I've written 12 books, self-published and traditionally published, hardcover and paperback. I wrote my first book in 2007. If you're thinking about writing your first book, it's easy to start worrying about things such as finding a publisher, designing a cover, ISBNs, Amazon, editing, and how you're going to sell it.
The first problem you need to solve is simple:
How do you turn what you know, or want to say, into a manuscript?
The first thing I tell someone writing their first book is..
Don't Start by Writing a Book
Start by collecting ideas.
A book starts with words, thoughts, observations, stories, research, photographs, examples - anything that might belong in the book.
When an idea comes to me, I write it down.
Don't tell yourself, I'll remember that. You won't. Put it in your phone. Type it into your computer. Write it on a piece of paper. It doesn't matter. Capture it.
Then start organizing those ideas by subject.
If you're writing a book about creating a healthy home, for example, you might have folders (on your computer or in a desk drawer) for:
Water
Plumbing
Electical
If you're writing a book about building a house, your organization might follow a process:
Grading the lot
Pouring the slab
Framing
Windows
Siding
Those folders may later become chapters. You don't need to know that yet. Just start collecting thoughts and ideas. A good book is less about sitting down to write, than a collection of ideas accumulated and eventually organized into something coherent and enjoyable to read.
That's how I approach my books.
Save Everything
This is one of my rules: Save everything.
You will write things that don't fit in the book later.
Don't delete them.
Move them into another file.
Something what doesn't belong in Chapter 2 may be what you find yuo need in Chapter 7. Something that doesn't fit in this book may become part of future book. I keep a folder called, Not Used. The name doesn't mean I'll never use what's in it. It means I don't know where it belongs. I've had material come out of that folder later when it was useful for other books or articles.
Give the files names that you will recognize six months from now.
Don't collect only words.
If your book might use photographs, diagrams, illustrations, charts, or other visual material, start collecting those as you go. Put them in the applicable folder.
I like using my own photographs. They're unique to my book, and I don't have to negotiate with someone for permission or to pay to use them.
The point isn't to know what the book will look like. You're gathering material.
Save everything.
Decide where it belongs later.
Don't Write the Book Yet
Once I have enough material, I don't sit down and try to write "the book."
I start developing individual pieces and ideas that are in the folders
I create a separate word document for each subject I think might belong in the book.
If I'm writing about building a house, I might have one word file on my computer for foundations, another for framing, another for windows, another for roofing.
Then I work on whichever one, which ever file, I feel like working on a given day when I have time.
Today I might add three paragraphs about roofing. Tomorrow I might remember something about windows, open that file and type it in. A week later I might go back to roofing file and realize something is missing and I should add it.
Each idea develops independently. Some may become chapters. Some may only be a few paragraphs. Some may disappear from the book entirely. That's fine.
At this stage, I'm not trying to force everything into a structure just because I decided six months ago that I wanted Chapter 4 to be about roofing.
I'm developing the material and ideas.
Structure comes later.
Don't Worry About the Table of Contents. Yet
Eventually you'll may want or need one.
I don't begin by trying to create a table of contents. I can't as I'm not certain which ideas might make it into the final manuscript. I'm not forcing myself to write Chapter 1, followed by Chapter 2, followed by Chapter 3. That's making the process harder than it needs to be.
Suppose today you're fascinated by something that belongs in what will eventually become Chapter 8. Write Chapter 8. Open your folder for that subject (maybe it's roofing; maybe it's how to cook a steak) and add your thoughts and start putting things together in a order that reads well.
Take all the notes you've accumulated about that topic and put them into ONE document.
Don't edit the document yet.
Cut and paste. Move things around. Add explanations. Get the ideas into ONE place - one document- for each fundamental idea.
Now read it from beginning to end. Ask:
Does this make sense?
Does one thought naturally lead to the next?
Do I find myself with a question about something that's missing or would be nice to include here?
Is something here that doesn't belong? Maybe it's good for the book, just not in this part. Cut that part out, open the document you think it belongs, and past it there.
What's missing? Anything?
Pay Attention to Questions That Pop Into Your Head
As you're reading you may suddenly think:
What about ______?
If the question occurred to you while reading it, there's a good chance it will occur to your reader. If the answer isn't there in your book, the reader may stop thinking about what you're trying to tell them, and start thinking about the unanswered question instead. They will lose their concentration and stop reading or not understand what you're trying to say
Answer it.
Maybe you've written something about it and it's sitting in another folder. Go find it.
Maybe you haven't. Write it now.
This is one of the ways the manuscript begins telling you what it needs. You're no longer dumping information onto pages. You're experiencing the material from the perspective of a reader who doesn't know what you know.
Then Stop Working on It
This may sound counterproductive:
After you've gone through a section (a file) once, close it, and work on something else (another file for another idea). Move to another subject and repeat the process. I might not look at the first section again for two weeks. By then, I've forgotten what I wrote. Now when I open it, I'm closer to being someone reading it for the first time.
