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Apple first released iBooks Author back in 2012, and it was and still is largely geared to the textbook and education community. IBooks has introduced many ways to present and display content, with an audience of over 800 million iPad users across the world. It’s been that since mid-September 2014, over one million customers visit the iBooks store every week, which makes for a huge potential market for authors and publishers.

The iBooks Store includes both traditional e-books, using the.EPUB format, and multimedia iBooks produced in iBooks Author. These Apple e-books can only be sold and distributed in the iTunes Bookstore, though other versions of the same book can be sold elsewhere. The primary advantage of iBooks is the use of multimedia elements (like video and interactions) to better engage with your audience. IBooks can also be used for non-publication purposes like portfolios, and are perfect for showcasing content on supported mobile devices. I recently completed and published my own iBook, titled:.

This guide is primarily based on my experience and workflow for writing a book, from initial idea to publishing. What Is iBooks Author iBooks Author is a desktop publishing tool and word processor, similar to There are plenty of lightweight and easy-to-use text editors for Mac users, but for projects requiring desktop publishing features, Apple's recently overhauled Pages is still a good solution. And Microsoft Word is deceptively simple. You are fine as long as you fire up a document and just type. But Microsoft Word wouldn't be the Swiss knife it is without its productive features.

It also includes what are called widgets for inserting image galleries, videos, interactive images, 3D media, and even Keynote presentations. An iBooks Author e-book has the look and feel of a multimedia web page, but the iBooks format can only be read using Apple’s Apple's iBooks and Amazon's Kindle are two of the best apps for reading a book and each has its own strengths and weaknesses – but which is right for your reading habits? (free) for iPhone, iPad and Mac. At the time of writing, multimedia iBooks cannot be read on the iPhone — only standard traditional iBooks. Here’s a demo of my multimedia iBook on the iPad. In many cases, multimedia elements can significantly influence how the content is written and how the book is designed.

This can be especially useful for nonfiction books, such as cookbooks, software manuals, history and geography guides, art and picture books, and crafts and hobby guides. As a writer, you can use the features of iBooks Author to present content that is better communicated through video, images, and interactive media. This expanded format does mean that an Apple e-book is often larger in size than a traditional text-based e-book. For example, one of David Sparks’s iBooks, about, is a whopping 1GB download, because he included lots of instructional videos and audio interviews. The content of his book certainly makes learning about markdown a lot easier, but the large file size may take up a significant amount of space. Fortunately, iBooks users can remove and re-download iBooks whenever they like without having to make any double-purchases.

IBooks can also be downloaded and accessed on the Mac version of iBooks, which comes pre-installed with Mac OS X. Multimedia iBooks are especially useful for educational environments, because the content can include interactive photos with pop-ups, short quizzes, and a glossary of terms. IBooks Reader also includes very useful highlighting and annotation tools for reviewing content.

Successful Multimedia iBooks Some of the best examples of self-published iBooks for techies are David Sparks’ Field Guides, which include five multimedia iBooks:,. Though David’s first published book was a traditional paper book, produced with a publisher, he later found that self-publishing iBooks provides more autonomy and a better way of presenting content. In a recent email exchange with David he told me that iBooks Author allows him “to create books that I’m proud of and my readers love.” He also says that though “iBooks Author has been a sort-of-whipping boy in some circles because the books are limited to the iBooks Store the application has improved, and I think it is still the best solution for my books.” David’s guides take almost full advantage the available iBooks widgets, and he was able to have full control over the design and direction of the book. With traditional publishers, authors often lose control over the design and even content of their book. In many ways, iBooks are like a website, allowing users to browse content without having to read in a linear method.

The reader also includes annotation tools for marking text, writing notes, and even setting up study cards for academic content. I highly suggest downloading one or more of David’s guides and other well produced iBooks to discover what is possible in writing and producing a professional iBook. Nearly iBooks in the store include a sample download of their respective chapters. Here are a few other notable multimedia iBooks, each with available sample chapters for download. by David Sparks. by David Sparks. by Rafael Perini.

by Rachael Ray. by Smithsonian Institution. by J.W. Rinzler and Ridley Scott Planning Your iBook As with any You don't have to be Stephen King to be a productive writer.

Using the right applications and writing tips, you can get more writing done with less frustration, and finish what you start., after you determine what your book will be about, you should develop an outline of the chapters and sections you intend to include. I personally use the If you want to go beyond old school methods or limited Microsoft Word outlines and save time in the process, OmniGroup's OmniOutliner takes creating outlines to another level. Because it allows for automatic numbering and switching around of items. During the writing process I frequently review my outline to revise and fill in missing sections. When using iBooks Author for the first time, you might not realize how the multimedia elements can actually drive the content of your book. So in the outlining process, think about which sections of your book could be presented as a gallery of images, a video or Keynote presentation, an interactive pop-up, and so on.

Writing Drafts Though you could certainly write your book directly in iBooks Author, the application is not really a word processing program like Word and Pages. It doesn’t include writing collaboration features, and most importantly there’s no ability to track changes you have made.

The main content of an iBooks file can be exported as a plain text file, but the exported file is stripped of formatting entirely, so you will need to reformat the text in Word or Pages. This formatting is retained when you export the iBooks content to PDF. I typically draft manuals and books in the When it comes to getting a research paper, ebook or novel completed, Scrivener can help you stay organized and motivated — that is, if you know how to use some of its best features., because it allows me to quickly switch between different chapters and sections of a manuscript, and also related research documents, web pages and notes can be stored and managed in the same project file along with the manuscript content. Another option for drafting is Apple’s Pages, which offers the advantage of exporting your draft manuscript directly to iBooks Author. In theory, you can set up chapters and sections in Pages and export them to iBooks Author, which will create the same chapters and sections for iBooks – but more about that later.

Writing Book Template Review Frame My For Mac Download

Whichever program you write with, write using chapters and sections, which is the setup for all iBooks Author templates. Draft and revise as much as you can outside of iBooks Author. Most likely it will be a waste of time to include images in your drafts, because you will be switching and moving images around later in iBooks Author. If you’re like me, you may like to include images while drafting to help write the content and remind yourself of what the content refers to – but don’t dwell on it.

