Writer's Tips and Guidelines

Write the Book People Finish

Free guidance from the editors who have helped over 1,000 authors get into print

Most books go unfinished by those who buy them. Jellybooks, a company that measures how readers actually move through ebooks, reports that fewer than half the books it tested were finished.¹ Its founder put the consequence in one sentence: readers who do not finish a book do not recommend it.²

Solomon saw this coming. “Of making many books there is no end,” he wrote, “and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Three thousand years later, about 115,000 new titles a week prove him right, and the weary reader has never had more reasons to stop.

That sentence from Jellybooks should change how you write. Word-of-mouth recommendation is still the best marketing. It’s how books go viral: a reader finishes, a reader tells a friend. A book that stalls in chapter three gets no recommend.

So this page is about getting finished. Everything on it comes from the same place our editing comes from: what we have learned from working with over 1,000 authors since 1984, and from the best books ever written on the craft of story. We give it away here because an author who understands these things writes a better manuscript, and a better manuscript makes a better book for both of us.

Start Here: Five Questions Before You Write Another Page

1. Who is the reader, and why will that reader care? “Everyone” is not a reader. A tired mother of three, a new believer, a man who just got a diagnosis: those are readers. Describe your target audience member(s).
2. Is this just another book on the subject, or will it stand out and shout? Search Amazon for your topic. Read the 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star reviews and write down what readers did not like, what readers wanted but did not get. Make your book something that gives those things to readers.
3. Is there the right amount of content? Too little and the reader feels cheated. Too much and the reader stops. Most first manuscripts have too much. In today’s market, we recommend a book between 25,000 and 40,000 words.
4. How will you promote it? The authors who sell the most copies decided how they would reach readers before the book was printed. Make a list of what you are willing to do. How many hours a week or month are you willing to dedicate to marketing activities you’re comfortable with?
5. Does your biography show you are the person to write this? Not necessarily your résumé. What are the facts that make a stranger trust you on this subject? What makes you a credible author for this book?

Your Title and Subtitle: Think Like a Stranger

You know & love your book. That feels good, but it works against authors when they choose titles and subtitles. Authors reach for mysterious, symbolic phrases that pay off for readers near the end. A title with mysterious meaning may be potent to an author who’s been living inside the book, but a browser is a stranger with no memory of your book. Browsers become buyers when they recognize something concrete in the title and subtitle that allows them to match the material with their interests.

We often hear, “Readers will find out what the title means once they read my book.” Here’s the problem: a browser who’s not drawn in by the title never becomes a buyer. Your title is not a reward for finishing the book. It’s the reason someone starts it.

Every browser is silently asking one question: “Is this book about something that interests me?” Your title and subtitle have a few seconds to answer yes. The simplest rule we know: your title may be abstract, poetic, or intriguing, but your subtitle may not. Your subtitle must finish one of these two sentences:

• “This book explains how to…”
• “This book is about…”

Subtitles that finish “This book explains how to…” (read each one aloud after that phrase):

• Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease and Reclaim Your Life
• Learn to Say No! Stop Living for Everybody Else and Start Living for God

Subtitles that finish “This book is about…”:

• Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life
• Uninvited: Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely
• The Blue Porch Swing: How My Grandfather Taught Me to Pray
• Grandma’s Green Recipe Box: How to Feed a Family Well on a Small Budget
• Room 214: A Nurse’s Story of Faith, Grief, and Hope on the Cancer Ward

For medical, health, and lifestyle books, test the subtitle against “This book explains how to…” first. That sentence is preferred for those books because it tends toward picking action words. For medical and lifestyle books, an action verb outsells a description: “Reclaim Your Health” outsells “Reclaiming Your Health.” Also, a medical subtitle can run to fifteen or eighteen words when it focuses on promised outcomes. (Non-medical subtitles should stay at 14 words or less.) If the “This book explains how to…” phrase is not working, fall back to the “This book is about…” and finish that phrase with a coherent sentence.

