Choosing Your Non-fiction Book: Kind, Reader and Promise

Most stalled non-fiction books don't fail at the sentence level. They fail because the author never decided what the book is for. You know a lot about your subject, so you start writing about all of it, and three months later you have 40,000 words that could be four different books.

This lesson is about making that decision on purpose. You'll pick the kind of book you're writing, name the reader and the problem they bring, define what the book promises, and compress all of it into one sentence you can test every chapter against.

What are the main kinds of non-fiction books?

The categories blur at the edges, but each one carries a different contract with the reader. Knowing which contract you're signing tells you how to structure the book and what kind of evidence it needs.

• How-to or prescriptive: teaches the reader to do something or change something. Think budgeting, training a puppy, managing anxiety, learning to code. The reader judges it by one question: did it work?
• Memoir: a true story from your life, shaped around a theme. The reader wants to feel what you felt and understand what it meant. It doesn't have to teach anything directly.
• Narrative non-fiction: a true story told with the tools of fiction, such as scenes, characters and suspense. It can be history, science, true crime or journalism. The reader wants a story that happens to be real, and expects it to be accurate.
• Reference: built to be consulted, not read cover to cover. Field guides, dictionaries, technical manuals, recipe collections. Organization and findability matter more than voice.
• Business and thought leadership: argues for an idea, a method or a way of seeing a field, usually from your professional experience. It often doubles as a calling card for your work, which is fine, as long as it still delivers value on its own.

Hybrids are common. A memoir can carry practical lessons, and a business book can be built around a story. Still, pick a primary kind. When readers can't tell whether they're getting a story or a manual, they tend to feel shortchanged on both.

Who is the reader, and what problem do they bring?

Describe one specific reader, not a demographic. 'Small business owners' is a market. 'A woman who runs a two-person bakery, is good at baking and dreads the books every quarter' is a reader. You can picture her, guess what she has already tried, and know which words would make her close the book.

Then name the problem in the reader's language, not yours. Experts tend to describe problems in technical terms. Readers describe symptoms. The bakery owner doesn't say 'I lack a cash flow forecasting process.' She says 'I never know if I can afford to hire someone.' Your book should meet her where she is and walk her to where you are.

For memoir and narrative non-fiction, the 'problem' is softer but still real. The reader might want to understand what it's like to lose a parent to dementia, or how a small town lived through a factory closing. Name that question too.

What is a non-fiction book's promise?

The promise is the change the reader can expect by the last page. It should be specific enough that a reader could tell whether you kept it. 'Better finances' is a hope. 'A simple monthly system that tells you what you can afford to spend, in under an hour a month' is a promise.

A good promise also limits the book. If the promise is a monthly system in under an hour, then a chapter on retirement investing is out, however much you know about it. That's a feature. The promise is what lets you cut.

How do you write a one-sentence positioning statement?

Use a fill-in-the-blanks template until the sentence feels natural, then rewrite it in your own words:

If you can't finish the template, that's useful information. It usually means you haven't picked a reader yet, or the promise is too broad. Fix that now. It's much cheaper than fixing it after the draft.

Should you write the book you know or the book readers want?

Ideally both, but where they differ, lean toward the reader. Your expertise is the raw material. The reader's need decides what you build with it. A useful check: list the questions people actually ask you about your subject, at work, in emails, at parties. Those questions are often a better table of contents than the one in your head.