You can always export body content of your manuscript without the images and widgets to a text file. For my book I drafted as much as I could in Scrivener and then exported the entire document to Pages for additional revisions. It’s important to note that you will be drafting and revising a lot depending upon the length and complexity of your book. I know there are people who claim that a book can be written in 30 days, but I just don’t see that happening unless it’s all you do everyday, and even then I see it as impossible to write a good book of 20,000 or more words in one or two months. The entire writing and revising process takes time, and you’ll do even more of it when you finally get the body text in iBooks Author. Creating Your First Book To get started with iBooks Author, you can choose to begin with a template or create your template from scratch. IBooks Author includes fifteen templates, and the App Store includes dozens of third-party templates, at very affordable prices.

I personally recommend the website too, which has a wide variety of professional designs. If you have experience using Apple’s Pages, you will be familiar with how iBooks Author works.

Writing Book Template Review Frame My For Mac

Aside from the self-explanatory tools at the top of the screen, the application consists of four main sections:. The upper sidebar consists of template icons of pages, including chapters and sections, copyright, foreword and dedication pages, and preset column pages. You can click on the individual thumbnails and make changes to font style and size among other settings, so that each time you create a new chapter or section, the default settings you choose will automatically get applied to the new chapters and pages you add to your manuscript (more about this below). The bottom third sidebar section contains a thumbnail view of all chapters and pages you create in iBooks Author. Thumbnail chapters and sections can be rearranged, but individual pages in chapters and sections cannot be moved around.

Each template starts with chapter and section pages. The larger main section is where you type text and insert multimedia elements into the body of of your manuscript. The Book assets section between the layouts and the thumbnail sections provide access to the cover art for your book, the table of contents, and the optional glossary and intro media for your book. Here you can insert a video that automatically plays when your book is opened, if you like. Like Pages, iBooks Author includes an Inspector with formatting and layout tools.

Also similar to Pages, the iBooks Author toolbar includes a font style tool, a button for multimedia widgets and buttons for adding shapes, charts, and tables. Notice also that though multimedia iBooks are viewed and read in landscape orientation, there’s also a button for viewing your book in portrait view. Note that portrait orientation puts all your media elements into the margins of your book, and readers will need to tap open them for full viewing. In a recent iBooks Author update, Apple included portrait orientation templates, and it appears that multimedia widgets can be included in those pages too. Do note that these portrait templates cannot be switched to landscape view. Many readers may prefer books in the traditional portrait orientation, so consider in an option for your own book. All templates can of course be customized, which means you can create your template based on an existing template, or create one from scratch.

To customize a template make all the changes you would like to chapter pages, sections, and the different types of pages (e.g., preface, foreword, dedication) in the Layout section of iBooks Author. The changes made to layouts will be applied to all new pages you create in your book. The video below provides a bit more insight about working with layouts.

Chapters, Sections & Pages Multimedia iBooks consist of chapters, sections, and pages. As with standard ebooks, your book can be made up of chapters and pages, but in iBooks, you can break content down into sections (within chapters) for better presentation of information and reader navigation. For each of its templates, iBooks Author creates the first chapter and section for you. Click on a page to start typing or pasting content, just as you do in Word or Pages. You can click in the Insert menu to add another section, chapter, or insert more pages. If you have a version of your manuscript drafted in Pages or Word, you can drag and drop the file itself onto the first chapter of the book, and iBooks Author will import the content of that file and create chapters and sections based on how the content is laid out in the imported file. The application will attempt to use the chapter headings you typed in the original document.

The formatting of the imported chapters and section will be based on what is set for your iBooks. But remember, you can go the Layout section of iBooks Author and change the formatting of headers and body style, and the select to apply those changes universally. As with Word and Pages, you can also use the Style Drawer (located under the View menu and in the toolbar) to apply or change styles. However, based on my experience, this approach didn’t work as smoothly as I liked, and I ended up cutting and pasting my body text from Scrivener and Pages and pasting it directly into iBooks Author.

As I worked through each chapter, I realized that a lot of the content I had drafted in Scrivener could be better communicated with a gallery of screenshots or interactive images. I had decided early on that I wanted most of my book to be image driven rather than pages and pages of text. I also wanted the book to be browsable, so readers didn’t have to necessarily read the book from cover to cover. To create a chapter in iBooks Author, go to Insert Pages, and select the chapter style or section you want to use. While you can customize chapters and pages anyway you like, it’s best to make changes in the layout section so that those changes can be applied to all the chapters you have created or will create. This provides a consistent style throughout your book.

When you make changes to the layout, click the Apply Changes button to apply them universally. Sections are not required in a regular iBook, but adding sections is useful when it comes to an interactive multimedia iBook. For example, chapter 8 of my book consists of seven sections. IBooks Author will automatically create section headings for the interactive Table of Contents (ToC) of the book. This special ToC allows users to use the pinch finger gesture on any page of the book to open the ToC for quick navigation. Users can swipe back and forth between chapters and sections.

Also note the text size for iBooks templates are typically 20pts, which is an appropriate size for reading on an iPad-sized device. Readers can adjust the size of the font in the reader, so resist the urge to make this larger than it needs to be. Adding Multimedia Widgets iBooks Author includes nine different widgets that can make your ebook standout from the rest, and offer a different user experience to a traditional e-book.

Instead of your book being pages and pages of text, widgets add visual elements like images, video files, and 3D animations to spruce up your book. The gallery widget is probably the easiest and most useful widget. For example, a gallery widget can be inserted into a blank page, or it can be added (and resized) alongside existing text on a page. Widgets are inserted from the drop-down widget selector in the toolbar. Once you have dragged the gallery widget where you want it, drag and drop the image files you would like to include. The Widget section of the inspector allows you to also re-arrange or replace added images. Notice in the Inspector the option to “Show Thumbnails” of your images in your gallery.

This option might be useful to readers for quickly navigating through the images, because it simply requires they tap thumbnails. When you click on an image in the gallery, it brings up the Edit Mask which allows for resizing the image. Sometimes to make for a better fit, you should capture images based on the actual dimensions of the widget frame you set on the page. Notice also in the Layout part of the Widget inspector, there are options for selecting a gallery title (e.g., Figure, Illustration, Movie, Diagram), a caption for each image, and how these are placed—top or bottom, or top and bottom. To customise these options, make sure you first have the gallery selected. Before publishing your book, try to make sure the measurements for your media elements are consistent from page to page. Do this by clicking on the Metrics panel within Inspector to refine and adjust measurements so that each related media element has the same dimensions.

