How Not to Screw Up Your Nonfiction
Step One: make sure you know what you’re talking about.
Step Two: that’s it.
I kid. That’s definitely step one of writing a successful nonfiction book, but it’s far from the only factor involved in making your book achieve the goals you have for it.
It’s easy to fall into all-too-common mistakes and pitfalls that mean you fail to communicate your message, miss the mark for your particular audience, or simply write a different book than the reading public needs during the year it comes out.
Below are the ten most common mistakes made by nonfiction writers. Read them and avoid them, so you can go forth to make new, creative, and exciting mistakes of your very own.
10 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Your Nonfiction Book
1. Not Clearly Defining Your Audience
One issue with nonfiction books is they get written by experts. Experts know a lot about their subject, both in terms of depth and breadth. Very, very few successful nonfiction books cover everything the writer knows about the topic at hand.
To decide what parts of the topic you want your book to cover, you must first define your audience. What portion of the reading population do you intend this book to serve? Are you making an esoteric case for your peers? Are you introducing the topic at a 101-level for absolute beginners? Are you doing deep on a specific niche within your area of expertise, for people who know a little? Are you solving a particular problem?
Once you’ve nailed that detail down, you can write the book at the correct tone and pace for the audience you’re creating it for, which can both make the book more successful and help you save time in the editing and beta reader stages.
2. Talking Down
Most experts and writers understand this in theory, but it can be trickier to avoid than you suspect. The thing is, you wouldn’t be writing a nonfiction book if you didn’t know a great deal more than the average layperson about your area of expertise, and not talking down with that kind of knowledge disparity is sometimes a challenge.
The first step in avoiding this is to again remember your audience. Picture a specific individual — somebody real who you know, or an imaginary “typical reader” — and write specifically to them. Something about imagining the book as a conversation between yourself and somebody you visualize often helps keep things at the right tone.
The second step in avoiding this is to ask beta readers specifically if you’ve managed to avoid this pitfall. If there’s any hint of condescension in your writing, they will pick it up.
3. Missing the Jargon Window
The jargon issue is a tough needle to thread when writing nonfiction. If you don’t use any, you miss the chance to build tribe with your readers. Knowing jargon, in-phrases, and slang is one way the “ins” separate them from the “outs”. On the other hand, if you use too much jargon, your writing can become opaque to the novice audiences you are writing it for.
One way to manage this is to focus on the quality of your writing. If a jargon word makes a sentence or paragraph clearer, cleaner, or more concise, use it. If not, use common language instead. It’s okay for a definition to add word count early in your text if it makes things better moving forward.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most subjects have between five and ten pieces of jargon that get used consistently; for example “rubber ducking” in coding, “liquidity” in finance, and “PEBKAC” in tech support. These types of terms would be the common “argot” in your field. Be certain to include those, even if it’s only in a glossary section, so people who have read your book can more easily understand other books and articles in your field.
4. Lack of Focus
A book that’s too broad in scope can be confusing and unengaging. It can even lose some of your authority with readers and give the impression that you’re less of an expert than you are. It can feel scattered, hard to follow, and obscure both key basic knowledge and the main message of your book. Most nonfiction books with this issue get there in one of two ways.
The first way is when the author writes the book from the start with no clear thesis in mind. Instead of setting out to deliver a specific message, or inform readers about one particular aspect of their field, they try to cram everything they know into the book. The solution here is to begin the outlining process with a thesis statement, and leave out anything that doesn’t serve your thesis.
The second way is when the author has a clear thesis, but fails to outline effectively. Pantsing is for fiction (and even then, alert readers will know I’m skeptical). Instead, start with a clear outline that serves your thesis, and when you start writing avoid any temptation to go off on side points and similar rabbit holes.
5. Writing a Thesis
A thesis is a highly advanced work written by an expert, intended to be read and assessed by people with as much knowledge as the writer, or more knowledge. It tends to have high-level language, be filled with jargon, and conform to academic writing format and conventions. It is, to put simply, boring and inaccessible for most potential readers.
If your intent (see item one on this list) is to make an argument to the highest-performing people in your field, then a thesis might be appropriate. If not, you will lose more readers than you gain and the book will not succeed in its mission.
