Julie Broad's book identifies three core problems nonfiction authors face: writing for themselves instead of readers, producing boring content, and failing to plan for success. She emphasizes reader-centric writing, benefit-driven hooks, and a 12-15-month timeline that includes marketing. Authors can monetize through courses, speaking, or complementary products.
Chapters
Are you looking to write a nonfiction book within the next couple of years? Or maybe you're already in the process of writing one. Maybe you're like me. I've always thought about doing it, but I don't really understand the process. And even though I'm the guy running Book Thinkers, I have a lot of questions. Well, this book would be a great resource for you as it was for me. I just finished reading it. Hello, Book Thinkers family. Today's book tip is going to come from Self-Publish and Succeed by Julie the Book Broad. And the subtitle of this book reads, The No Boring Books Way to Write a Nonfiction Book That Sells. There are so many mistakes and barriers to entry if you're looking to write a book, and this book will help you avoid so many of those costly mistakes. There are 3 of them that Julie addresses in the intro, and I'd like to read them to everybody because these are some of the questions that we're going to address throughout this book and this video. The typical nonfiction book focuses on the author, not the reader, and that sets up the book and author for massive marketing challenges right from the start. How many times have you talked to somebody that says, well, I'm looking to become a New York Times bestseller, I'm looking to become famous, I want to sell a bazillion books? Well, if you're starting with that point in mind, you're going to set yourself up for failure. You need to write with the reader in mind. You need to write as a solution for some sort of problem that the reader is focusing on, not trying to become famous. If that's your goal, you have a lot of problems, but Julie can help you work through that in this book. Number 2, a large percentage of nonfiction books are really boring. Unfortunately, that is the truth, and you don't see a lot of them reviewed on this page, but I unfortunately have read a lot of boring books because they lack a benefit-driven hook and storytelling techniques, even if they contain great information. So what is a hook? How do you communicate it effectively, effectively within a book? What are some storytelling techniques that you should incorporate? Those are things you're going to learn while reading this gem right here. And then number 3, many authors, especially self-published authors, don't plan for success. They write their book and hope it will sell. Book Thinkers works with a lot of authors who come to us and they say, hey, our book just came out and we thought we'd sell a lot of copies. We didn't. So how can we get on the page? And that situation can be avoided with the proper planning. It takes 12 to 15 months to write a book, a proper book, and part of that process includes marketing. Julie can tell you how to do that kind of stuff. See, Julie founded a company called Book Launchers, and Book Launchers will assist a self-published author through whatever part of the process they want help with. This book contains a lot of the secrets in their process. And so as somebody who looks at a traditional publisher and says, well, I don't want to give away 70% of the money that you're going to make, or I don't want to give away the rights and intellectual property that are contained within this book. I don't want to give away the rights pretty much as an author to do what I want with my own book. I don't want to spend extra money buying back my own book and copies. Self-publishing, I mean, it's the way of the future. Amazon has made it so efficient for people to do so, but you don't want to become one of those authors that only sells 250 copies of your book. You don't want to become one of those authors who Thinks of fame and fortune before they think of the reader. You don't want to become one of those authors who makes so many of these mistakes and writes a boring book. Boring books don't sell. Boring books are terrible. And unfortunately, nonfiction sort of has some of those stereotypes. When I tell people about Book Thinkers, they go, ah, nonfiction books, those are dry, those are boring. Well, we're here to make them sexy again. We're here to make them fun and entertaining. And Julia is so good at that. And so if you're looking to write a book, I would highly recommend checking this one out. If you're looking to write a book, check out booklaunchers.com. There are so many great resources for you. Who knows, I might be writing my first book sometime soon and using a lot of the principles in this book, maybe, maybe even collaborating with Book Launchers. We'll see. And then the other thing that I wanted to mention is that Julie and I actually recorded a podcast conversation that'll come out within the next couple of weeks. So if you're an aspiring author, but you're not sure if this book is going to be a good fit for you after today's video, make sure you give that podcast listen a try. Make sure you check out Julie's information. Make sure you check out Book Launchers because I think you'll be sold after you do all of that. Again, Self-Publish and Succeed is a great resource. There's a couple other things that I'll mention in case you're not sold yet. So here we go. This book will teach you the importance of your title and subtitle. Did you know that subtitles sell books? Did you know that subtitles rank super high in SEO and that this should really be the hook of your book. It should explain exactly what you do. It should replace your elevator pitch. A lot of people don't think about things like that. It's so funny, I ask authors all the time, well, what's your book about? And then they'll say something like, well, you know, it's pretty tough to explain, but let me give it my best shot. It's like, no, let's get rid of all of that prerequisite language and actually be able to communicate what the hook of the book is about. How is it going to help your reader? Then there are other things I learned about, like the titles of your actual chapters. Chapter titles. I've not really given much thought to them, but when a reader goes into a bookstore, at least a physical bookstore, and they're flipping through, they'll often look at the chapter titles. And how many chapter titles do you know are titled something like Finding Your Why? You want to differentiate. You want to leverage that SEO. You want to sell individual courses based on your book. And then here's the kicker, and probably what I think is the most valuable piece of this book, in my opinion. How do you complement your book? It's really tough to make money with your book specifically unless you sell thousands and thousands of copies. So let's say you're not going to sell thousands of copies. How can you make extra money? Do you become the person in your space and add an extra zero to your speaking engagements? Do you release a course that goes out with the book that teaches people a specific skill? Do you— I don't know, there are so many different ways. I don't want to spoil any more of them. So that is my pitch today. That is my book review. I loved reading this book. It was very well written. I think it's going to be a great resource for me when I end up writing my book. And so with that, go read something. Bye! Bye!
