How To Write a Book
A short guide to writing a curiosity inspired book
I’ve co-authored or authored 4 books so far, which is amusing to me because I’m dyslexic and I barely passed English at school. So, if I can do it, then it’s very likely you can too.
The intent of this article is to give you a basic roadmap to publishing a non-fiction book. There’s no shortcut to the actual writing and editing, but this guide will get you off the starting blocks and out of your head.
Why do you want to write a book?
Before you get started it’s a good idea to understand your motivations. Unless someone has a big social media following or a public reputation, authors don’t make a lot of money from publishing books. But there can be lots of other rewards. Recognition, credibility, speaking engagements, workshop revenues, and increased domain expertise.
Non-fiction books can also be the basis for other types of work. It’s a long play but it’s the gift that keeps giving. I was able to translate my books into consulting engagements for my firm, and personal relationships that resulted in lucrative advisory work. It’s hard to say exactly how much money was created in the long-tail of the books, but I’d guess it’s in the seven figure range.
Why I wrote my books
I wrote my books from a place of curiosity. There were questions rattling around in my head that needed answering. As my quest to answer them turned into conversations, my notes from those interviews started to look like the beginning of a book.
The books I’ve written aren’t going to win a Pulitzer prize but they have helped many thousands of people. The books have been published in 16 languages, and have positively influenced my career in a multitude of ways.
I met one reader who kept a dogeared copy of one of my books in her handbag. That’s about the nicest complement a non-fiction author can expect.
Get your motivation and incentives clear before you start. Writing can be arduous and it’s necessary to have a purpose behind the work. You’ll need something more meaningful than fame or money to kick your butt and stay focused.
So what are the steps to go from an idea to selling tens of thousands of books? For many authors, it all starts with unanswered questions.
The questions
I highly recommend starting from a place of curiosity. Being curious reduces imposter syndrome and prevents you from sounding like a know-it-all blowhard. Acting like a nosy journalist gives you a great mindset to start your investigations.
For our first book, Design Sprints, my co-author C. Todd Lombardo and I were curious about how you answer the question, “will this product idea work?” We were both working in the digital product design space at the time and we were often confronted with that question.
That initial question led to more questions about prototyping, testing product ideas, and finding product-market fit. Making a list of questions, assumptions, and doubts gave us a really good thesis for the book.
It’s possible you’ll already have some answers but having the questions will develop empathy with your reader. After all, you’re writing for them. Get into their heads and avoid making assumptions about what they might already know.
So step one is to make a list of questions you’d like to find answers to.
The sources
Albert Einstein apparently said that “The only source of knowledge is experience.” If that’s true, then the best place to go for answers is wherever the experience is. That is generally with the people that have the experiences you do not. These are the sources.
Once we have some key questions we ask “who might have the answers?”
Make a list of the people that have already demonstrated some understanding of the domain you’re investigating. These might be other authors, industry leaders, critics and commentators of the space you’re in, or people you are personally connected to because of your own experience.
The most effective way to get the source’s attention is to message them and tell them you’re writing a book. I’ve only ever had one person reject my request for an interview. Turns out they were also writing a book on the same topic so they felt it was a conflict of interest.
Here’s a sample of the email I send to prospective sources:
“Hi ____, I’m working on a book about ____. You’ve been a leading voice in the space for a while and I’d truly appreciate the opportunity to interview you and share your thoughts with my readers.”
It’s sometimes necessary to add details of the book publication deadline, the publishers name (if not self-publishing) and some of the other voices you intend on adding to your writing. More on publishers later.
In the writing of our bestseller book Product Leadership, this investigation meant Martin Eriksson, Nate Walkingshaw and I were flying around the world interviewing the top product and design leaders. Lots of fun!
In a digital first world it’s not necessary to leave your home to do the interviews but if you need an excuse I highly recommend visiting the sources in person. The context that they are working or living in can often be highly valuable to the conversations. You get to meet their teams, see their workspaces, and often get to have informal conversations over a meal or a drink.
Step two is to make the list of people you want o interview and then email them your request.
The conversations
Once you’ve arranged your interviews with the sources, pack your bags and go talk to them. Whether you choose to travel or do the interviews remotely, you’ll need to record the interviews and store them somewhere safe. I normally have a flash drive, a back up on my Mac, and a cloud backup. You can’t be too careful.
