How to Write a Non-Fiction Book 🔗
Last year (2022), I decided that I was going to write a book. The end product was my book, How to Practice Guitar and Train Your Creativity.
It was an interesting process to go through, which I thought I would outline for anyone that was interested in writing their own book.
They key steps can be broken down as follows:
- Expertise
- Schedule
- Brainstorm
- Outline
- Write
- Edit
- Deliver
Experience 🔗
When it comes to writing a non-fiction book, you should be writing on something that you are an expert on. If you are writing a fiction book, this step doesn’t apply and skip ahead to the next section.
The internet is full of ‘gurus’ and opinions. Gurus, using manipulative marketing tactics (I’m not against marketing and sales, but it should be done honestly) ’teach’ their suckers about things they are not experts in. People in general present their opinions as facts.
Many people, media outlets included, flat out lie and deceive.
So if you are going to write a non-fiction book, be an expert in your topic. If you are actively helping people improve in your field, teaching or a professional, then you are qualified to write a book.
Imposter Syndrome - Who are you to write a book? 🔗
You might be an expert in your field and thinking to yourself “Who am I to write a book?”
Does it matter who you are?
If you are able to help one person with what you write, then you are qualified to write a book.
You don’t need permission.
Schedule 🔗
Now that we know you’re an expert in your field, it’s time to schedule some time to work on your book. I recommend 1-2 hours a day. You can do more or less on some days, but most days of the week, try and get an hour or two of solid work done.
Most importantly, schedule that time in advance. At the start of your week, schedule the time that you’ll use for working on your book.
The secret to getting anything done is to schedule time for it.
You can achieve anything that you schedule
Brainstorm 🔗
Now that you have time set aside to work on your book, it’s time to get to work on your book.
Brainstorming has two phases:
- What is your book going to be about?
- What are you going to put in that book?
What is your book going to be about? 🔗
Is your book a passion project, or something you intend to sell? Is your book part of some other goal, for example, improving your professional reputation?
If your book is a passion project, write about whatever you want.
If you book has some other purpose, choose a topic that fits the purpose.
If you are wanting to sell your book, choose a topic that has an audience - if you choose something too niche, no-one will be interested in buying your book.
If you are using your book to further your career, choose a topic that you are an expert in that is congruent with your career goals.
This may take several days of scheduled brainstorming to figure out.
What are you going to put in your book? 🔗
This is a tricky step that is easy to rush, however, spending enough time on this will making writing your book easy.
I used a mindmap program. SimpleMind is a good free mind mapping program. You don’t need anything fancy, just basic mind mapping functionality.
The core point on your mind map is your book. Then start brainstorming ideas and topics. Take your time, this step could take several days or even a couple of weeks.
As you get more and more ideas onto your map, try and see how to organise them into different topics. If you brainstormed your topics first, figure out how to break them down into different ideas.
You will probably find this step a bit messy, which is normal. Some of your ideas will be big picture topics, some will be an element of a particular topic.
Don’t worry about anything at this step being “right or wrong”, use your intuition and take some time to think it over. You’ll figure it out.
When coming up with ideas for your book, some of the following questions might be helpful:
- When you discuss your field, what do people often misunderstand?
- When teaching, what mistakes do your students often make?
- What mistakes do you think other educators make when discussing your field?
- What insights have you gained from your experience?
- What do you find easy that others struggle with? Why?
What level will your book be aimed at? 🔗
Whatever the topic you are writing about, there will be people who are beginner, intermediate and experts in your field. What is the level of understanding your book will require to understand?
For example a physics book aimed at someone who has a PhD in quantum mechanics will be written very differently to a physics book aimed at someone who knows their times tables but struggles with quadratic equations.
Outline 🔗
You should now have a mind-map that has all the ideas that your book is going to cover.
The next step is to organise your mind-map into a list as follows:
- Topic 1
- Sub-idea 1
- Sub-idea 2
- Sub-idea 3
- Topic 2
- Sub-idea 1
- Sub-idea 2
- Sub-idea 3 etc.