Beyond your own screenshots and self-shot photos, there are many Finding a great photo isn't that hard. Using that perfect photo can also come without sweat and cost. The five sources here ease your hunt because you simply subscribe to them with an email. Which you can use to find images for your iBook. I mainly used the because it provides lots of free and inexpensive images and layouts, plus includes an easy to use graphic design web application. Other Features As you add chapters and sections to your book, iBooks Author automatically creates a table of contents that you don’t see until you pull down and reveal the “Book” section in the side column above the thumbnails for the chapter and sections. You can readjust the size of the table of contents text, but you can only edit the chapter titles and sub-headings on their individual pages or in the thumbnails.

The chapter number text frames can also be moved around, such as below or above the chapter titles. If you’re writing a non-fiction or academic book, it might be useful to include a glossary of terms, which can easily be done by selecting one or more words and clicking the Add Term button under the toolbar. A glossary might be most useful for technical or historical books for providing readers with definitions of selected names and terms, which appear in-line. Click on the Glossary button in the book assets column to add definitions. Intro media, such as a movie or an image may also be nice to include, but keep in mind that movie files add a significant amount of digital weight to your book. As for cover art — I recommend getting a custom design created.

For my book, I used the cover image included in the template, and while it’s not bad it does somewhat look like a stock photo with some basic graphic design. Next time I’ll pay designer to create a unique cover that more closely matches the content of my book.

Also, as you write your book, constantly preview it in iBooks Reader on both the iPad and Mac. IBooks Author allows you to preview the entire book or the currently selected page (File Preview). In the application’s preferences, you can change the default preview setting to selected page or the entire book. The preview version of your book can be downloaded to your iOS device via iTunes.

You can also export the book as an.IBOOKS file to a cloud drive like Dropbox, and then open the file in the iBooks Reader on your iPad. I found the process of exporting previews to iTunes a little tedious, and the preview versions wouldn’t automatically update between devices via a wireless connection.

Exporting to Dropbox worked better and slightly faster for me, but if your Mac supports AirDrop with iOS devices, you can send your iBook straight to your iPad. The exported version of an iBook will appear in the iBooks Reader with a “Proof” badge on it. Edit, Edit, Edit You will spend a considerable amount of time revising and editing your book, but I highly recommend that you also have a few qualified people proofread your book before it’s published. If you can hire a professional proofreader, all the better. Hiring a qualified copy editor for your book as you complete chapters is also very helpful.

An editor can help sharpen your sentences and provide recommendations for revisions. During the editing process, I exported my pages to a plain text file, and then opened that file and formatted the chapter headings and sections so my sister-in-law could proofread the manuscript. For her last round of proofreading, she proofread directly in iBooks Author, as did another proofreader of the book. As with Pages and Word, iBooks Author also includes the option to “Proofread As You Type” inside the Edit menu, so be sure to enable that feature. In addition, take advantage of the Proofreading tool (also located in the Edit menu).

It’s useful for highlighting double words (like “the the”), double spaces between words or the end of sentences, and suggestions for editing wordy expressions. While you can’t make it ignore special terms like “app”, it still provides yet another way to review and edit your content.

Revising, editing, and proofreading your book is a painstaking process, but if you release your book with lots of grammar and spellings mistakes, readers will almost certainly let you know about it. It’s also important that you remember to back-up your work as you write.

IBooks Author automatically saves your document as you work in the application, and as with Pages, iBooks Author allows for browsing and reverting to previous versions of your document (File Revert to Browse All Versions). Regardless, you should still manually save a backup copy of the document to another drive. The I have previously written an entire MUO guide about using Apple's smart folders and Automator program, but a classic third-party application called Hazel is one of my personal automation assistants that works in the background. Can automatically do that for you. Submitting to iTunes To publish and sell your iBook in the iTunes Book Store, you first need to create a free account on, which requires your personal banking account information and some form of social security number (this can change from region to region), which is used to pay taxes on the income from book sales.

After you’ve registered, click on the Resources and Help icon and download the Getting Started documents which explain all the various parts of iTunes Connect. Note: Apple no longer requires an ISBN number to publish and sell an book in iTunes. ISBN numbers, which can cost from $150 per number, are most useful if you’re selling book in a traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore, which uses the number for keeping account of book sales and inventory. ITunes Connect won’t be of much use until you actually get your book uploaded to iTunes. To do this, download iTunes Producer, which is available from the Resources page of iTunes Connect. Producer allows you to specify which assets — including cover art, book description, and book price — will appear on the iTunes Books page for your book. Up to five screenshots of sample pages in your book can be submitted for your book page.

Note, the dimensions of these images must be either: 1024×768, 1024×748, 1068×1024, 768×1004, 2048×1496, 1536×2048, or 1536×2008. To get an accurate size, create a blank file with one of these dimensions in Photoshop or some other graphic editor, then add and scale your screenshots down to size.

If your files are not the supported dimensions, you will get an error message, which will prevent the submission of your book package to the iTunes Books Store. After you have edited and previewed your iBook a thousand times, you will want to create a sample version of your that can be downloaded for free by potential customers on iTunes. Typically, you sample book consists of the first few chapters of your book, but you can select any chapters and sections you want to include. To create a sample version, Go to File Duplicate to make a copy of the iBooks Author version of your book file. Open the copied version, and remove chapters and sections you don’t want to include the sample.

For my book, I chose the first two chapters, the dedication and introduction to the book, and the last section of the book which is about me. Preview the sample version on in the iBooks Reader, and if everything is okay, export the copied file to an.IBOOKS version. When you export this time, select the “a sample book,” option and export the file to the Finder. Drag and drop your sample book to the “Sample” files section of iTunes Producer. Next, go back to your iBooks file and triple-check your book again, and then export it as an.IBOOKS version. This time, check the “a complete book” option. Drop the exported file into the “Book” (not sample) file section of the producer.

When everything is ready, click the submit button to send your book and media assets to iTunes. Under the My Books section of iTunes Connect, you can check the status of your submission.

My book was submitted and approved in less than 24 hours. As you will see, inside iTunes Connect and Producer, there’s several other things you will need to do, including setting the price for your book, selecting which regions of the world you want your book sold, and downloading promotional codes to provide free downloads of your book. Remember: Apple get 30% of each unit of your book sold. You will also need to provide a bank account for Apple to deposit payments directly to.

Take some time and carefully consider your pricing. Unless you think you’re going to get high volume sales, don’t undercut yourself by selling your book for $0.99. If you write and produce a quality book that is at least 100 pages long, I recommend a starting price be at least $5.00. You should also keep mind your monetary investments in producing your book, which may include hiring a proofreader, paying for images, and subscribing to a book launch page. Keep your costs down as much possible so you can profit more from the sales of your book. Once you’ve recovered the overhead costs of your book, you can start profiting from the residual income from the sales of your book.