Instead, be sure to write your book at a level, and with language, that the average reader can appreciate and understand. Keep it accessible, and where appropriate even fun. Only use common argot and either informal or business-formal language. (Do you see what I did right there?)
6. Illogical or Non-intuitive Flow
You’ve read nonfiction books like this, where it’s hard to grasp the transitions from one chapter (or even paragraph) to the next. It might make sense in the mind of the writer, or even to others with a high level of expertise, but to the people who need the book it’s hard to navigate. You can avoid this with two steps.
First, have a novice check your outline before you set out writing. Ask them if the book’s structure follows a flow that works for a layperson. If they say no, rework your outline with their help until it makes sense to them. This may require you to eliminate, add, or move large sections of the book.
Second, have novices at the beta reader stage. They’ll do for the finished work what your outline novice did at that stage, helping you keep your flow something the average reader can manage.
7. Missing Out on Storytelling
The human mind engages with story more than it does with any other form of information. Studies have found that people remember information delivered in stories after fewer repetitions, and for longer afterward. That’s why mnemonic devices work so well.
Find opportunities to tell stories as you write your work. Use anecdotes from your experience, case studies, and examples. Each one will engage your readers more fully, help them enjoy the book more, and make it more likely they’ll remember the information (and your name) later on.
Better yet, what stories exist within your field that are part of its history and process? Including those can be very powerful. They’ll inform your reader, invite them to be part of the “in crowd” of your field, and accomplish all the things I just listed above. It’s a win-win-win.
8. Ignoring Peers
This one is less about writing and more about marketing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. Peers in your field, and even your rivals, are a powerful resource that can help your book succeed.
Your peers are the people who are most likely to celebrate and share your book. They will leave reviews, mention it to people, even cite it in articles. If you mention and quote your peers, you don’t just add credibility to your book; you motivate your peers highly to engage with it even more deeply.
If you’re considering writing a nonfiction book, you’re probably already at a level where you’ve been name-checked by somebody in your field. Remember how awesome that felt? Engage a whole team of book marketers by doing that for folks you get along with in your profession.
Rivals can be even more powerful. If you pick a friendly fight, they will engage. As long as you keep that engagement on point and professional, it has a higher chance of getting lots of attention than almost anything else you can say or do with and about your book.
9. Skipping Counterarguments
Two points of view exist about counter arguments in a nonfiction book. One of them is right.
The wrong point of view says that you should avoid mentioning any counterarguments when writing nonfiction. The idea here is that by acknowledging them, you hurt your own argument and erode your credibility.
That may have been true at one time, but in the internet age those counterarguments are out there. The reading public will know about them, and wonder why you didn’t address them in the book.
The right point of view is what that implies. Identify the most common and credible counterarguments against your point and take them head on. Demonstrate why you disagree in a way that makes your case while building your credibility through the quality of your facts and arguments.
There’s a balance to be struck here. Some counterarguments are so ignorant they don’t warrant your attention; in fact covering them at all would give conspiracy theories and other bad ideas more credit than they deserve.
Only you will know which is which in your field, but in general only address counterarguments that are made by people at least as knowledgeable as you are.
10. Forgetting to Build a Platform
Fiction authors make this mistake all the time, but it’s a bigger issue for nonfiction writers for two reasons. First, nonfiction reliably has a smaller potential audience than fiction. Second, nonfiction writers typically have a better position to build a following in their field.
Make building your platform a part of your writing schedule. Whether you do that through wider publication of informative articles, a series of speaking engagements, online activity, or a combination of them all, make certain you are getting the word out about your name and expertise on a regular and systematic basis.
If you do this right, once the book is out you will find it creates a self-reinforcing spiral. People buy your book because you’re an established expert, and you get more opportunities to further establish your expertise because you’ve written a book about it.
Beware the Nerd Factor
This could be considered an aspect of Rule 1, but is so common it needs a little extra attention. One mistake many experts make is assuming that people are as fascinated about their subject matter as they are. Sure, if somebody spends money on a book about a topic, they’re interested in that topic…but if they were as into it as you are, they would probably have written their own book.
Beware of rabbit holes, hobby horses, pet peeves, and winning esoteric debates you have with other experts in your field. That stuff is for white papers, dissertations, and similar texts written toward your peers. A nonfiction book whose job is to sell needs to focus on what laypeople and journeymen want to know.