The interviews should feel like casual conversations. Ask thoughtful questions, then shut up and listen. Just kept asking, “Tell me more about that?” or “Can you expand on that please?” Leave uncomfortable silences as they tend to encourage the source to start talking again.
As you listen, new questions will emerge. Add these to your interview questions. Record it all.
Once I’ve recorded an interview I’ll upload it to the cloud and send a copy to a transcription service. My favorite is Rev.com but there are dozens of good transcription services available now. They have a 24hr turnaround option which I’m happy to pay a little extra for so I can save time.
The next morning I’ll read the transcripts and highlight excerpts that answer my questions or feel like quotable segments. If I really like an interview I might even turn it into a shorter piece like an article.
The third step then is to conduct the interviews and get those conversations into a text format.
The testing
As I hinted above, I often write articles and posts as I gather information and answer my questions. These articles prove to be valuable for several reasons. I get to test the audience’s interest of a theme, improve my writing, and generate new sources for interviews.
The other benefit of writing as I go is that instead of writing the book in one big effort, I’m eating the elephant one bite at a time.
I’ll gather my notes and transcripts and write an article that is about the length of three or four pages of the book. These are my test pages. I don’t need them to be perfect as they are testing the ideas and audience interest. It’s better to publish something that is imperfect than no to publish at all.
My preferred platforms for publishing these test articles are Medium and LinkedIn but I’ll also publish on industry blogs.
First, I’ll write a short post on LinkedIn focused on a single idea, for example ‘how to manage your calendar to optimize productivity’. LinkedIn is a great place to test audience interest and get real-time feedback. Comments and reflections from readers will often nudge me towards a certain direction or encourage me to dig deeper.
The comments can also result in new interviews. Sometimes a reader will recommend someone to interview or link to a good source for new insights. If the LinkedIn post performs well, measured by engagement and shares, I’ll rewrite it as a longer article and publish on Medium (as I did here).
On Medium I’m looking for “claps” and comments to further validate the audience interest but I’m also using it to improve my writing and add color to the work. In some cases I’ve used AI tools to help me craft better paragraphs but it’s not clear that AI is significantly better than old fashioned editing (yet).
So, there you have it, the forth step is to fire bullets before cannonballs!
The writing
As you can surmise, this process of writing test article is really just an exercise in writing the book piece by piece.
When I’m in writing mode, I’m doing 2–3 hours of writing each day. These hours are almost entirely spent on the articles that will pave the way to the chapters of the book.
When it comes time to thread the articles together I’ll take a week off and disappear to a retreat with my co-authors. A winter chalet in the mountains or a beach front BnB are perfect places to get a big chunk of the writing done. I expect to bang out 50K-75K words during that week of uninterrupted writing.
If you’re working with co-authors then conversations between you can be recorded and developed into paragraphs and even entire chapters. When C. Todd and I wrote Design Sprints, we structured our writing retreat over 5 days and treated it like a Design Sprint. Each day had a theme and each day we committed to writing several thousand words.
Inserting the interview transcripts into the writing is easier if you’ve tagged and labeled the text by theme and topic. I’ll use a Google Doc for the draft text (it’s always backed up that way) and Google Keep for tagged notes and transcripts. That way I can search for tagged quotes and then copy and paste text directly into the main book draft.
As a novice writer I would do a lot of the first draft editing myself. As I got more efficient I used an editor to work in parallel with me. I would write a chapter then let them know it needed their attention. They’d make changes, comments, or request additions in the Google Doc using the editing features. You can find editor services online or ask around and get an introduction to an editor.
My goal is to have 75K-100K words in my first draft. Once the editing process has been through 2 or 3 cycles it’s common to have half the words in the trash and be left with about 50K words.
So, step five is to get the words out of your head onto the screen.
The themes
As I conduct the interviews and write articles, I look for the themes that bubble to the surface. These themes become the buckets around which I’ll organize the chapters. Ideally you’ll have 3 or 4 big themes in your book outline and then further refine the themes into a handful which you can place your chapters.