Note, however, that the self-publishing book market is huge and competitive these days. I recommend reading Nina Amir’s. I started reading her book after I published Starting From Day One, and there are definitely some things I will do differently in writing my second book.

Promoting Your Book Writing and self-publishing your book is a ton of work, and for better or worse, promoting your book so that hundreds, if not thousands of potential customers know that it exists is another huge job in itself. I would say that from the very first time you get started on your book, begin indirectly promoting it through your social networks and other relevant places.

Here are a few ideas for promoting your book:. Share chapters or excerpts of chapters of your book on your blog. Sharing your book content early in the process is one way to gauge reader feedback, and it helps you keep your audience in mind as you write. Tell a few select people about your book to get their feedback. One or more of your friends may keep asking you about how your book is going, which could be a good kick-in-the-pants for you to keep working on it.

Write guest blog posts about the subject of your book to reach a wider audience beyond your own blog. Join social networking groups and monitor hashtags that address the topic of your book. Connect with people who are interested in the topic you’re writing about. Make sure your social network profiles make reference to your book in progress.

Include a nice design and a link to a good blog post about your forthcoming book. A few months before your book is published, create a book launch page on your blog, or use a service like (that’s my book launch page). Make sure your book launch page includes a way to collect names and emails for those interested in buying your book.

I started my book launch page about three months before it got published to the iTunes. Make sure your book launch page includes a few blurbs by notable people who have at least browsed your book before it’s published.

If you don’t have two or three people who can write a blurb, then you may need to spend more time networking with potential readers who are interested in your book. Consider creating another blog site or online project related to your book so that you can capture an audience for your book when it’s finally released. Blog and post updates on your social networks about the progress you’re making on your book. Even if people don’t respond, keep posting anyway.

Try to get a podcaster or blogger with a significant following to write the foreword to your book, and/or to interview you about your book. Develop a media kit that includes a press release, reviews of your book, a good profile photo, and screenshots of sample pages from your book. Seriously: don’t feel as if you need to rush your book to publication. Give yourself some to time to find your audience and generate interest in your book before it’s released. Drawbacks to Multimedia iBooks The biggest drawback for a multimedia iBook is that can only be sold in the iTunes Book Store, and it can only be read in the iBooks Reader app.

For my book, the niche audience is primarily users of the Everyone has a story to tell. It's not always a story in need of an audience, sometimes a story just needs to be told.

You may want to continue the journal you started when you., many of whom probably also have an iPad or Mac computer. Multimedia iBooks can be exported to PDF, but the PDF version will not include embedded widgets. A gallery widget, for example, will only show the first image of the gallery, and an embedded video and or audio file will not export into the PDF version. To sell your iBook in the Kindle or PDF version, you will need to recreate the layout to fit the requirements of those formats.

Other Resources This article has hopefully provided you a good overview of what to do for creating your first multimedia iBook. For more details about using iBooks Author, there are several free and inexpensive guide manuals available in iTunes Bookstore, such as (2012).

Most of the guides were written a few years go, but they are sufficient enough for what you need to know about the authoring application. The YouTube channel, also covers all the features of iBooks Author, including how to use paragraph styles, modify gallery widgets, edit Keynote widgets, align objects, and sharing an iBook Author file with a friend. Let us know what you think about iBooks Author and how you might use it as a writer. Have you released an e-book? Talk about the experience and what you learned below!

Explore more about:,.

. If you’re a Mac guy, I whole-heartedly, full-throatedly recommend using Scrivener. I think you can get a free 30-day trial, so it’s at least worth checking out. Especially with this last book, it totally saved me from having hundreds of (virtual) stacks of thousands of (virtual) scraps of paper.

For me, it was vitally important that all non-book related reading be as mindless as possible. I binged on mysteriesRex Stout and Donald Westlake/Richard Stark in particular. I tried, not always successfully, to start each day with some discrete goal I wanted to accomplish: write 200 words, or get through a certain amount of research, or conduct two interviews, or whatever. If I set out to spend a day “writing,” that would be so overwhelming I’d end up just farting around online all day instead of starting the climb the mountain. Finally: assume your book is going to completely tank commercially. That’ll help you remember that you’re not writing this for the purpose of writing a best-seller (at least I assume you’re not), but because it’s something that you care passionately about and excites you intellectually and because you hope to be able to share your thoughts and observations and conclusions with a group of people you respect and want to discourse with. Everything else is gravy.

At the end of the day, what’s important is producing something you believe innot producing something that’ll catch people’s eyes at B&N. Find an organizational scheme for your notes and materials; keep up with it (if you are transcribing sound files or notebooks, don’t let yourself fall behind); and be faithful to it: Don’t obsess over an apparently better scheme that someone else has. At some point during your work, someone will release what looks like a brilliant piece of software that will solve all your problems. Resist the urge to try it out, whatever it is, unless 1) it is endorsed by people whose working methods you already know to be like your own and 2) you know you can implement it quickly and easily without a lot of backfilling. Reworking organizational schemes is incredibly seductive and a massive timesuck. (I use DevonThink, OmniOutliner and Filemaker Pro. David Dobbs apparently has a quite different flow.

We hope to do a workshop on this at NASW.). Don’t wait too long to start writing, especially if your book incorporates descriptive or narrative elements. Write at least a quick sketch of the sensory and emotional elements that stick with you as you come back from field reporting. You’re going to spend a lot of time in your head.

Take care of your physical self too. Be just as committed to that as you are to getting your writing done every day. If you don’t care about your health, think your vanity — there’s an author video and a lot of public appearances in your future. Bonus tip: Be good to your spouse/partner and protect time for them. They’re in this with you, but unlike you, they didn’t choose it. I’m working on the 3rd edition of my book, EFFECTIVE BUSINESS AND NONFICTION WRITING, and stumbled on this blog, the 23 “brilliant authors” sharing their sage advice about writing a book, and the 227 responses to it. Excellent job, Steve in presenting this material.

I’m up to publishing my 37th book — new editions don’t count as new books by the way which is probably why so many authors wisely prefer to just write a new book! — and each and every book is still a challenge (and why and how it evolved is its own story). Bravo to your father for reading to you at such an early age and setting in motion the love of books and writing. Good luck with your book!I look forward to reading about that next part of the process — publishing and publicizing it. The longer I’m at this wonderful thing we call writing a book, the more I feel that writing and promoting are totally different skills. Fortunately there’s still “word of mouth” as the most magical option of all!

