NotitiesWrite Useful Books
Rob Fitzpatrick
This guide presents a method for writing nonfiction that focuses on creating useful books through reader engagement and iterative testing. It emphasizes the importance of exposing drafts to real readers early, designing for recommendations, and maintaining a clear promise to enhance recommendability and organic growth. Additionally, it highlights the need for a strong reader experience that consistently delivers value.
This guide proposes a different way of planning, writing, testing, and refining nonfiction, adapted from the hard-won lessons of product designers and entrepreneurs. When applied properly, it leads to books that can grow organically via reader recommendations for many years, without relying on either heavy marketing or a large author platform. (Page 5)
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A major theme of this guide is to stop writing your manuscript in secret and start exposing it to—and learning from—real readers as quickly as possible. That might feel scary, but there are ways to do it safely, and it’s worth doing. You want to find (and fix) your book’s mistakes before launch, not after. (Page 6)
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As a small disclaimer, there are countless ways to write a great book and plenty of great authors who do the exact opposite of what I’m about to advise. That’s all fine. I’m not trying to create a grand unified theory of books or to say that anyone else’s way is wrong. I just want to shine a light on a path that leads reliably toward creating nonfiction that is successful, impactful, and recommendable. And in the traditionally hit-driven, feast-or-famine world of books, there’s something to be said for reliability. (Page 10)
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The goal of book marketing is to stop needing to do it. (Page 10)
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Books are inexpensive products. As such, investing loads of time into active, hands-on marketing is unlikely to sell enough copies per hour to return a meaningful income. The solution to this conundrum—and the whole premise of this guide—is to design something so useful that readers can’t help but recommend it. (Page 10)
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such, I invest practically 100% of my effort into creating the most useful book possible—testing it with real readers at every step—and treat marketing as largely an afterthought. Not because marketing isn’t important, but because marketing a useful book is the easiest thing in the world. (Page 10)
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You’ll still need to grind your way toward reaching the first several hundred readers yourself, which does involve some hands-on effort. Without that original seed audience, there would be nobody able to recommend your book and organic growth couldn’t happen. (Page 11)
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Self-publishing does require more work, but you’ll earn 5x more royalties for life (50-70% instead of 8-15%) while also maintaining full control over your work and its future. To compensate for your reduced royalties, a publisher would need to sell at least 5x more copies than you could manage on your own. And in theory, they can. (Page 12)
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Until you’re proven, it’s more accurate to view a publisher as your book’s investor, production assistant, and distributor rather than as its marketer. (Page 13)
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your early drafts are supposed to be terrible. Every first draft is a dumpster fire. That’s okay. All writing begins by being awful and only starts to shine through rewrites, beta reading, and editing. A draft is still a baby; it’s unfair to judge it by the standards of a grown-up book. Second, creating useful nonfiction is a task of manual labor, not genius. When people say they’re “bad at writing,” this usually just means that they’re unwilling to spend sufficient time on feedback and editing. (Page 14)
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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. (Page 15)
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And if you’re anything like me, nothing will keep you as motivated as knowing that you’re already helping real readers who are eagerly awaiting the next version. (Page 15)
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Authors tend to view reader recommendations as a bit of a happy accident. But you don’t hope for recommendations; you design for them. (Page 16)
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You can divide nonfiction books into two categories by their purpose to the reader: Pleasure-givers (“ interesting”, “fascinating”, “beautiful”) Problem-solvers (“ useful”, “actionable”, “clarifying”) (Page 17)
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Pleasure-givers are crafted like art or literature, as a solitary act of genius. Whereas problem-solvers ought to be designed and built like products, through a reader-centric process of testing and refinement. 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 (Page 17)
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By shaping your book around this sort of clear promise and outcome, you fundamentally change its behavior in the marketplace. (Page 17)
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Problem-solvers (i.e., useful books) behave differently. Their success is more meritocratic and within your control. Importantly, this category of books can be reliably designed, tested, and proven to be valuable to your readers, even prior to publication, which massively reduces the uncertainty and risk around creating something successful. Confusingly, nearly all of the advice you’ve ever heard about “writing a book” is actually about writing a pleasure-giver, and is at best irrelevant and often harmful when applied to a problem-solver. (Page 18)
