting to believe that your advice is worth sharing, go out and prove that it is by helping real people and seeing if it works.
you need to test and solidify your educational design in advance.
Begin with friendly first contacts.
Second, plant a flag online. The simplest version — if your profession allows for it — is to add a link or blurb to your email signature explaining what you’re doing with your book and how people can help.
Third, when people ask what you’ve been up to, start mentioning the book as “your thing.”
begin your pre-launch seed marketing
And if nobody cares, their disinterest also means something.
You don’t actually care enough about this topic or reader to fuss with testing and refining a useful book (return to scoping until you care)
The first problem — a lukewarm reader — is evidence of an undesirable scope. Adjust either your promise or reader profile until you’ve found something that excites and motivates them.
Most folks who claim not to know a single potential reader are actually just too nervous to ask for help.
If you really, truly can’t reach a single potential reader, then you’ll want to start dealing with that today instead of on launch day.
Hiding from your readers is a slippery slope that causes a series of harmful decisions and consequences: skipping reader conversations, skipping beta reading, and launching without testimonials, reviews, or a seed audience.
Having verified that people want it and it works (i.e., that your book is Desirable and Effective, the first two requirements of DEEP), it’s time to write a first draft.
My editor, Adam, describes it as, “vomiting words onto the page.”
Don’t fix typos. Don’t rework paragraphs to be more beautiful. Just follow the ToC that you’ve already verified via reader conversations.
The first draft is just to help you think.
If you find yourself stuck by either tone or writer’s block, try drafting the book in your email client.
members of our nonfiction authors’ community,
pick a time when you’ll sit at your desk and then sit there, religiously, even if you aren’t getting anything done.
if I don’t do my writing first thing, then I don’t do my writing.
All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.
Two hours is plenty, but you’ve got to carve it out, defend it, do the work, and then show up again tomorrow.
From a reader’s perspective, your book is a multi-hour journey experienced as value received over time spent.
Designing a strong reader experience means deciding exactly how to pace and where to place your book’s major insights, takeaways, tools, actions, and “a-ha” moments. It’s the difference between a page-turner and a grind and is how you nail requirement #3 of DEEP: Engagement.
after twenty pages, I still hadn’t learned anything.