This information I found very intriguing and, quite frankly, very helpful towards learning more to get my writing endeavors underway. I LOVE the nature of writing, and have been doing it for many, many, many years, just not in a book format. I am slowly getting my feet wet with writing a book, and hopefully more in the future. Thank you for sparking a fire in my heart for a passion I have always found to be ever-present in my heart. Steve — thank you for showing your passion to help others in the same area of work you most enjoy. Hopefully we cross paths in the future. Steve, thank you for putting together such a comprehensive collection of thoughts on writing.

It is very useful for anyone interested in writing, novice or expert. My observations on writing: Don’t expect monetary rewards but write because you enjoy writing. The joy of writing and creating some thing which others will enjoy, is reward in itself. There is no short cut to writing success. Reading about the experience of others makes you more savvy, but at the end of the day, they can’t write for you. Take what works for you because you and your experiences are unique.

Proofread everything. Offer to proofread for friends when they have assignments due. Proof your own work, even simple text messages. Every tiny thing you proof helps you look with a critical eye towards writing.

Talk to your teachers about your papers that you’re working on. They have a ton of knowledge that isn’t tapped into during the course of regurgitating standard curriculum.

The biggest thing is to actually write. Especially without letting the internet distract you Oh. Hi Rahmah I have no clue why the idea about grown-ups being more talented, skilled or intelligent than teenagers, or kids, still goes poisoning around. The average teenager is not less, he or she just haven’t got around to experience this and that yet.

My impression is that when you learn something, you also might unlearn something else (- become more adapted). Young people have a freshness and objectivity one rarely find among grown-ups. Praise your own imaginativity, even (or especially) when you can’t “attach” it to anything already existing. Enjoy your writing, and good luck 🙂. I simply wanted to thank you once more for the amazing web page you have made here. It can be full of ideas for those who are definitely interested in that subject, in particular this very post. Your all so sweet as well as thoughtful of others plus reading your site posts is a great delight in my experience.

And that of a generous gift! Ben and I are going to have fun making use of your ideas in what we should instead do in the near future. Our listing is a mile long and simply put tips are going to be put to good use. I’m 13 years old and i am very imaginative so everyday stories are going through my head. I told my mom one of them and she was impressed and told me that i should write it down and publish it.

I am currently writing the story and you people have given me great advice but i’m still a little hesitant because i have never heard of a 13 year old writing a book. Have you come across a book written by a teenager? I would really like to know because it would help boost up my self esteem a lot. Thank you for your time. Why does everyone say, “buy a different computer and never have it connected to the internet?” Is this because hackers can steal the book? Or is it to prevent distractions when writing?

I am an excellent writer when it comes to news articles and essays. I am learning how to put a book together to get into that field of work. So since I am new to book writing, was wandering if it is a widespread problem of hackers or spyware programs stealing books that you are writing and have saved on a pc. Also is microsoft works a decent program to start with, or should i buy a professional writing software program. This has been so refreshing!

I’m working on a book now andit is scary. It is lonely. And I often feel like I have no freakin clue what I’m doing. I’m a student presently also, as well as a single parent.

So writing everyday is just not happening for me. But alot of the information I learned here did much to let me know that my process is OK. There were certain things that I read here that I was doing unconsciously or felt led to do for whatever reason and didn’t know that it was something that I SHOULD be doing.

The confirmation was much needed. What I’m working on is something i believe in and am passionate about and if it doeesn’t make its way to B&N I think I can live with that. I’m not the greatest writer by any standards but i do have something to say. Thanks for the encouragement!! I wrote three published books on different cities in Germany. EverNote was invaluable for me to organize my research so I recommend you try it (it’s free if you do have mainly text to organize, if you need more space it costs a reasonable 45 USD p.a).

It runs on PC and Mac and additionaly stores (and syncs) data via the web (which saves you the trouble to think of backups – the program has never failed me since 2005 and I use it excessively for everything I want to keep on my fingertips). I wrote the books with WriteMonkey (which is a great distraction less editor for windows) and organized the books with Excel (which was a pain in the a) – I wish I had had Scrivener then – which I use for my current two book projects, a historical novel on the Thirty Years’ War and a book on Internet Marketing with Social Media.

Good luck for your project. And remember: It always helps to break everything down into small parts. Steve, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I’m in the middle of my first novel (but not my first book, I’ve written a textbook before this) and this blog is a treasure trove of advice. Good news from your blog is that I’ve discovered I’m actually on the right track, mostly. Because I’m a PC guy, I’ve found that Freemind (open source) is a great mind-mapping tool. I’ve used it for the novel’s overall flow, and to keep my hundreds of separate field notes in order, as to where they belong in the big picture.

Thanks again for a wonderful contribution to the writing community! And good luck to all authors reading this! I actually saw this link and came to read the advice because I’m a writer. There are definitely some tips that I can use. Great article.

I just wanted to let you know that I recently figured out that I have Asperger’s (at almost 30) and as I have been reading up on it you’ve been referenced many times. I will definitely be looking forward to your book.

I hope that you include some info on women too as most of what I’ve read about women has been memoirs. They are good but I’d also like to read about more of the science of it. Outline very thoroughly and then fill it in. When you get jammed, take a walk- your subconscious will resolve the issue.

I once procrastinated on a book contract and had to do a 70,000 word book in thirty days. It can be done and it’s a decent book. Of course if you look at my site you’ll find that I don’t do 70,000 word books anymore and actually believe that nearly any non-fiction subject can be covered in one tenth of that- we were writing those 70,000 words to fit a physical format made for book store displays. It was an arbitrary amount that has no relevance these days as ebooks surpass print.

Two, now five practical things that haven’t been mentioned: 1. If your book is going to use anything that requires permission, such as photos, get those permissions now, not after you’ve turned in the ms. They can take forever to acquire. And get World rights even if your publisher only has North American rights; your agent will thank you when they sell the UK and translations rights because then those publishers won’t have to acquire the permissions themselves. And make sure the electronic rights you get match what Penguin is planning to do with the ebook.

Don’t even think of using song lyrics. They cost a fortunate, and the permissions are so convoluted they’ll just make you hate the song. And, no, you can’t just use one line. Check out Anne Tyler’s “Breathing Lessons”: she had to get permission for one line from the Dead’s “Golden Road.” Although admittedly it might be cool to use a line from a Dead song just to be in contact with Ice 9. In a similar vein, do your notes along the way, and do them according to the style your publisher wants them in. Like permissions, they take forever and leaving them until the end is liking adding two miles onto a marathon.

