Nonfiction Ink

For many entrepreneurs, writing a book is an important component to a successful career. Besides providing you a product to sell, it can help you:

1. Position Yourself as an Expert in your Field
Writing a book provides instant credibility. It differentiates you from your associates and competitors, allowing you to charge higher fees and offer additional services. Potential clients can learn about you through your writing – making it easier to capture an interested audience.

2. Increase Media Exposure
Expert status leads to additional media exposure, speaking engagements, and interviews, which, in turn, helps build your brand and platform, and sell other business products and services.

3. Expand Your Potential Client Reach
A book allows you to reach more people, nationally and internationally, and entice them to learn more about you by visiting your website, enrolling in your workshops, or acquiring your services or products.

4. Provide Additional Marketing Tools
You can use excerpts from your book to create articles, guest blog posts, newsletter columns, and giveaway booklets. A published book merits a news and press release, which garners even more publicity.

5. Connect with Your Target Audience
While researching and compiling your manuscript, you can acquire feedback through email surveys, your blogs, and social networking profiles to learn exactly what your client wants and needs and then deliver that with your book. With a better understanding of your target audience, you make the reader your ideal client.

Once you’ve written and published a book, you can add “author” to your list of titles.

1. Create a Book Development, Publishing, and Marketing Plan
Create a detailed plan. Selling books takes effort, diligence, and tenacity.

2. Write For Your Audience
Test your concepts and content on a focus group, research other books on the subject, know what readers want, and write a book that readers want to read.

3. Deliver a Clear Message
Create a core message and present it succinctly – using examples, interviews, and statistics to support it. Use a thesis statement to keep you on track. You should be able to convey your key message in one sentence.

4. Hire an Editor
Your manuscript must be polished and free of typographical errors, and grammatical mistakes. Besides proofreading, a professional line-editor will ensure your sentences are properly constructed and your content is arranged for flow and clarity.

5. Have a Peer Review Your Manuscript
Have a professional colleague review your manuscript. Encourage honesty and use the criticism to make your book better during the revision process.

6. Include an Index
Readers expect an index to be included in a legitimate book. And libraries will only carry books that have indexes.

7. Establish an Author Platform
Your platform is your media visibility – how much exposure you have as an expert on a particular subject… your blogs, websites, speaking engagements, seminars, television and radio interviews, and podcasts. Your platform is what will help promote your book when it is published.

8. Know Your Position
Determine your position in the market. What other books are available on the same topic and what differentiates your book from the competition? Write a positioning statement outlining your target audience.

9. Create a Professional Book Cover
The book cover sells the book! Consider it a marketing tool and hire a professional book cover designer. For more details on book covers, read my post 10 Tips To Design a Bestselling Cover.

10. Acquire Testimonials and Endorsements
Personal recommendations add legitimacy to a book and help sell it. Place them with the sales copy on the back cover.

11. Build a Database of Potential Readers
Start collecting names of potential readers well in advance of your book’s release date. You can build your network through social sites (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn) and your website and blog traffic. Create a sign-up page and offer an enticement (such as a newsletter or free report) for subscribers to opt-in. Ideally, you want to develop a list of 5,000 people or more.

12. Have an Online Media Kit Available
Make it easy for journalists and TV reporters to use you as a source for interviews by putting an online Media Kit on your website. Your Media Kit can include photos/headshots, a list of topics you speak on, sample interview questions, a portfolio of media clips, a backgrounder or bio, excerpts from you book, reviews of your book, a calendar of upcoming events or speaking engagements, and press releases.

1. Help the reader solve and fix a problem or make the reader’s life better in some way.
2. Know your reader and write for him in a casual conversational tone, as if sitting across the table from one another.
3. Deliver a transformational experience, not just informational. Provide an emotional experience that impacts the reader’s life.
4. Help the reader incorporate your method, strategy and suggestions into her life by providing exercises, checklists, and other ways to take action.
5. Create a connection with the reader with a website or blog where she can be part of a community that interacts and provides additional resources.
6. Create a brand and a core message. Be consistent in all your deliverables.
7. Be aware of the market: other successful books in your genre, lifestyle changes and reader’s needs  – and create a book that fits into the market.
8. Fill a gap in the market. Find a special niche within the subject that is not being addressed or a position that has opened up due to out-of-date, inaccurate, or poorly written books on the topic.
9. Pre-Test the material by conducting audience and peer reviews and tweak the content as necessary.
10. Develop synergistic add-on products such as reports, podcasts, videos, and seminars.

If you’re a writer, crime does pay.