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Make a clear promise and put it on the cover (Page 18)
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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. (Page 18)
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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. (Page 18)
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These books were valuable not in spite of their specificity, but because of it. (Page 19)
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Your book’s promise should appear in (or at least be strongly implied by) its title and/ or subtitle. (Page 20)
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concisely describe your book’s promise. The best way I’ve found to get there is to try it out in conversation. When someone asks what you’re working on, attempt to describe the book in just one or two sentences. And then you need to do the hardest thing of all: to shut up and listen to them completely misinterpret and misunderstand what you’re trying to do. (Page 20)
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The point is that, in order to make something valuable for somebody, you must be willing to define and defend what your book isn’t. (Page 22)
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Throughout the writing process, you’ll receive a bucketload of well-intentioned criticism, advice, and suggestions from all sorts of people. Before allowing those comments to take hold of your soul, take a moment to reflect on who your book is really for. (Page 22)
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Your book is under no obligation to start from the beginning, to serve everybody, or to cover everything. Pick the piece you’re best at, for the people you care most deeply about serving, at the moment in their journey where you can really help them, and forget about everything else. These crucial decisions will define your book’s scope. (Page 23)
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didn’t fix the scope by figuring out what to add (or how to write it more beautifully), but by figuring out what to delete. The path became clear after asking one crucial question: What does my ideal reader already know and believe? (Page 24)
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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. (Page 25)
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For a problem-solver to be recommended frequently enough to endure and grow, it requires four qualities, represented with the acronym DEEP: 2 Desirable—readers want what it is promising (Chapters 2 and 3) Effective—it delivers real results for the average reader (Chapters 3 and 5-6) Engaging—it’s front-loaded with value, has high value-per-page, and feels rewarding to read (Chapter 4) Polished—it is professionally written and presented (Chapter 6 and the Appendix) (Page 26)
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The fatal flaw of ineffective books isn’t the writing. They’re generally well-written, well-edited, well-proofed, and well-styled. But they don’t work. (Page 27)
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In the world of education, there’s a phenomenon called “pseudoteaching.” From the perspective of a classroom observer, pseudoteaching appears flawless: the lesson and its delivery are clear, simple, energetic, and coherent. But for whatever reason, students fail to actually learn. Pseudoteaching mimics the appearance of brilliant teaching without sharing its impact. The knowledge fails to cross the air gap. (Page 27)
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In fact, it’s so rare for a book to deliver on its promise that readers will adore you for doing just that one thing. (Page 27)
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I’ve heard plenty of people recommend a messy-but-effective book by saying: Listen, it’s terribly written and full of typos and has a cover that appears to have been drawn by a distracted toddler, but it’s got something inside that’s just too important to miss. It’s going to change your life. You’ve got to read it. Trust me. (Page 27)
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Word of mouth can be anticipated and designed for (Page 28)
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You can—and should—write out this sort of recommendation story for your own book idea. It puts you in the perspective of your readers when they are first seeking (or hearing about) your book and helps you better empathize with their situation, goals, and context in that moment. (Page 29)
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Is your book’s promise Desirable enough that people will readily complain about, receive advice, give advice, and search for solutions to it? When someone encounters this problem/ question/ goal, is finding a solution a top priority or simply a nice-to-have? If your book could have several possible promises, does one have more “hair on fire” urgency for a certain type of reader? Of your several potential reader profiles, does one more actively search for (or give) advice and recommendations? Do any feel the pain more sharply? If so, they’ll fuel a stronger, faster recommendation loop. (Page 29)
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A book’s organic growth will live or die based on its recommendation loop. (Page 30)
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Recommendability creates a mini-monopoly and pricing power (Page 31)
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recommendability removes competition. This has considerable implications for marketing, pricing, and profits. (Page 32)