Four tests before you settle on a title:

1. The finish-the-sentence test. Read your subtitle after “This book explains how to…” If it does not make sense, try “This book is about…” If it still does not make sense, keep working.
2. The stranger test. Show only your title and subtitle (no cover, no explanation) to five to ten people who have not read your manuscript, ideally not close family. Ask, “What do you think this book is about?” and “Would you pick it up?” If you have to explain it, try again.
3. The Amazon search test. Write down the words a buyer would type to find a book like yours, then search for them on Amazon. Are those words in your title or subtitle? About 70% of online book sales go to books on the first page of results, and search words in your title are how you get there.
4. The social media poll. Post two or three options and ask people to vote and say what they expect each book to be about. The most useful votes come from people outside your church and family circle.

Your Back Cover: Under 200 Words That Do One Job

The back cover description has one job: move a browser to a buyer. It is not a summary. It is not the place to prove how much is in the book. We write ours against a four-step model we call AIDD: Attention, Interest, Desire, Decision. Each sentence has to carry the reader one step closer to the decision.

Keep it under 200 words. Ellen White gave the editors of three church papers the same instruction in 1904: “Let the articles be short, and let them be full of moisture and nourishment.”³ There is not much room on a back cover, and more importantly, browsers decide in seconds. About 70% of books are now sold online, where a browser sees the cover, the title, the subtitle, and the first 30 to 50 words of the description, and then decides. Those first 30 to 50 words are the most valuable real estate in your book. Plan them. The oldest instruction a writer ever received was given to a prophet with a message for people in a hurry: “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it” (Habakkuk 2:2). The browser is running. Make it plain.

What goes in those words depends on what you wrote.

• A true story opens with the moment the reader cannot look away from, then tells the reader what kind of person lived through it.
• A theology or Bible study book opens with the question the reader already has and promises the answer the book gives.
• A health or lifestyle book opens with the outcome the reader will experience. People do not buy health books for information; they buy them for the result. Say the result.
• A children’s book speaks to the parent and the child at once: what the child will love, and what the parent will be glad the child learned.

One more distinction that most authors miss. The back cover gets the browser to open the book. The introduction gets the browser to put it in her cart. The introduction is where you address the reader directly, in one to three pages, and say why the book exists and what the reader will have when they finish. Both are sales tools. In our business, people do not buy information. They buy transformation. The back cover and the introduction must both promise that the reader will be different after reading.

When you publish with us, a minimum of three people work on your back cover copy, and we give you options to choose from rather than a single draft. You will see how much thought goes into 200 words.

How to Write so Readers Finish

Every manuscript that reaches us is one of a handful of kinds, and each kind fails in its own predictable way. We wrote one guide for each. They are free, they are long, and they are the same principles our editors apply when they work on a manuscript. Pick yours.

True Stories and Memoirs

Missionary stories, lives of service, testimonies, biographies. Why most of them start in the wrong place, why the worst night of your life should be the longest chapter, and the one question that tells you what your book is really about.

Theology and Bible Study

Bible study, doctrine, prophecy, Christian living. Why a book that states its conclusion on page one has nowhere to go, how to give the other side its full strength, and what a 33,000-person study says about how people remember what they read.

Health and Lifestyle

Why the reader, not the patient, is the hero of your book; how to deliver physiology without a lecture; and why the relapse belongs in the story.

Children’s Books

Why the child must solve the problem, why the moral at the end is the fastest way to lose both the child and the parent, and what 70% of children say they want from a book.

What Happens to These Principles When You Publish With Us

Reading about craft is one thing. Having four editors and three designers apply it to your manuscript is another. In our Professional, Advanced, and Premium packages, every manuscript is reviewed by four editors and three designers, with a master’s-level theology editor or a medical reviewer added when the subject calls for one. The things described on this page and in the four guides are the things they look for. When a stage of your story is missing, they will not write it for you; they will ask you for it, because you were there and we were not.

Here is what that difference looks like in copies sold.⁴

The principles above are a large part of the reason.

Guidelines and Requirements

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.

Mike Brazington, Publisher