True crime captivates readers – giving them a glimpse into the forbidden and illicit and safely opening the door to a world and a side of human nature that everyone acknowledges, but few are willing to explore.

Readers have been fascinated by crime stories from the time of the first true crime book collection in 1735.  Probably the most enduring true crime story is a spree of killings that began in 1888 in London’s Whitechapel district.  Today, more than 120 years later, Jack the Ripper remains a popular topic.

What is the enduring appeal of true crime?  The most disturbing crimes seem to elicit a need to find meaning in meaningless acts, a context to explain the unexplainable.

Early true crime works were sensational, lurid throwaway tabloids.  Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood effectively changed that, launching modern true crime writing.  Published in 1966 the book combined fiction writing techniques with investigative journalism, catapulting the genre to respectable nonfiction.

The goal of narrative true crime is:

1. Understanding what drives people to commit the crime – political corruption, corporate embezzlement, kidnapping, rape, insider securities trading, racketeering, hustling, drug running, slave trading, bank robbery, forgery, murder – by examining psychopathic, sociopathic and antisocial behavior.
2. Provoking an intellectual and emotional response in the reader.

ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL TRUE CRIME

• Incorporates layers of detail about the setting, the social fabric and the culture of a particular time period – providing a historical perspective.
• Explores, in-depth, the characters’ minds – victims, perpetrators, and survivors
• Examines the impact on the society and community
• Relates the story to the reader
• Emotionally engages the reader
• Combines literary techniques – vivid characters, dialogue, description, action, metaphor, symbolism, theme, suspense, rising conflict, well-paced plot – with investigative reporting.
• Delves into the factual details of the story: forensics, police procedurals, criminal psychology, judicial practices, the arrest, trial, penalty and aftermath.
• Has something provocative to say about the events (instead of simply conveying a lurid tale of crime).

A brief list of True Crime reading:

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

Shot in The Heart, Mikal Gilmore

The Devil in the White City, Erick Larson

Killing Pablo: The Hunt For the World’s Greatest Outlaw, Mark Bowden

Public Enemies, America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, Bryan Burrough

YOUR TURN: What do you find so captivating about true crime narrative and do you have any favorite books?

Scenes are the cinema of narrative nonfiction.  Scenes lift a story off the page and create a sense of movement.  Instead of recounting the information to the reader in exposition form – like a still photograph – scenes incorporate action, conflict, suspense and dialogue to move the story forward.

Writing a scene that engages the senses is far more difficult than simply summarizing the action and spoon-feeding it to the reader.  Good narrative nonfiction provides emotional drama, not just ‘explanation’.  If you are writing narrative nonfiction, you must learn how to successfully incorporate literary techniques into your work.

WHAT A SCENE DOES

• Advances the story
• Presents what the character(s) want or need
• Includes an obstacle or opposing force (conflict)
• Emotionally involves the reader in the decision or event

HOW TO DECIDE WHEN TO CREATE A SCENE

1. For Major Plot Points or Events In The Story
When you decided to leave your husband after 23 years. The moment the CEO is caught for embezzling.

2. To Convey Conflict Between Characters
When the detective interviews the main murder suspect. When the soldiers are captured by opposing forces.

3. When The Stakes Are High or Strong Emotions Are Evoked
When the crew must convince the captain to head back to shore before the perfect storm cripples the ship.

Consider these questions:

• What is the problem or obstacle the primary character needs to overcome?  What is the conflict?
• What is the purpose of the scene?
• Does the scene advance the story?  How?

This scene, from The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald, is rich with suspense, conflict, emotion and high stakes:

Herndon paused, staring into Wilson’s eyes.  Seconds passed, seeming like minutes.  The moment grew unnatural.  Wilson said nothing.

Finally, Herndon broke the tension.  “There are going to be indictments.  People will be going to jail.  Right now you have the opportunity to make a decision, and we would like you to make the right decision.”

This was Wilson’s chance to admit his mistakes, Herndon said, a chance to someday be able to look his grandchildren in the eye and say that he had done the right thing by confessing and helping the government.

“It’s tough, it’s hard, but it will be tougher if you don’t cooperate,” Herndon said.  “We’re giving you the chance to make a difficult decision, probably the most difficult you’ve ever made.  But it begins now by being honest about your activities at ADM.”

Suddenly Wilson interrupted.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go through the company attorneys,” he said.  “I know the antitrust laws, and I haven’t done anything wrong.  And don’t think I don’t recognize the pressure tactics you’re using.”

Wilson stood up.  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he repeated. “And this interview is over.”

YOUR TURN: How do you deal with creating scenes in your nonfiction work?

The Table of Contents (TOC) is the backbone and sales tool of your nonfiction book.  It is a powerful organizing and marketing tool.