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But if my book has been personally recommended? That’s complete immunity to all competitive dynamics. (Page 32)
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I figured that if people were hearing about the book via individual recommendations, then I could price it however I liked. (Page 32)
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Most books drown in a sea of undifferentiated competition. Recommendability offers a boat and a moat. Of course, for recommendability to deliver maximum benefit, you book must be built to last. (Page 32)
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Write for the back catalog with timeless content A useful book’s organic growth will accelerate over time as more people receive enough value to become able to recommend it. As such, you gain compounding benefits by writing something that will remain relevant for many years. (Page 32)
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Selling 50,000 books in a twelve-week launch window is hard, requiring an enchanted cocktail of luck, skill, resources, and hustle. But if your book is able to endure for ten years, you could hit that same lofty milestone (worth about $ 350k in total royalties if self-published) by selling 100 copies per week. A hundred copies per week isn’t trivial, but it’s doable. (Page 33)
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According to author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, back catalog books are responsible for 90% of the publishing industry’s profits while requiring only 2% of its marketing budget. (Page 33)
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Beyond creating something DEEP4 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 (Page 33)
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Overall, the bits that date should be brief, infrequent, valuable for today’s readers, and easy for tomorrow’s to skip. (Page 35)
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To create a book that lasts and grows, the formula is simple: do the best job of solving an important problem for a reader who cares, without anchoring yourself to temporary tools, tactics, or trends. (Page 35)
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Improve your book before you’ve written it Imagine a friend who is designing and building a new house for their family. But instead of gathering feedback on the early designs from the people who will be living there, they just start piling up bricks. Months later, they’re finally proud enough of the work-in-progress to reveal it to the rest of the family, who gently suggest that it might be nice to have another bedroom. Or perhaps for the whole thing to be placed slightly higher up the hill? The well-intentioned builder says, “Hmm, great suggestions,” and begins tearing down and rearranging everything. It takes ages. After a couple iterations, they’re out of time and out of energy, so they call it good enough. They say, “Well, I wish I could have done a little bit more, but honestly, building a house is just such hard work—every little adjustment takes months!” 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. But by that point, even small changes have become unnecessarily complex and costly, leading to wasted time, extra rewrites, and a final product that falls far short of its full potential. (Page 36)
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A guiding principle of product design is that the more iterations you can do—while in front of real users—the better the product will become. (Page 37)
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Just be aware that neither of these conversations are about asking for opinions about your book idea (“ So what do you think?”). Asking for opinions is just fishing for compliments. The most impactful reader conversations happen early in the process, while you’re still figuring out the scope and ToC and are free to make big, sweeping changes without rewriting anything. (Page 38)
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Have you ever read a book (or listened to a lecture) by someone with so much expertise that they ended up becoming unintelligible to the novice? That’s the curse of knowledge, and it kills an awful lot of books. (Page 38)
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As the author, you’ll typically be more experienced than your readers. To write something useful, you’ll need to get back inside their heads and see the topic from their perspective. (Page 39)
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Just remember that these sorts of conversations are not about pitching (or even describing) your book idea. In the context of building reader empathy, pitching will prevent deeper learning by both exposing your ego (which discourages negative feedback) as well as by suggesting that you’ve already figured out the details (which discourages big-picture feedback). You want insights into their life, not opinions about your idea. (Page 40)
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Fill your ToC with takeaways, not clickbait (Page 41)
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Before each of his fifteen HBO comedy specials, George Carlin would spend an entire year, in front of real audiences, distilling his new ideas down into a single hour of refined brilliance. (Page 44)
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You’ll sometimes be lucky enough to find a potential reader who cares so deeply about your book’s outcome that they will be willing (and delighted!) to spend considerable amounts of time with you. While writing The Workshop Survival Guide, Devin and I each “adopted” one aspiring facilitator, spending somewhere between twenty and forty hours with each throughout the book’s creation. This allowed us to test the book’s full process with them, see where they got stuck, and to identify the ideas that had sounded good in theory but failed in practice. (Page 45)