And changing the style after you’ve done them is like adding two more. While eating a chocolate cake. If you know what you want to write in a passage, but don’t yet have the exact fact or reference you need or haven’t done all the research that the passage will take, just put in brackets indicating generally what will go there and move on to the rest of the chapter. In other words, don’t let some inchoate detail derail a chapter. You can always go back and fill it in. For instance, it’s not well known but an early draft of “Moby-Dick” reads: “Call me something or other.

Some years ago—never mind how long precisely” 4. After the one with your editor, the second most important relationship you can have in publishing is with your editor’s assistant. S/he’s the one who will likely guide you through the production process and be tasked with answering questions along the way, such as “Where’s my check?” and “Really, there’s a huge guy putting my car on a flatbed; can you FedEx me that check?” And don’t forget the assistant in your acknowledgments either. Re Anonymous on marketing, unfortunately, that can be the case, and there’s no way your book fits the Today show demograhic. So set up an excerpt in Wired now; the sales staff will love to sell the book in with that point on their tip sheet. Also do many more things like this post, which gets the word out about your book.

They’ll be a nice break from cranking out 500-1000 words a day if only because it’s all the respondents who are cranking out the 500-1000 words. I loved your post and the tips are so inspiring–thank you for sharing them.

Please look into the positive impact that the Feingold Diet can have on kids who are incorrectly diagnosed as being on the spectrum or ADD. My youngest was struggling to focus in first grade and I feared that school was going to become a huge obstacle. A teacher made me aware of the Feingold diet and following it has made all the difference in the world in her scholastic performance.

As well, it has managed her asthma. Good luck on your book. Steve, you already have a demonstrated ability to write excellent prose in magazines and online. The average chapter in a book should be 2500-3500 words.

Much shorter and it’s too brief for typical page layouts, much longer and you can lose people who jump in midstream. So think of your book as a task of writing 35 such stories. Then you can winnow them down. All you need is the overarching vision of where the book will go, but for me, that often comes after I wrote half the stories.

Best wishes John. Just came across this, Steve, and am really happy about it. I’ve felt in a bit of a writing slump, hemmed in by my academic job and very unhappy about it. I’ve had a book brewing for a few years that I need to get out, and the sad fact is that, after the teaching, helping students try to get their theses out is so draining of my own ability to write. There’s so many bits of advice here that rang like gospel for me that I’m going to have to come back to this post at regular intervals.

I love the idea of a writing computer and am looking for a whole slew of software that your contributors recommend (including the program that immobilizes your internet connection for defined periods!). I wrote my first book in cafes in Rhode Island specifically because I had no wireless at the time, no one knew me in RI, and students and others couldn’t find me there, unlike my office. And it was embarrassing to sit there in a public place with a laptop and not do some sort of typing. But I’m also hearing the advice I give my students when they complain that their theses are not writing themselves: put your fingers on the keyboard. Just put them there and don’t move your fingers away or do something else or decide that some minor task has to be done first.

And keep them there when things don’t immediately happen. Eventually, all the stuff you have stored and mulled will start to come out. So you write the parts that want to be written first and leave the hard bits — the hard bits may never need to be written. There is greatness and boldness in just beginning.

But perhaps the hardest part is to stay with it when the beginning isn’t smooth or easy. Muito obrigado for the post, which I’ll be back to again.

Steve, I’m just sick and tired of everyone saying how great this article it. Your readers are whining more than a baby with a heat rash. So what if it’s great – isn’t it time for a review like this one: “Ho-hum. It’s good.” But so are steaks on the grill and summer tomatoes, but you don’t hear me praising them to high heaven. I’ve written 5 books, published them myself and have some advice for people like me who just need some information on putting their book together.

You know – graphics, what to put on the cover, how to figure out line length. All the crap publishers have to do that authors don’t really think about. Here’s what I’ve learned: I’ll write more when I feel like it. Kidding aside, nice job, Steve. Jeffrey Dobkin.

Steve, this may be covered somewhere above: don’t just take care of yourself. Take care of your family. A project that can consume all time–even when you are away from the keyboard–may consume all your effort.

Make time to hang with your spouse. Make time for other important people. Shut down the project from your mind and focus on you, them and other things. Keep in mind, the only “book” I have ever written was a dissertation. I knew that the number of readers wouldn’t go far beyond the committee and a number of researchers who were following my work. I didn’t go through draft after draft like you are going to do.

But I knew people who fixated on their dissertations (and other projects) to the point of doing harm to their lives. I know someone whose manager requires life balance objectives be written into yearly goals. You wouldn’t be where you are if you didn’t have skills balancing life and work. I’ve also seen how you enjoy this work, so that is a big plus. Thank you for a fabulous treasure trove of writing ideas. Writing a book, especially the first one or the first one of a new genre is challenging to say the least.

I have written five books (psychology, personality and prescriptive). However, now I have decided I “must” write a murder mystery and I am stalled, distressed and unnerved. Though I have the background (cold case squad, police academy, psychology) I don’t have narrative writing experience. When writing my book, The Manipulative Man, I discovered that a good editor is absolutely essential. Paula tenaciously demanded (bullied) rewrites that helped create a professional, yet exceptionally user-friendly book for women or men in (or-shudder- thinking about getting in) relationships with highly manipulative people.

I recommend finding a knowledgeable, talented, merciless editor. It worked for me. An excellent and informative article on writing a book. I just want to add that many of us want to tell a story, based on our experiences and findings. We all want to figure out the most engrossing way of telling a story. What strikes me is that sometimes catchy phrases, and compelling one liners take the place of detailed and fine writing with in-depth content.

My point of view is that along with compelling story telling, it is the meaningful (the term may be subjective), in-depth content, research and analysis that matters, in-order to leave a lasting impact on readers. There is also an audience for simple, easy to understand, racy bestsellers. No offence meant to those. But masterpieces are products of intense and deep thought.

Excellent collection of advice! Thank you all—including many of my favorite science writers.

I took notes! I write books for tweens/teen, and I echo the advice about reducing your entire concept into a simpler, shorter truth (works for fiction and nonfiction). After reading some how-to books on screenwriting, I’ve been practicing movie taglines and loglines as an exercise. As soon as that pearl shines, the project becomes much more focused, fun, and flowing.