Does this make sense? Why am I telling this story?
Did I explain something that was obvious because I know the subject, something that won't be obvious to the reader?
What's missing?
When you've been staring at the same paragraph for an hour a day for a month, you know what you intended to say. That makes it difficult to notice what you actually said. Put it away long enough and you begin reading more like your reader will.
Then go through it again.
The book gets better every time you circle back.
Now Create “the Book”
You will reach a point where it's time to see what the book actually is.
Make an outline.
Notice how late in the process I'm doing this. You may have started with a rough idea of the subjects you wanted to cover. Now you have material in front of you.
What belongs first?
What does someone need to understand before they can understand something else?
Which subjects belong together?
What's redundant, and already been said?
What's missing?
Something you thought might be an entire chapter may turn out to be only three paragraphs. Something you thought would be one subject may have grown into three chapters.
That's fine.
Discover the structure, rather than forcing the material into a table of contents.
Now cut and past all this, and create one, unified, master manuscript document - a new file. Move the individual pieces (cut and paste text from the different files) into the master big one. Cut and paste style.
It will be messy.
Move things around.
Read it.
Move things again as neeeded.
Read it again.
Once everything is together, you can ask questions that were difficult to answer when the material was scattered:
Does the order make sense now?
Am I repeating myself anywhere?
What's missing?
Those individual topic documents have become chapters. The chapters have found an order. You're no longer working on a collection of ideas.
You're working on a book.
How Long Does a Book Need to Be?
A common nonfiction trim size is around 6 × 9 inches. As a rough number, you might figure 300 words per page, although the number varies with formatting, headings, photographs, illustrations, margins, type size, and the design of the book. A 30,000-word manuscript and a 70,000-word manuscript are going to become different books.
I wouldn't begin by deciding, I need to write 70,000 words. I'd ask: What does this book need to say? Is it saying it?
Write first.
Then look at what you've created.
If competing books are200–250 pages, and yours is 73 pages, that tells you something. Maybe you've written a wonderfully concise book. Maybe you're missing half the information a reader expecting.
Maybe it's because you haven't considered page margins and font sizes. Check the books you are comparing yours to. One trick to make a book appear larger that it is by using wide margins and leaving more space at the top and bottom for headers and footers. If, based on word count, your estimated page count seems low, you may need to widen the margins and headers before you conclude it's too small to be a book.
Page count isn't the problem.
It's evidence that should cause you to ask more questions.
Don't Ask Friends for Feedback or to Edit Your Book
Once you have a complete manuscript, there's a temptation to ask friends, "Will you read my book and tell me what you think?"
Your friends will have opinions.
That doesn't mean they know how to evaluate a manuscript.
One person loves it. Another thinks Chapter 3 should be Chapter 8. Someone doesn't like the title. Someone thinks you should tell more stories. Someone thinks there are too many stories.
You can go in circles and end up chasing your tail to please everyone. It's a llike writing a song - difffernet people have different tastes inmusic. I place weight on criticism from a professional songwriter. The same applies here. At this stage, I want professional critique for a professional editor.
I use manuscript critique services such as Scribendi. The purpose isn't fixing commas and misspelled words. I want someone qualified to evaluate the manuscript.
Does it work?
Does it flow?
Are there structural problems?
Does something need to be removed?
Does something important appear to be missing?
That's a different from proofreading a final manuscript.
You May Need More Than an Editor
Something I didn't understand when I started writing books: there are different kinds of editors, and they solve different kinds of problems.
A manuscript critique isn't looking for misspelled words. It's asking if the book itself works:
Would someone who doesn't know what I know understand it?
I've paid for more than one critique for the same book when I wanted different professional perspectives.
There's something else I didn't know existed when I started: A book doctor. A book doctor can help solve a fundamental problem with a manuscript—organization, structure, clarity, and how the material should be presented.
I learned about this after having a publishing contract for one of my books fall apart. The publisher didn't think the manuscript worked. I thought the material was good. Instead of asking, is the material bad, I asked, what's wrong with the way I'm presenting it?
The person who e helped me wasn't a copy editor (She didn't catch a lot of mis-spelled words and grammar mistakes). She was valuable as a book doctor. She helped me simplify and reorganize the material into what became Healthy Living Spaces.
The information wasn't the problem. The problem as structure. Sometimes a manuscript doesn't need better sentences. It needs a better way of presenting its ideas.
Critique First. Edit Later.
This can save you money and frustration.
Imagine paying someone to meticulously line-edit a 70,000-word manuscript, then having a professional critique tells you Chapter 4 doesn't belong, Chapters 6 and 7 should be combined, and you need to write an new chapter between them.
You've paid someone to perfect the sentences you're now deleting.
My sequence is:
Write → organize → assemble → critique → revise → final edit.
A manuscript critique asks: Does the book work?
A book doctor helps answer: How could this book be better?