Before you can be published, a publisher will ask for a few chapters of the book and an outline of the manuscript. The themes are critical to outlining your book and making sense of how all the questions and answers will be organized for the reader.
I start with a high-level theme, similar to a vision, and then break that into a few buckets that either align with my reader’s career path or the way an organization is structured. For example, if you’re writing a book for team leaders, you might have themes that address small teams, emerging teams, and larger enterprise teams.
As you can see, step six is to create some organization for the book.
The design
I believe that making the book easy to read, attractive on the shelf, and accessible to my audience is my responsibility as the writer, not the publishers.
You do not need to be a designer but you do need to understand how the information in your book will find its way into the minds of your readers. Fortunately, there are dozens of design tools and services to help you. Just Google, “design services for authors.”
For the cover design you can use offshore design services to create a dozen concepts that can then be tested. I recommend having at least 3 or 4 design concepts. Share them with your intended audience and get feedback to make them more impactful. Trademarked designs need to be approved.
When we wrote Product Leadership we were emotionally attached to using NASA’s Grand Tour poster as our cover. It turned out that the poster design, although public domain, had been licensed to a merchandise company for all commercial print related products. Ugh, back to the drawing board.
If you’re lucky enough to have a publisher (more on that below), they will generally provide some design services to you. However, even if you have a designer, you should have written a design brief ready so they can be prepared to deliver on your vision.
Here’s a 5-min design brief template for you to use.
For my fourth book, I was fortunate enough to work with the legendary design and editing gurus Elijah Woolery and Aarron Walter. The Enterprise Design Sprint was a masterpiece thanks to their attention to detail. Working with rockstars is the advantage of having been published before. The more you publish the more resources will be at your disposal.
Step seven is to prepare a design brief for your designers and your publishing team.
The publisher
At the start of this article I asked you what your motivations where for writing a book. What your motivations are will also play into whether you publish with an established publishing house or self publish.
My personal experience, and what I’ve learned from dozens of conversations with authors, is to first publish with a publishing house. Once you have that “published author” status you can self publish all you want. This was the advice I received from the multiple New York Times Bestseller author Ryan Holiday during an interview I did with him.
For non-fiction books in the business category there are lots of publishers. If you have an outline and 2–3 completed chapters to share with the publisher, you’ll almost always get a meeting. The more you have to share with them the better your chances.
If you can also share your list of credible sources, design concepts, a marketing plan, a design brief, and your test articles you’ll have a really good chance of getting a book deal. These first-time book deals are skewed in the favor of the publisher as they are taking a risk on you. Unless you have a massive social media following or a big email list you can market to you don’t have much leverage.
If you choose to work with a publisher they will provide editing and design services in exchange for a small upfront payment and a share of the royalties. If you have a co-author you’ll be expected to divide your royalty share between you.
Chances are, if it’s a business book you won’t sell more than 10,000 books but that’s still likely to make you a category bestseller. You won’t be rich but you’ll get a lot of attention and build a core audience.
So, step seven finding the right publisher by being very prepared.
The marketing
Most non-fiction publishers will be almost useless when it comes to marketing or promoting your book. There are exceptions of course. As I discovered after the fact, their job is to edit, print, and distribute the book on platforms like Amazon. Your job is to market the book.
My first book, Design Sprints, was successful almost entirely because it was well timed. Design Sprints were becoming very popular and there was no other book out on the subject when we launched. Being lucky with timing is half the battle.
Over time we got smarter and did roadshows, book signings, appeared on dozens of podcasts, and sent out emails to our own and others lists. Unsurprising, having a marketing plan is essential to having an impact.
Know your audience, know where and how to reach them, and have a set of tactics you can use to communicate with them regularly.
Before you launch, the best marketing you can do is to publish articles and excerpts of the book on a newsletter platform (like substack) and collect thousands of emails. You can also garner followers on LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms. When you’re ready to launch the book you can ask for pre-orders and promote discounts for your subscribers.
After you launch you’ll want to be a guest on podcasts and webcasts that speak directly to your audience. Using the power of others platforms gets you in front of thousands of people and gives you the credibility of association.
There are lots of articles on promoting books so I’ll end it here. Your final step is to have a smart marketing plan and then execute on that plan.
Good luck!
