10 Ways to Write a Better Book in the 2020s

The Formula for Influence Series

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

A series of insights to help your book project’s success.

You have a message and you want to champion it to others. How do you best navigate the digital landscape and activate new insights to improve your effectiveness through creativity and innovation, particularly in writing and publishing?

The goal of this series is to help you maximize the potential of your idea as a book.

I think about this stuff all the time—maybe too much. I am endlessly fascinated with the act of communication. What are you about? What is your message? To whom do you wish to speak? What form will it take?

As a publisher, my goal is to help you explore these questions in book form. Capturing your ideas in book form is still a big deal in the 2020s. Books are the only medium that force you to think deeply enough about an idea to really get to an innovative solution. You can get away with rehashing other people and tossing out tropes and cliches in other media, but books are less forgiving of such facile activity.

The problem is that getting a good book to market is quite challenging. More than one sharp leader has told me, if I knew how difficult it is to create a good book, I never would have even tried. I can’t think of an industry that is more arcane and esoteric. Social media has only made awareness of the mystery more broad. If you’ve tried to gain followers, you know the pain of which I speak.

Some of us might throw our hands up at the whole thing, except that we can’t. What we used to call “mass communications”—one to many communication—is inexorably part of contemporary life. If you have something to say, and you feel called or compelled to share it with others, then understanding the industry of publishing is just the cost of doing business.

Though not comprehensive by any means, this series is an attempt to help you understand a little more about writing a good book.

The Formula for Influence, or How to Write a Better Book in the 2020s

1. Another Chunk: It’s not just a book, but a product line

2. Open Up a Vein: Discover your personal connection to the work

3. The Unforced Error Most Authors Make: Avoid making ancillary products first

4. Ride the Zeitgeist: Make sure your idea is in season, not ten years old

5. Judge a Book: The critical importance of a visually appealing cover

6. The Cover is the Solution: Look for design choices that sum up the idea

7. Don’t Focus on What Its About: Focus on the key discovery and reader benefit

8. Good Books Solve Problems: Train yourself to think in genre and category

9. Lose the Five Dollar Words: Don’t write to impress; pay attention to readability.

10. 10 Steps To Greater Writing Productivity: Don’t focus on the end, but your time to write.