Creating a Killer Table of Contents for Your Non Fiction Book

Way too many authors do not spend enough time on their table of contents. And that's a problem. A really big problem. Because the table of contents not only needs to sell your book, but it also can lead to speaking engagements and media interviews. Stick around. I've got your back on this subject and it's something you need to know. Well, hello there. I'm Julie the Book Broad Award winning author and founder of Book Professional Seller Publishing team that will help you write, publish and promote a money making impact. Creating Nonfiction Book When I self published my first two books, nobody told me this. In fact, despite spending nearly $8,000 on each book hiring professionals to make the books as good as they possibly could be, not a single person spent any time on the table of contents except my editor editing it for formatting and typos. And that's a darn shame. I look at my books and I see some decent chapter titles, but I also see some that could have so much better if someone had just told me that I should be brainstorming them and working on them as hard as I worked on my titles. They need to be researched, tested and try to make each chapter title as good as it possibly could be. Why? Because it matters. First, if a reader likes your book cover and title, the reviews are good enough to continue looking, they're going to pick it up and flip to the inside or click on the look inside. And if that table of contents or those chapter titles aren't making them even more curious, you're probably going to lose them. And here's the thing. Most chapter titles sound like like every other book in their genre. Do you want in on a little secret? There's one chapter title I see all the time. Finding your why. Seriously, all the time in real estate, I see this chapter title all the time. Calculating your cash flow. Evaluating investment properties. There's two snooze. They're in every book already. It doesn't need to be in your book. So as soon as you've read one self help book or one real estate book and you see those, you feel like you don't need to read that book. But let's take an example as to what would make that better. We'll use Finding your why as an example. Now what you want in an ideal scenario is something that has an enormous benefit to the reader. Even better if you can quantify it, it creates curiosity. So something they don't already feel like they know, or it goes in the face of the expected it counters commonly held beliefs or finally could possibly stand alone as a talk title, a course title, or a workshop. Your chapter titles don't have to have all of those, but if they do, at least two, you're probably in really good shape. And of course it has to be relevant and summarize your chapter, at least to a point. So let's take Find your why. One book that we worked on had this recently and it's kind of a self help book. I'm totally generalizing because I don't want to reveal anything about this book, but we workshopped Finding your why title and came up with a really long list and then narrowed it down. Some of the ones that were on the list were dreams and escape plans. Dancing around your dream. There's a difference between a dream and an escape plan. Your dreams in a trust. These were all related to content in that chapter, so it fit. But they're more interesting than finding your why. So what if your chapter is kind of boring? Like how to Calculate Cash Flow? Look at that chapter and find what you say. That's a little different. Or maybe you have your own approach, you know, calculating cash flow without a calculator. The five second approach to whether a property will cash flow. Know three numbers and you'll know if a property cash flows seven ways to calculate cash flow that won't waste your time. Those are all just examples of what would be more interesting than Then how to calculate cash flow. Again, just making this stuff up. The big things. Again, create curiosity. Have a benefit. Fit with the hook of your book and engage that reader. Not like this. Engage like interesting. Engaged. All right. Does each title in your table of contents make someone so curious they have to ask about it or read it? So if you want a little test, show someone who hasn't read your book yet the table of contents and ask them. Actually, don't even ask them. Wait to see if they ask you about any of the chapter titles. Or say, ooh, I have to read this chapter. When you get somebody saying that, ideally somebody that is in your ideal reader audience, you know you're starting to get on the track of great table of contents. Ideally, try to get every chapter to the point where somebody goes, mmm, I gotta hear I gotta read this chapter. But getting 50% would still be miles ahead of most books like this. Tip. Hit that thumbs up button. Try it. It feels good. And of course, subscribe to the channel so you catch all these videos. New videos, and every Tuesday and Friday, except in the summer when we take a break. So subscribe and turn those notifications on so you get notified when a new video comes out because when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some fabulous book launcher swag like this fantastic noboringbooks mug or this oh so soft journal and we'll become YouTube besties like I'm Besties with Dave ot Kevin Nobi 1 Fio Shea, Poetry from the Heart and Saluto Uba. Thank you so much for your comments, likes and share. I really appreciate you. Now, if you haven't already, you must check out this video on making sure you have a great hook for your book because your chapter titles will hang off that hook. Get it? But if you've watched that already, this video is pretty fabulous as well. So go ahead, click on one of them and I will see you there.