Six Things You Need to Write a Non-Fiction Book: Part 1

Series Summary

Non-fiction literature represents the majority of man’s contribution to the collective body of written material in existence. Though a lot of non-fiction consists of old records, minutes of meetings, and technical documentation, it can also tell an amazing personal story, give self-help advice, or take us on a journey through space and time. The only difference between fiction and non-fiction is fact; in one genre fact is superfluous, in the other, fundamental.

Writing a non-fiction book can be both a joy and a struggle. The process involves a great deal of research and refining to get just the right information for a very specific audience…hopefully with a style and voice interesting enough to be memorable.

Once you’ve written your book, publishing it can be a daunting task. At a traditional publishing house, there are many factors to consider when choosing a manuscript to accept. Much of the deliberation is over the marketability of any given title…in other words, how well it will sell. Once a book is chosen, a team of people is usually assigned to design and edit it, send it to the printer, and then get it into readers’ hands using creative marketing and promotion strategies. If you decide to be both the author and publisher of the book, you’ll have to learn how to wear all of these hats.

In this free video guide to writing a work of non-fiction, discover how to take your idea from proposal to print. Our expert, a published writer, and author of How to Write a Nonfiction Book: From Concept to Completion in 6 Months, gives you exhaustive step-by-step advice. Tips include what you need before you write a non-fiction book, how to create a proposal, doing thorough research, overcoming writer’s block, choosing a publisher, and marketing your book.

Video Transcript

" I’m Bobbi Linkemer on behalf of expertvillage.com, and I’d like to invite you to visit my website at writeanonfictionbook.com. Let’s talk about what it takes to write a book. My first law is nothing gets published that hasn’t been written first. In my opinion, it takes 6 things: desire, a concept, a plan, a long attention span, self discipline, and support and guidance. Let’s just take a minute to talk about each one of those. Desire, that means you have to want to write this book and you have to want it a lot because you’re going to be working on it for a long time, and you have to be absolutely in love with your subject. That’s the real test, how important is this to you and how much do you really want to write this book. Second thing is a concept. What is the book about? What is your message? Why is it important that you get that message across to other people? Why do they even want to know this and why do you care? Can you articulate it very quickly? The third thing is a plan. You wouldn’t start out, this is a cliché I know, but you wouldn’t start out on a trip without a map or a plan or a GPS system. You would know where you were going; you would plug in your destination and you don’t start a book without a plan. The plan, which we will talk about a little later, is a proposal. The third thing you need is to stick with you subject for a long time. That means a long attention span; it can take anywhere from 6 months to years to write a book. Have you ever talked to anybody who spent 10 years writing a book? That’s a long time to stay excited about one subject. Think about it as tying a knot on one end of this process, and that’s when you get the idea and you formulate your concept and you pull it through all of the steps, including writing and everything that comes after writing. When you have the book in the hand, that isn’t even the end. You keep going because you have to promote it and you have to sell it. Your goal is to get into the hands of your audience. When you finally do that you tie your knot at then end. That’s the process that you have to stay enthused and excited about for the whole time. "