But, it rarely happens at the beginning. I usually end up knee deep or so before I “get it.” My other struggle has been to rediscover the joy in writing, after several decades of writing to a publisher’s specs. Letting my inner voice come through loudly and discovering all the new toys (multimedia, transmedia, digital storytelling, interactivity, games as stories/stories as games) have finally turned the office back into a playground after a two-year drought. Another way I found my mojo has been to talk about my topic online and with friends—sharing what I find fascinating, puzzling, challenging, etc.

The enthusiasm rises instantly. The risk, of course, is being “that” person at a party. I write history, and like you I went from being a journalist to writing books. I was surprised by how different the disciplines were. Much of the advice I would have given you has already been given by someone else. Especially the tip about having a second computer that is not connected to the internet, and ideally a second computer that is in a room that is not connected to the internet, which is in a building that is not connected to the internet.

A hut in the garden works, if you have a hut and a garden. Or hire the cheapest bare one-room office you can find and equip it with one table, one chair, one computer, one mug and one kettle.

Other than that, here are five lessons that I have learned from hard experience that I think apply generally to most writers: 1. The big difference between journalism and a book is pacing. If you’re a competent journalist, you never go too badly wrong with pacing, even when you’re writing a long feature – and there’s essentially no such thing as pacing to worry about when you’re writing a news story or a short feature. So you tend not to think about it too much. When I’m writing a book, I don’t think about much else. What this means is: you can transfer over your existing writing chops, but you have to consciously develop a whole new skill, which is recognising when your book is moving too slowly or too fast, or is accumulating so much background that it’s getting in the way of your story.

In my experience, this is is a problem that emerges only on the page, as you write. You won’t necessarily spot it in your proposal or even in a sample chapter or three.

In fact the only way to spot it is to read what you have written as a reader. In practice what this means is making sure that you build a pause into whatever schedule you are working to. Write a chapter, leave it – ideally for at least a couple of days, better for a week – then go back to it and read it straight through as if it was something written by another writer that you are picking up for the first time.

Lots of problems emerge this way; address them immediately, because fixing the pacing of an entire book once it’s finished is a horrible, soul-destroying task. You may have to read more than the chapter you’ve finished, too – you need to check how it plugs into what came before it. I have another tip to help you get started in the morning. For each new book I write, I pick a book by someone else that I love for the quality of its writing, and I keep it on my desk. When I’m ready to start each morning, I read three or four pages of it.

I find this works as a warm-up for my writing muscles. It gets you in the flow. It probably helps if the book covers roughly the same field that you’re writing on. When I wrote a book about police corruption, I had Bryan Burrough’s Public Enemies on my desk. It helped a lot.

I wholeheartedly agree that you need to know where you’re going before you start. Aside from anything else, it helps tremendously with the pacing (see point 1). So, odd as it may sound, I usually begin each book by writing the epilogue.

Once I know where I need to get to, I find it much easier to work out how to get there. This is perfectly practical when you’re writing narrative non fiction, but actually I can’t see why it wouldn’t work for fiction too, although I’ve read plenty of fiction writers who say that one of their chief pleasures is realising their plot is about to take a wholly unanticipated turn. You will find yourself struggling to shoehorn in a favourite story, piece of information, or anecdote.

You will find yourself realising that it doesn’t really fit, but you will love it so much that you keep it in the book anyway. And if you are honest with yourself, when it comes to doing the revises, you will find yourself admitting that it doesn’t work and that it has to come out. With experience, you will learn to spot these dangerous interlopers, and recognise that you will save yourself a heap of trouble by excluding them from the get-go. Of course, this is just another take on Faulkner’s “Kill all your darlings,” but I hadn’t heard that quote until after I’d made precisely this mistake at least two or three times. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Pretty much every narrative history I’ve read starts with a prologue consisting of an exciting incident from the middle of the story. After that it goes back to the beginning of the story. And after using that trick four times in a row, I got fed up with it and decided to try something different: just starting my next book at the beginning. It didn’t work. Or at least, it worked perfectly well, but what I ended up with was a lot of customer reviews on Amazon complaining about how long the story took to get going.

So there’s a reason why writers write the way they so, and it’s a bad idea to try to overturn conventions for the sake of it. I had a very good time going through the tips & comments. Thanks for the effort and care. It sums up to “passion” for what you are doing. Non professional book writing is essentially an exercise in passionate communication, internal and external. I run a small editing company. Practically no staff and a good network of quality help.

From professional reading to editing to design and printing. I’ve learned the hard way that between the original draft and the book at the store there are certain key skills as important as the writer’s and very different.

Use them and pay them. It is hard, highly skilled and very important work.

I also write occassionally but only if I feel the emotionally committed. Indeed, it does drain all your energy and is no good for your health.

Again, congratulations. Steve, throw away all the advice and just listen to your inner beat. The book will come out just as you want it to. But one thing you need to consider, too, mate: Could Reading On Screens Be Inferior To Reading On Paper? This is my personal POV, danny Bloom, Tufts 1971, researcher in Taiwan. But you might want to hear about it.

See, Steve, there is a big issue that the tech biz and society has so far not faced up to, according to some neuroscientists who study the brain differences between reading on paper surfaces — think newspapers, magazines, book! — and reading off the glass screens of Nooks, Kindles and iPads.

What leading experts in the field such as Anne Mangen in Norway and Maryanne Wolf at Tufts University say is that the fundamental differences between paper-reading and screen-reading might be so huge as to light up different regions of the reading brain and that these differences need to be studied more, especially with (f)MRi and PET brain scan research. It’s my personal hunch as an amateur neuroscientist, based on a lifetime of reading on paper and just a few years of reading off screens, that reading on paper surfaces is vastly superior for three important things: the brain’s processing of the text being read, the brain’s memory of the information and critical analysis of the inforrmation. I’m not talking here about the fun of flipping pages or the smell of paper or even the distractions of the screen’s hot links and sexy pictures — or that movie you’re watching on the side window while reading this blog. No, I’m saying that I believe, and that science will one day prove, that reading on paper is superior, brain-wise, to reading in a pixelated or E Ink world. At the heart of all my argument here, there is a luftmensch trying not only to understand reading, but also figure out the nuts and bolts that make up the human experience. Of course, I need to find out the real neural differences in brain chemistry regarding paper-reading and screen-reading.