Most readers base their purchase decision on a book’s cover and the Table of Contents.  They want to know exactly what to expect – what will they learn, how will they feel, do they need the information, does it work, will they like the writing style, will they understand the material – in other words, is this book the right fit?

USE THE TABLE OF CONTENTS TO ANSWER READER’S QUESTIONS
Potential readers will look to a Table of Contents to answer their questions about a book:

• Does the information work, will I achieve the goal?  Include anecdotes, case studies, and success stories in the TOC
• Will I be able to understand the content or steps necessary? Include diagrams, charts, maps, and images.
• What will I learn? Include detailed sub-headings for each chapter.
• Do I need the information? Use keywords to inform the reader why the information is pertinent.  For instance, ‘CAN-SPAM Laws Can Kill Your Business’, ‘How to Avoid Foreclosure and Save Your Home’, or “Why You Need To Understand The Recession To Stay Employed’

HOW TO OUTLINE AN EFFECTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Organize the overall flow of the content
How-To and Self-Help books have an intrinsic step-by-step outline built into them, making outlining an easy task.  Your content will do one of the following: lead readers through practical exercises and techniques to develop specific skills, or guide them through the evolutionary stages of a process while addressing ways to overcome challenges, or solve a reader’s problem by walking them through a step-by-step system.  Successful outlines organize the book’s main points, so write down the most important ideas, steps, techniques or skills you will present to the reader.  Now you can break the topics into individual chapters.

2. Organize Chapters into Sections and Subsections
After brainstorming or mind-mapping the topics for inclusion in each chapter, select those that represent major themes to create chapter sections. For each chapter outline, ask yourself:

• Does each section belong in this chapter?
• Should any information be moved to another section?
• Is any information duplicated? (duplicated information should be eliminated)
• Am I missing any important ideas that should be included?

3. Create Compelling and Informative Chapter Titles and Subtitles
Titles reveal the overall structure and style of your book as well as convey promises and benefits.  The most effective titles are two-part: an intriguing title accompanied by a descriptive subtitle. If you use witty or whimsical chapter titles, always attach a more specific tagline so the reader has a clear understanding of the information they will find in those pages.

Compelling two-part chapter titles from Modern Traditions, a how-to book on weddings:
Chapter 6: Angels on Horseback – Wedding Transportation
Chapter 8: Walking Among The Stones – Ceremony Décor
Chapter 11: Cattails and Harvest Wheat – Setting the Table

4. What to do with extra information
After finishing your outline you may find you have more information that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.  If you determine the information is important and should be included in the manuscript, consider creating an appendix, breaking up the information into smaller chunks for sidebars, or including a Q&A section at the end of each chapter.

Frank Catalano and Bud Smith created an extensive Table of Contents outline for their book, Internet Marketing For Dummies that effectively answers potential reader’s questions:

Part I: Getting Started with Internet Marketing

Chapter 1: Getting Net-Savvy
Marketing on the Internet
Introducing the Web
E-mail and mail lists: Unsung online heroes
Newsgroups: The threat and the promise
America Online and online services
Online advertising
Wireless access
Do You Need to Market on the Internet?
Finding Your Online Market
Internet user profile
Working in the Online World

Chapter 2: Market Size Matters
Using Internet Marketing Resources
Building up your bookmarks
Search tips and tricks
Following the experts
Sizing Up a Market
Identifying customer characteristics
Customer characteristics and the Internet
Sizing up the competition

Chapter 3: Your Internet Marketing Plan
Assessing Your Overall Marketing Effort
Assessing current company-level marketing efforts
Internet marketing at the company level
Assessing current product marketing efforts
Marketing your product on the Net
Net marketing for the sole proprietorship
Matching Your Customer Base to the Online Community
What if my business is local?
What if my business is global?
Assessing Your Competitors’ Net Work
Creating a comparison chart
Using your completed chart
Sizing up your Net-only competition
Sizing Your Internet Marketing Effort
Creating a Written Plan
Implementing Your Internet Marketing Plan

Chapter 4:Mastering Your Domain
Choosing an ISP for Online Marketing
Discovering How Domain Names Work
Breaking down domain names
The competition for domain names
Why domain names are so important
Possible new domain names
Choosing Your Domain Name(s)
Domain name follies
Good and bad domain names
Choosing a company domain name
What if you’re local?
Registering Your Domain Name(s)
Registering your domain name yourself
Having an ISP or Web-hosting service register your domain name for you

