Write Useful Books

Highlights

• In any case, there’s a trick to getting the best of both worlds. Savvy authors have recently been choosing to self-publish their first 10,000 copies and then transition afterwards into a publishing deal. If you’re able to go this route, you’ll receive full royalties from the first 10k sales (worth approximately $55k more than the royalties you’d receive from a publisher on that number of copies sold[2]) and can then enter contract negotiations from a position of strength since your book is already de-risked. This approach was used by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares (authors of Traction) and by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur (authors of Business Model Generation), who each ended up getting insane deals for first-time authors. It’s a strong hybrid model that maximizes early profits without sacrificing eventual scale.

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• Third, even if you were recently an amateur in your topic, fear not. 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.

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• 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

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• 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. It may seem counterintuitive to try to drive potential readers away. But good books receive bad reviews after making too broad of a promise and luring the wrong people into buying.

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• Three helpful lines of questioning to strengthen your scope: When someone decides to buy and read your book, what are they trying to achieve or accomplish with it? Why are they bothering? After finishing it, what’s different in their life, work, or worldview? That’s your book’s promise. What does your ideal reader already know and believe? If they already believe in the importance of your topic, then you can skip (or hugely reduce) the sections attempting to convince them of its worth. Or if they already know the basics, then you can skip those. 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.

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• The recommendation loop for The Workshop Survival Guide is triggered by the stressful preparation before an important workshop or presentation. The cost of failure is high and the event’s date can’t be moved, which makes it an urgent, must-solve priority. 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).

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• Beyond creating something DEEP[6] and useful, you must obey two additional requirements for your book to enter the back catalog: 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

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• As absurd as it sounds, that’s exactly 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.

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• You’ve been dealing with X recently, right? Would you mind talking me through what you did and how it went? How did you decide to do it that way? What else did you try? What did you give up on or find unhelpful? Where did you search for help or guidance? What were the most frustrating moments? How did you eventually get over them? Did you read any books or blogs about it? Why (or why not)? Which ones were helpful and which were a waste? Why? What’s still worrying or blocking you? Are you doing anything about it, or is it not that big of a deal?

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• Stop writing for an anonymous crowd; imagine yourself writing to a specific individual who you know, and who wants your help. Stop trying to sound smart. Use the same tone and language that you would use to explain something to a friend or colleague.

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• From a reader’s perspective, your book is a multi-hour journey experienced as value received over time spent. If too much time passes before arriving at the next piece of meaningful value, a reader’s engagement drops and they’ll drift away.

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• The most common way to ruin your reader experience is to spend too long on foundational theory before getting to the bits that people actually want. This feels quite natural as an author (“Let’s get the theory out of the way”) but is grueling to readers.

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• By arranging the content around the learner’s goals instead of the teacher’s convenience, the experience stops feeling like a drag and begins to feel easy and engaging.

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• With one small adjustment, your ToC will become an x-ray view of your book’s “takeaways over time,” allowing you to visualize, debug, and improve its reader experience. You do this by adding word counts to the titles of your sections and chapters, allowing you to see how many words (and thus how many minutes — 250 words per minute is typical) are sitting between any two pieces of value.  These word counts will be removed prior to publication, but they’re invaluable while the book is in development.

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• If your whole book is building up toward a grand conclusion or set of tips, can you simply start with the big reveal? The third approach is the most controversial. Authors often feel that by “giving it all away” too soon, readers will take the goods and run. But I haven’t found that fear to be justified. The Mom Test delivers most of its big ideas in the first three chapters (about 7,500 words or thirty minutes’ reading time). The rest of the book is really just supplemental detail for folks who need a bit more guidance around putting it into practice. Every page is valuable for beginners, who read it cover to cover. Meanwhile, more advanced readers are able to quickly get the value and then move on, grateful that I haven’t wasted their time. This structure has done wonders for both engagement and word of mouth.

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• The same is true for Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series. Small enough to fit in a back pocket and quick enough to read on a commute, these books have been wildly successful.

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• Identifying the value can fundamentally change a book. In the early versions of The Mom Test, I had included a silly mock conversation to demonstrate how getting feedback tends to go wrong. I felt a bit sheepish about its goofiness and had only used one such example. But beta readers loved it, saying that it solidified a normally abstract concept.

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• People will only recommend your book if it has successfully touched their lives. “Sounded good in theory but didn’t work for me” is a death blow to an otherwise recommendable book.

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• Successful marketing isn’t really about marketing at all — it’s about product design, testing, refinement, and ensuring that you’re delivering real value to your readers.

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• One slightly sneaky trick is to research relevant events while your book is still being written, and coax a few organizers into becoming beta readers. This is a smaller request (asking for their time instead of their reputation) that allows you to begin demonstrating value and building a relationship.

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• Hassan Osman, host of the podcast Writer on the Side

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• You probably can’t write the world’s best book about a huge topic for every type of reader. Decide who you’re serving and how you’re helping them, and then write just for them. Better to be loved by someone than ignored by everyone.

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