A line editor asks: Are the words and sentences correct?
Only after I'm confident that the book says what it needs to say do I want someone worrying about every sentence, punctuation mark, spelling error, and inconsistency. Don't pay someone to polish sentences in a book that still needs to be reorganized.
Even then, I'm not finished.
Edit the Book Again, After It's a Book
There's a difference between reading a manuscript on your computer and holding the finished layout in your hands.
Once the book has been designed and laid out, I want to examine the final print copy again. Things become visible that weren't obvious in the manuscript. A heading falls strangely. A photograph doesn't work where you thought it would. A page looks crowded. Something is awkward across a page turn. A typo survived.
I consider the printed proof another stage of the editing process. (This is also where I check the cover).
If a designer created the layout, send the corrections back to the designer. If you created it yourself, make the corrections yourself.
Then print another proof.
Don't rush to publish because you're excited that you're almost finished. The manuscript is the most important part of the book.
Only Now Should You Worry About Publishing
This is where many aspiring authors start. It's backwards.
Traditional publisher or self-publishing?
Amazon or IngramSpark?
Paperback or hardcover?
Color or black and white?
Ebook?
Those are legitimate questions. None can make a mediocre manuscript into a great book. Start by writing a book worth publishing. Then figure out how you're going to publish it.
If you have a traditional publishing deal, the publisher will handle these decisions.
If you're self-publishing, you become the publisher. That means you're responsible for the editing, design, production, distribution, and much of the promotion yourself.
That's one of the biggest differences between the two paths. It deserves an article of its own and I'm writing one to follow up.
Don't Design the Cover Too Early
I spend a lot of money on book covers. People judge books by their covers.
There are practical reasons to wait to make your book cover.
The designer needs to know the book's dimensions and final page count, as the number of pages determines the thickness of the spine.
Finish the manuscript first.
Then decide the physical format.
Then create the cover for the book you're publishing, not the book you imagined six months ago.
When I hire a cover designer, I look at their previous work. One trick I use is to walk through a bookstore and pick up books whose covers make me stop. I look for who designed them. That's a better starting point for me than searching for the cheapest person who says they design book covers.
Go to a Bookstore
Before publishing your book: Pick up books similar to the one you're creating.
Not to copy them.
Study them.
How big are they?
How thick?
Hardcover or paperback?
How large is the type?
How wide are the margins?
How are photographs handled?
Do books in that category have indexes?
What information appears on the back?
What makes you pick one up instead of the one next to it?
You can learn about creating a book by physically examining successful books created for the same reader you're trying to reach. You're not asking, how should my book look? You're asking a better question: What does a reader picking up this kind of book expect, and what can I do differently?
Your First Goal Isn't to Write a Bestseller
My first book became a bestseller after I appeared on a major FM morning radio show. That's a story about promoting a book, not writing one. They're different problems.
If you're writing your first book, and worrying about bestseller lists, book tours, Amazon rankings, social media, royalties, and how many copies you're going to sell, you're trying to solve problems you don't have.
Your first problem is:
Create a book worth reading.
If you intend to write more than one book, your first book is marketing for the second. Someone who finishes your first book and thinks, Wow! That was good. What else has this person written? is the reader you want when the next book comes out. Rushing a mediocre first book into print doesn't help you build that audience.
Start smaller. Don't write your book today.
Write down the idea you just had.
Create a folder.
Write one section.
Save the paragraph that doesn't fit.
Take the photograph you might need later.
Come back tomorrow.
Do it again.
Eventually scraps become subjects. Subjects become chapters. Chapters become a manuscript. One day you're holding something that didn't exist before:
Your book.
Resources
Book critiques
Scribedi
https://www.scribendi.com/service/book_critique
Images
For high quality images with specific requirements: https://www.istockphoto.com
For free, general purpose images: https://www.pexels.com
"Book Doctors" and “line” Editors
Have a Manuscript Critique done on your draft by SCRIBENDI before you write the entire manuscript. I also have them do a line-edit for me to proofread the layout before giving it to my publisher. The cost to edit is based on word count. Cost for an initial “critique” is less. Both are critical if you want a great book. Repeat. I sometimes have had three critiques before I edit and publish. I ask for a fresh sight of eyes and different viewpoint by requesting a different editor for each pass.
https://www.scribendi.com
About the Author
Daniel Stih is the author of 13 books covering subjects ranging from environmental health to climbing, music, relationships, and personal development. He has worked with traditional publishers and self-published his books, giving him firsthand experience with writing, editing, book design, print-on-demand, distribution, marketing, and selling books. He's published books in color and black-and-white, hard cover and soft.
His first book became a bestseller following a radio appearance, and his books have gone on to support speaking, teaching, consulting, media appearances, and other professional work.
These articles aren't a formula for becoming a bestselling author. They're based on what Daniel has learned from writing, publishing, and selling books.
Learn more about his approach: Why I Think This Way.