Add a couple of sentences with a very broad outline to each topic and sub-idea.
This outline will be your reference point for writing your book.
Writing 🔗
With all the preparation that’s been done, you should find this part easy.
Take your outline and work through it, point by point, writing everything you know about that particular topic/idea.
While simple, this part may take week, even months to work through.
The key here is to type like a madman, getting everything out on the page. Don’t worry too much if you haven’t phrased things as clearly as possible, or if your word choice isn’t great, aslong as it makes sense to you and you understand it, keep writing.
In this stage you want to just get everything out as fast as possible.
Edit 🔗
You should be several weeks, even months into the process, and you should now have a shoddy book!
In this stage we take that mad, rushed writing from the previous stage and refine it.
Work through each paragraph, checking:
- Clarity. Have you communicated the point in a succinct and understandable manner?
- Logic. Does the order of your paragraphs make sense? I often find that when in the writing phase, I write my paragraphs in a bizarre order and have to rearrange them.
- References. Have you discussed an idea that wasn’t your own? Put a footnote linking to the original source of that idea.
- Spelling and Grammar. You’ll want to ensure these are correct.
- Level. Is what you’ve written understandable by someone at the level that you decided to aim at in the brainstorming stage?
- Have you added anything that sounds good, but doesn’t really make sense or match your experience?
Editing is a brutal and repetitive process, you will have to go through your book from start to finish multiple times to iron out most of the bugs.
Some people hire a professional editor to help them with this stage.
However, when you complete this stage, congratulations, you have a manuscript.
Deliver 🔗
This is the final stage. You now have a completed manuscript. There are a couple of things left to do:
- Get a cover designed
- Decide on an internals that are needed (page numbers in your footer, introductory pages to declare copyright/publishing rights, contents page etc)
- How will your book be delivered? Physically printed, as a PDF, .epub or .mobi file, etc.
Congratulations! You now have a book.
Tools that can help 🔗
When it comes to creating your book, there are a few tools that can help.
I wrote my book using Pages in OSX, which was ok, although it did have a few frustrations with images (which you get with any word processor).
Word editing tools 🔗
- Pages
- Microsoft Word
- Markdown
- Scrivener
Pages and MS Word are probably the most user friendly and what most people are familiar with. For most people, these are great options to go with.
Scrivener is a professional application specifically created for writing books.
Markdown is a “language” for writing. I’m writing this blog post in markdown. You write in plain text adding symbols to specific certain bits of formatting, for example, section titles or bold text. It requires processing to turn the markdown file into a formatted file, such as a book file. Markdown is better for people who want to focus purely on the writing, but will enquire some technical knowledge to get from the raw markdown to a usable manuscript.
Here is an introduction to markdown. Here are a few blogs by people who used markdown to write a book:
Writing and language 🔗
Grammarly is a great tool for helping with your spelling and grammar. I used it with my book and found it to be much better than the built in grammar checker with Pages. It’s also free!
Frequently asked questions on writing a non-fiction book 🔗
Can I use OpenAI/ChatGPT to write a book? 🔗
You can, but please don’t. The world is polluted with enough junk as it is.
How can I sell me book? 🔗
That is a topic that is outside of the scope of this article.
How long does it take to write a book? 🔗
Mine took nearly four months from start to finish, working through the process that this article has outlined.
How many words should a book be? 🔗
According to Blogger to Author
The average word count of a nonfiction book in traditional publishing is around 60,000 words. Target word counts are often included in contracts between the author and publisher. The average nonfiction book that’s self-published tends to be a little shorter, running between 20,000-35,000 words.
My book was 48,000 words, which on A5 came out at just over 200 pages, which seemed like a respectable length.
How do I know when I’ve finished writing? 🔗
When you’re out of useful things to say.
How do I know when I’ve finished editing? 🔗
If you’re asking this question, you probably need to take a break… then do some more editing.