You Want to Write a Book this Summer?
You Want to Write a Book this Summer?
Advice for aspiring authors of essay collections, business advice, and self-help
Any day now I’m going to get a call from someone who wants (or “needs”) to write a book over the summer. Real human beings have done this very thing (called me and written their book over a summer). That said, I usually advise aspiring nonfiction authors to lower their summer output expectations. You know, in the vein of walking before you run.
I’m not talking about publishing in this newsletter. Briefly, if you want to find a publisher, you’ll need to write a book proposal
first. If you intend to publish your own work, you need to produce a book that looks and reads like a legitimate company published it.
If you want to write a book, not a booklet, you need 30,000 words. Minimum. These first 30,000 words will not be perfect, so don’t pressure yourself on that front. With time, effort, and perhaps some support from someone like me, you can shape these words into a book you’ll be proud of.
Here’s how you might get there, whether you’re starting from a walk or a jog:
You might be a walker if:
You haven’t consistently written anything longer than an email.
You don’t have a solid profile of your ideal reader.
You don’t know what I mean by “ideal reader.”
You don’t have an outline or table of contents. Perhaps you only have a theme or topic in mind.
Walkers should work with someone with a track record for keeping the project within its scope
and helping them manage their time and morale. Walkers, please consider giving yourself at least six months to write 30,000 words in scope.You might be a jogger if:
You have a well-defined scope for the book.
You’ve been actively blogging, writing newsletters, or giving speeches and presentations.
You have a solid profile of your ideal reader.
You’ve outlined your topics or built a table of contents.
Joggers can finish a first draft in a summer if they meet their weekly deadlines and stay within the book’s scope.
Here’s how to turn existing content into a book:
Newspaper columns average 700 words. If you’ve written 40 pieces of that length, you could compile them into “a slim volume.” Add another 5,000 words and you’ve got a good first draft.
How long is your average blog post, newsletter, or social media update? If it’s 500 words on average you’ll need about 60 of them to get started (more, if the updates overlap significantly).
How many speeches or presentations have you delivered? A standard speech without long pauses runs 150 words per minute, so a 20-minute speech is 3,000 words. If you’ve delivered five unique 20-minute speeches on your subject, that’s a great start at 15,000 words. Go ahead and write responses to the ten most-asked questions for each presentation and you’ll have another 10,000 words for 25,000 total. Add a good introduction and summary with an appendix or two, and you’re in the home stretch.
Two of my 2022 book projects
Last year I worked on two different types of nonfiction books. I’ll discuss each to give you a sense of the breadth of books in the nonfiction category.
Two Old Broads
Two Old Broads: What You Need to Know that You Didn’t Know You Needed to Know is a self-help book about aging in the form of an essay collection by Dr. Mary Ellen Hecht and Whoopi Goldberg. This hybrid form is not conventional, but admit it, you’d be disappointed if Whoopi bowed to convention.
Publisher Harper Horizons hired me to assist the authors in shaping the second and third drafts of the book. We combined some of the essays, deleted others, and wrote new chapters to round out the book’s six parts: Broad Mentality, Broad Life, Broad Bones, Broad Well-Being, Broad Shoulders, and Broad Insights.
Maximum Trading Gains With Anchored VWAP
Maximum Trading Gains With Anchored VWAP: The Perfect Combination of Price, Time & Volume is a how-to book for traders and investors. Author Brian Shannon, CMT, hadn’t written much since his first book in 2008. He hired me to help him finish the first draft on time and then shape the book into two parts. I also managed the publishing project team of designers, a copy editor, and an indexer. I just checked his Amazon listing and see that 95% of his reviews are FIVE STARS.
Ask me anything!
What do you want to know about writing a nonfiction book? Ask me anything in the comments here.
I’m writing a book proposal right now and will be sharing my progress in the newsletter, so be sure to subscribe.
A book proposal is a proposal to write a book—it is not the finished book. The proposal contains a few sample chapters to demonstrate your mastery of the subject and the written word. The proposal will include marketing plans, comparative titles currently on the market, and much more that’s outside the scope of this newsletter.
Think of scope as the bowling lane between the gutters. If you’re writing a book about employee absenteeism, for example, don’t fall into the gutter by writing about proper salutations and signoffs on emails.