I find that, and I find the Nobel Prize. Gary Small at UCLA knows what I am talking about, Steve. In a Los Angeles Times interview last year, Dr Small was asked about this very issue and if he felt that screen-reading might replace paper-reading in the future. I wrote two books about technology and sound (both published by Peach Pit to essentially non-existent sales) and can back up one thing said here a few times. Nothing I have experienced is anywhere near as solitary an experience as writing 85,000 words. It’s makes the amount of solitary needed to finish the 2500 word magazine feature look like going to a movie alone. Anyone intending to do such a thing has to have an uncommon tolerance for being alone.

Note, I didn’t say lonely, because being alone and being lonely are different things, but they often feel rather similar. Especially after 40,000 words and you realize you’re not quite half done. Good luck to everyone who plans on shouldering the task. This post is a service to writers everywhere.

I wrote my first book recently after years of magazine pieces and went through my own phase of wrenching can-I-really-write-a-book self-doubt. It passed, sort of, when I got too busy and immersed in the research and writing to think about it anymore. Then I somehow emerged on the other side. I’m sure you’ll write a terrific book, and I look forward to reading it. On Scrivener–I tried it and can see why a lot of writers like it, but I eventually ditched it. I used Devonthink instead to keep the research organized and recommend it highly for any research-intensive proejct. Devonthink does have a learning curve, but it’s one that’s worth climbing.

I also use a Mac program called Freedom that shuts down Internet access for as long as you tell it–an hour, two hours, whatever. I am weak willed when it comes to the Internet, and this program did the job for me. And, I second Maryn on taking good care of your physical self.

It will keep you healthy, sane and energized. What a terrific service to other writers. Many thanks for your generosity in posting. My key advice: Put everything in a searchable database, tagged to a chapter, message, or subject.

Make finding anything/everything easy. At least for nonfiction, I find that writing every day doesn’t work for me. Finding, filtering, and arranging information into an argument comes first. When it’s all arranged, and you have an outline, call up just the relevant stuff for each chapter with a keyword search. You can ignore the mountain of material you have for other chapters. Writing each chapter is then more like writing an article.

I write about my book-development process at. This was enormous fun to read — especially when the authors contradicted each other! It just goes to show that what works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. I had the same “oh crap, how do I leap from article-length work to book-length work?” moment, and I have all the empathy in the world for you right now. For what it’s worth, what calmed me down when nothing else did was to remember that I already had a detailed outline to follow and that all (“all”) I needed to do was expand on it, in chunks of a few hundred words at a time, in whatever order made the most sense to me that day. Also, get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour.

Your neck, back, hands, and butt will thank you. Now get to work! I need something to read! Great advice. Working on my fourth book I am using the software writeflow.

Unlike scrivener it allows you to link from your manuscript to particular positions in a pdf and vice versa which is extremly useful if your sources are long pdfs of scientific papers or books. This means that you can always jump from your text to the source and back. You can also extract quotes from your sources and tag them and import any website into the writeflow database on one click (with safari). Two drawbacks though: only mac and still in development.

The outliner and other functions are not yet implemented. Hi Steve Your story — and the advice you received — is so generous that though we’ve only met briefly at a Scio or two, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I included words I’ve had framed on my desk since I was working on my very first book. They’re less instructive than sort of affirmational.

Anyhow they work for me. You are doing fine.

You would like to be further ahead, but that’s natural. Make lists, think, and react. Follow your instincts and let what’s happening come to you. It will work and you will be happy.

HAVE FUN for two reasons: so the readers will share your joy and so that YOU will have fun. Observe, ask questions, and branch out in all directions. What’s under the far rocks is usually good to know. Eat enough, and take care of yourself. Call friends. BE HAPPY!”. Love all this advice and I’m sure you noted how, well, diverse it was.

(“Don’t read anything not connected to the topic.” “Pig out on mysteries at night when you’re tired.”) I’m just finishing my fourth non-fiction book, so here’s my advice: 1. Amen to all the above about the need for organization. Obsessive, manic organization.

Back up every draft of every chapter in Dropbox or somewhere, anywhere, other than your hard drive/flash drive. Buy a second computer.

DO NOT CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET. Write on that machine. Don’t panic if you’re not “writing every day.” You can’t write every day, not if you ALSO want to do the research on which the prose will be based.

Research takes a lot of time and it’s tiring and it’s the necessary precursor to writing. Give yourself a break.

There will be days when what you most WANT to do is lie on the sofa staring at the ceiling. Because that’s your brain telling you that it needs some serious time to do some serious, deep work. And when it’s done its work, it’ll tell you that it’s time to go “back to work.” Because YOU working and your BRAIN working are two different things. Finally, and most important: A book is a collection of chapters. A chapter consists of paragraphs. And paragraphs are collections of sentences.

You write a book ONE. You’re not sitting down to write “a book.” You’re sitting down to write first one sentence, then another, and then another. See you on the other side!

One more after deadline from the superb science writer Brian Switek (@laelaps on Twitter). Thanks Brian! 1: Treat writing like it’s your job.

This sounds so simple as to be stupid, but hear me out. When I started composing Written in Stone – when doubts about my ability to actually write a book constantly pinballed around in my head – just showing up to work on the manuscript was a struggle.

Conducting more research and reading a few more articles were excuses to avoid making myself feel stupid by writing something I didn’t like. But that’s just part of the process. A book is a marathon. Simply showing up every day to work on it – whether you like what you produce or not – is essential training that will fine-tune the unique writing abilities necessary for long-form storytelling. 2: Learn from good storytellers. I wish that I had spent more time doing this when I was writing my first book.

Reading papers, talking to scientists, and immersing yourself in the book’s topic is all essential to writing a science book, but what does any of that add up to without a solid narrative to keep the reader moving towards that “Wow, I had no idea” moment? Different writers will have different preferences, of course. (My own sources of inspiration at the moment: This American Life, Radiolab, Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, and A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky.) 3: Learn to love the fail. I can’t claim credit for this one – it’s something I once heard Stephen Colbert say during a taping of his show, but I felt that it applied to the book-writing process. Typing out a crisp and beautifully-descriptive sentence, paragraph, or chapter feels great, just as it is extremely frustrating when the words don’t seem to come out right. Yet those aggravating moments are among the most instructive – where you can gauge where the story is going and why the prose just is not clicking. In order to write something that feels right, sometimes a writer has to find out what doesn’t work first.

Bonus rule: When an excellent writer like Steve Silberman asks you to contribute a few words of advice about books to appear alongside the collective wisdom from some of your favorite authors, do it right away. Otherwise you might forget about it and feel extremely foolish later on.