Part II: Marketing on the World Wide Web

Chapter 5:Planning a Business Web Site
Guiding Principles for Business Sites
Specifying Your Site Content
Creating a Look and Feel for Your Site
Having Your Site Done for You
Getting engaged
Projecting your management style
Beating the wrap-up

Chapter 6:Creating a Basic Web Site
Deciding Whether to Do it Yourself
Steps to creating a site
Who does the work?
Putting it all together
Creating a Web Page
Should you do it?
How to do it
Making Smart Graphics

Chapter 7:Marketing on Your Web Site
Your Web Site as a Marketing Vehicle
Coordinating your Web site with your overall marketing plan
Designing your Web marketing effort
Marketing Information on Your site
Understanding the vital role of press releases
Putting product information online
Telling Web surfers where to buy
News on Your site

Chapter 8:Getting the Most out of Your Web Site
Gathering Information about Site Visitors
Techniques for gathering visitor information
Uses for visitor data
Improving Your Site
Getting Found with Search Engines
Registering for Yahoo!
Getting found by active search engines
Publicizing Your Site
Developing an effective publicity strategy
Expanding your publicity efforts

Part III: Marketing with E-Mail

Chapter 9:E-Mail Marketing 101
E-Mail: The Common Denominator
Basic E-Mail Netiquette
The Elements of E-Mail Marketing Style
Write “dressy casual”
Be polite
Don’t be afraid to be forwarded
Making Every E-mail Do Its Share

Chapter10: E-Mail by the Pallet
Processing E-Mail by the Pallet
Planning for the flood
The 24-hour rule Delivering E-Mail by the Pallet
Creating an e-mail mailing list
Creating the right message
Getting the mechanics right
Spam: Cons and a Few Pros
Why spam offends
Avoiding the spammer level

Chapter11: Building Community wit E-Mail Lists
What’s an E-Mail List?
Subscribing to an e-mail list
Variations on an e-mail list
Finding and Using the Right E-Mail Lists
Benefits of participating in an e-mail list
Participating in discussion lists
Creating Your Own E-Mail List
Benefits of creating an e-mail list
Determining which type of list to start
Setting up a simple list server
Maintaining Your E-Mail List
Promoting Your E-Mail List

Part IV: Even More Internet Marketing

Chapter12: Speaking Up with Discussion Groups and Chat
Understanding Usenet Newsgroups
News over the “back fence”
Organized side-to-side and top-down
Setting Up a Newsgroup Reader
Finding and Mining Discussion Groups
Finding the right Usenet newsgroups
Finding the right non-Usenet discussion groups
Monitoring discussion groups
Participating in discussion groups
Marketing to Discussion Groups
A Few Words About Chat

Chapter13: Controlling the Message with Internet Advertising
What Are Your Goals?
Driving the Right Ad Vehicle
Banner ads
Site sponsorship
E-mail lists
Search engine keywords
Making the Ad Buy
A few words about words
The purchase process
When to call in a professional

Chapter14: Spreading the Word with Internet PR
Whom Do You Want to Influence?
Targeting the right contacts
Using the right touch
Planning an Internet PR Campaign
Messages are key
Excuse me, did you say something?
Internet PR agency or not?
Getting Your Release Distributed
Ready for release
Putting it on the wire
Tracking Your Released Release
Watching the wires
Pay for play

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter15: Ten Advantages of Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing Has Low Barriers to Entry
Internet Marketing Is Informational Marketing
The Online World Enables You to Respond Rapidly
The Internet World Highlights Marketing’s Role
Internet Innovations Are Marketing Opportunities
The Internet Makes Research Easier
The Online World Is Forgiving of Mistakes
The Internet World Is Currently U.S. Centric and English Centric
Internet Marketing Removes Geographic Barriers

Chapter16: Ten Disadvantages of Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing Is Different
Internet Bandwidth Is Crowded
Internet Efforts Can Get, Expensive
Online Marketing Doesn’t Reach Everybody
Getting Online Can Be Difficult
The Internet Increases the Pressure on Marketing
Justifying the Cost of Net Marketing Efforts Is Hard
Making Mistakes Online Is Easy
Guilt by Association
The Uncertain Future of the Online World

Chapter17: The Offline Marketing Resources
Crossing the Chasm and Others
Trade Associations
Marketing: An Introduction and Marketing For Dummies
Trade Publications
Statistical Abstract of the United States and America Demographics
News Radio
Anything by Ries and Trout
Any Big Magazine Rack
Permission Marketing
Television Advertising
The Internet Marketing For Dummies Internet Directory

About This Directory
Advertising
Business Owner’s Resources
E-Mail Lists
Government and Law
Marketing
Periodicals Online
Search Engines and Directories
Technology Resources
Web Tools