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Here’s the crucial insight about finding reader conversations: you don’t need that many. Plus, you don’t need them all at once—a few at the start and one or two per week throughout a book’s creation is more than enough. (Page 46)
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Instead of trying to convince strangers to do something they don’t want to do, spend your time finding the people who already care. (Page 47)
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Most folks who claim not to know a single potential reader are actually just too nervous to ask for help. And that nervousness comes from believing they need to show a perfect, polished product. (Page 48)
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You don’t need to draft the entire book, but should write enough to deliver the first big piece of value, allowing you to begin beta reading on that piece. (Page 50)
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The first draft is supposed to be a mess (Page 50)
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The first draft is just to help you think. (Page 51)
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Don’t worry about front matter (introduction, foreword, etc.) or back matter (appendix, resources, etc.). Focus on the core content. The introduction will typically be the last thing you write, after understanding exactly what the book has matured into. (Page 51)
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Use whichever writing tools you’re most comfortable with, even if that means pen and paper. You’ll probably import the manuscript into a different tool for beta reading, but you can write and revise your drafts wherever. If you find yourself stuck by either tone or writer’s block, try drafting the book in your email client. Put one section’s title in the subject line of a fresh email and address it to a friend who knows what’s going on. And then, in the body, simply type out the shortest possible explanation or justification of the subject line—that’s your first draft of that section. This can help escape the mental baggage of “writing a book” and get you refocused on the bit that matters: delivering useful knowledge. (Page 51)
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Stop trying to sound smart. Use the same tone and language that you would use to explain something to a friend or colleague. (Page 52)
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Tendayi Viki, a friend of mine, wrote three award-winning business books in three years alongside a full-time job and young kids, simply by waking up early enough to put two undistracted hours into his books each day. 3 Two hours is plenty, but you’ve got to carve it out, defend it, do the work, and then show up again tomorrow. (Page 53)
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Create an engaging reader experience by giving it all away (Page 54)
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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. Designing a strong reader experience means deciding exactly how to pace and where to place your book’s major insights, takeaways, tools, actions, and “a-ha” moments. It’s the difference between a page-turner and a grind and is how you nail requirement #3 of DEEP: Engagement. (Page 54)
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What keeps a reader reading Readers aren’t buying your useful book for its storytelling or suspense. They are buying it as the solution to a problem or a path toward a goal. They’ll stay engaged for as long as you are regularly and consistently delivering on that promise. 1 (Page 54)
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(Page 55)
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At least every few pages, you want your reader to be thinking, “Oh wow, I can use that.” (Page 55)
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Your book can be as “boring” as you like; readers will feel engaged and rewarded so long as it regularly delivers the next piece of whatever they were promised on the cover. (Page 56)
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When your reader experience is weak, “getting through it” will feel like hard work, and your book will gather dust, half-read on a nightstand. When your reader experience is strong, people will find themself surprised to have devoured the whole book in one sitting, without any sensation of effort or fatigue. But interestingly, the value isn’t always where you think. (Page 56)
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Confusingly, just because some piece of knowledge is necessary doesn’t mean that it is valuable—at least, not from the reader’s perspective. 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. (Page 56)
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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. (And as it turns out, this is actually the optimal way to teach chess to kids.) You want to create the same rapid and consistent delivery of value in your book. And you can visualize it with a slightly modified ToC. (Page 59)
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Beta readers are neither paid professionals nor kindhearted friends. Rather, they are actual, honest-to-god readers who want what you’re creating so badly that they’re willing to endure an early, awkward, broken manuscript just to get it. (Page 68)
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I’ve been surprised to discover that I can rarely predict which specific parts of a book will be most valued or enjoyed. But once the best bits have been identified, I can easily go through the rest of the manuscript and add more moments like them. (Page 79)
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