Define your book

This course assumes you have already decided to write a book. If you are still deciding, settle that first. Everything here is about making the book you have decided to write into one that works.

"Works" is the key word. A nonfiction book written by someone with expertise is almost never only a book. It is a tool you will hand to clients, mention on stages, send to a reporter, or leave for your kids. A tool has a job. If you do not define the job before you build it, you get something that looks nice and does nothing in particular.

Why the order matters

Most first-time authors start with the idea: "I want to write a book about leadership." Then they write, and somewhere around chapter four they notice the book is drifting. It is trying to teach new managers and impress CEOs at the same time. It is a memoir in one chapter and a manual in the next.

The fix is to make three decisions in a specific order. The Scribe Method, the book on which Scribe bases its process, lays out the sequence as objectives, then audience, then idea (see the chapter on book positioning). Each decision constrains the next:

• Your objectives decide who has to read the book. If your goal is more speaking invitations, the reader who matters is someone who books speakers or sits in the audience at the events you want.
• Your reader decides what the book needs to contain. Their problems, their vocabulary and what they already know shape every chapter.
• The idea is what you offer that reader. It is the place where what you know meets what they need.

Expect the idea you walked in with to change. That is not a sign of failure. It is the module doing its job.

Step 1: Set your objectives

An objective is a result you want from the book. There are two sides to it, and you need both.

What the book does for the reader

Start here, because the reader is the only reason anyone will pick the book up. Ask yourself:

• What problem will this book solve for the reader?
• What will they know, be able to do, or be able to decide after reading it that they could not before?
• What will they stop doing, or stop worrying about?

Be concrete. "Help people with their finances" is not an objective. "Help a recently widowed spouse understand the accounts, deadlines and decisions in the first year, so they do not make a costly mistake while grieving" is.

What the book does for you

This is the part people feel awkward about, so they leave it vague. Do not. A book that helps readers and also moves your work forward is not selfish. It is the reason most people with expertise can justify the time a book takes. The results authors usually want fall into a handful of groups:

• Visibility: more people in your field know your name and your ideas.
• Authority: you are taken more seriously by the people who already know you.
• Clients and opportunities: the book starts conversations that turn into work.
• Speaking: organizers invite you, or invite you to bigger rooms.
• Impact: your method reaches people you could never coach one at a time.
• Legacy: your story or knowledge is written down for family, a company or a community.

Pick one or two as primary. You can have more, but the book can only be shaped around a couple of them. Then make each one specific enough that you would know whether it happened. "Get more clients" becomes "start conversations with operations leaders at mid-sized manufacturers, who currently do not know my firm exists."

Name your champagne moment

The Scribe Method suggests a simple test it calls the champagne moment: the single event that would make the whole effort feel worth it (from the chapter on book objectives). The point is to make it realistic. "A prospect tells me on a first call that they read my book and that is why they called" is a champagne moment. "Selling a million copies" is a wish, and it will make a perfectly good book feel like a failure.

Step 2: Choose one reader

Your objectives tell you who has to read this book. If your objective is client work, the reader is your best future client, not your peers. If it is speaking, the reader is the person who books speakers or the people they are booking for. If it is legacy, the reader might be your grandchildren or the next generation of your company.

Now narrow it down to one person. Not a market segment: a person. You can have secondary readers who will also get value, but the book is written to one primary reader. When you write to a crowd, you hedge, over-explain and lose your voice. When you write to one person, you sound like someone talking to them across a table, which is exactly what good nonfiction feels like.

Build a reader profile

Write a short profile of that person. Include:

• Their situation: job, stage of life or business, what is happening for them right now.
• The problem: what keeps coming up, what they have tried, why it has not worked.
• What they want: the result they would pay for, in their words, not yours.
• What they already know: where to start the book. Too basic and they feel talked down to. Too advanced and they get lost.
• What they read and listen to: this matters later, when you position the book and plan the launch.

Check it against real people

Your profile is a guess until you test it. Some ways to check it without a research budget:

• Write down five real people who fit the profile. If you cannot name five, the reader may be too narrow or you may not know them well enough yet.
• Go through your sent email and your notes from client calls. What questions do people like this actually ask you? Those questions are chapters.
• Read the low-star reviews of books your reader already buys. Complaints like "too much theory" or "assumes you have a big team" tell you exactly what is missing.
• Call two or three people from your list and ask what they would want from a book on the subject. Do not pitch the book. Listen.

Step 3: Shape the idea

With objectives and a reader in hand, the idea is easier to see. The test for a strong idea is simple: is this a book the reader wants to read, or a book you think they should read? The Scribe Method chapter on figuring out your book idea calls this out as the most common mistake authors make. "Should" books lecture. "Want" books answer a question the reader is already asking.

Write it in 200 words or fewer

Write a short paragraph that answers three questions: what is the book about, who is it for, and what will they get from it? Keep it under 200 words. If you cannot, the idea is probably still several books tangled together.

The tangled version might contain a good book. It does not yet say which one.

Write the recommendation sentence

Imagine your reader at dinner, telling a friend about your book. What one sentence would they say? That is the book's pitch, and it should sound like something a real person would say out loud, not like a jacket blurb. "It shows you how to do a monthly forecast with the spreadsheets you already have" is a recommendation. "A transformative framework for operational excellence" is not.

Decide what the book is not

Most experts know far more than one book can hold. Write down the topics you will not cover in this book, even though you could. This list will save you later, when an interesting tangent tries to become chapter nine. Some of those topics might be your next book.

One related decision: hold nothing important back. The Scribe Method argues for putting your real knowledge in the book rather than teasing it (see how much to give away). Readers can tell when they are reading a brochure, and readers who learn a lot from you are the ones who later hire you.

Step 4: Write your positioning statement

Now pull it together into one sentence. Scribe calls this the North Star, and The Scribe Method gives it a fill-in-the-blank form (from the chapter The North Star Check):

I will use my book to target [PRIMARY AUDIENCE], by teaching them [BOOK IDEA], which will lead to my ultimate goal of more [OBJECTIVES].

Two examples, written for this course:

How to tell if it is strong

• One of each. One primary audience, one idea, one main goal. If you see "and" in every slot, you have not chosen yet.
• The reader would agree. Read the middle part to someone who fits your profile. Do they say "I need that"?
• It lets you say no. Take a chapter idea you are unsure about. Does the sentence tell you whether it belongs? If it cannot settle that question, it is too vague.
• It fits you. The idea should sit inside what you actually know and have done. A positioning statement that requires you to become a different expert is a different book.

Write the final sentence somewhere you will see it every time you work on the book. The next five modules all come back to it.

Common mistakes

• Writing for "everyone who wants to grow." A book for everyone is a book for no one in particular. Pick the person.
• Hiding the business objective. If you want clients from the book, say so, at least to yourself. Otherwise you will write a book that is admired by peers and ignored by buyers.
• Treating bestseller lists as the goal. Lists measure a narrow kind of short-term sales. Your objectives probably do not depend on them. See the Scribe Method chapter on realistic expectations.
• Making the book about you. Your story belongs in the book where it helps the reader understand or believe something. Where it does not, it can go.
• Skipping the reality check. A reader profile you have not tested against real people is a guess with a name.
• Polishing the sentence forever. The positioning statement needs to be clear, not beautiful. You can refine it in Module 2.

What comes next

In Module 2, you will look at the books your reader already buys, find the space your book fills, and turn your positioning statement into a title and subtitle you have actually tested.