Nicolas Cole breaks nonfiction into four types: Actionable (how-to steps), Analytical (data-driven), Aspirational (success stories), and Anthropological (psychology and culture). He maps each to a personal-finance book, showing how knowing your lens helps you target readers and shape your content to match what they actually want.
If you reverse engineer all nonfiction, all nonfiction really could be organized into 4 different categories. We called it the 4A Framework. You have actionable, analytical, aspirational, and you have anthropological. Actionable, the value prop is here's how to do something, steps 1, 2, 3. Analytical is here's why, usually backed by like data or studies or whatever. You read things where you're like, "Oh, that's a really interesting study. I didn't know that." That's a completely different type of reader. Aspirational is this worked for me, it can work for you too. The value prop is motivating. And anthropological is, here's the psychology behind why. Personal finance is the example we used with this. What's an actionable personal finance book? It would be I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. What's an analytical personal finance book? It would be like Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. What's an aspirational personal finance book? Probably like Rich Dad Poor Dad. What's an anthropological personal finance book? Probably The Psychology of Money. So all of these people are writing about the same topic, but the lens through which they're writing about it is very different. And each one of these readers is a different type of reader, and that will help give you some direction of, "Here's the topic I want to write about, here's the person that I'm trying to help, and here is their expectation."
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
