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Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published
Distilled wisdom from two publishing pros for every serious nonfiction author in search of big commercial success.
Over 50,000 books are published in America each year, the vast majority nonfiction. Even so, many writers are stymied in getting their books published, never mind gaining significant attention for their ideas—and substantial sales. This is the book editors have been recommending to would-be authors. Filled with trade secrets, Thinking Like Your Editor explains:
why every proposal should ask and answer five key questions;
how to tailor academic writing to a general reader, without losing ideas or dumbing down your work;
how to write a proposal that editors cannot ignore;
why the most important chapter is your introduction;
why "simple structure, complex ideas" is the mantra for creating serious nonfiction;
why smart nonfiction editors regularly reject great writing but find new arguments irresistible.
Whatever the topic, from history to business, science to philosophy, law, or gender studies, this book is vital to every serious nonfiction writer.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 17, 2002
88 people are currently reading
839 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
May 13, 2018
A lot of good, sturdy advice here.
September 10, 2011
If you are going through the nightmare of writing a book proposal for a literary agent read this book first, write half the proposal - read it again; and now, just as you think you've finished the proposal, go through this again ... hopefully you have dog-eared some pages, or underlined relevant sections.
And good luck!
And good luck!
October 25, 2021
Based on their years of experience, authors Rabiner and Fortunato have compiled a wealth of practical advice for successfully writing--and pitching--works of "serious nonfiction" (as they like to call it). My future writing endeavors will greatly benefit from the pages of this book--many of which are starred, bracketed, and underlined (something I rarely do in books).
September 10, 2021
This is a very helpful book about what it takes to get narrative nonfiction published by a trade press. While the authors emphasize trade presses, however, their advice is useful for academic publishing also. I particularly value the discussions about writing proposals and tables of contents. Regarding the latter, I learned that editors classify chapters: "context," "narrative," and "narrative-breakers." This classification is not surprising--and it is intuitive--but I have not considered precisely how I might vary a book manuscript's chapters in this way. In all, this is a helpful book for those of us who have authored books that began as dissertations. That process had strict boundaries and set expectations; writing a book as a book does not.
I will add that the book, first published in 2002, is dated. Opening discussions about placement of books on bookstore shelves, self-publishing via blogs on "The Web," and constant references to the Clinton impeachment scandal, are some evidence of this. The culture references are somewhat cringeworthy, but the references to bookstore chains such as B & N and Books-A-Million (where I worked in high school and early college) had me thinking sentimentally about the pre-Amazon days.
I will add that the book, first published in 2002, is dated. Opening discussions about placement of books on bookstore shelves, self-publishing via blogs on "The Web," and constant references to the Clinton impeachment scandal, are some evidence of this. The culture references are somewhat cringeworthy, but the references to bookstore chains such as B & N and Books-A-Million (where I worked in high school and early college) had me thinking sentimentally about the pre-Amazon days.
April 7, 2018
Thinking Like Your Editor is the best book on writing serious nonfiction that I have ever read. It is very useful when writing a book proposal. In addition, the chapter "Using Narrative Tension" is thought provoking and confidence inspiring. I highly recommend this book.
May 28, 2020
I found the book helpful overall. Will recommend to any fellow academics who want to write a trade book.
February 6, 2020
So many helpful bits of advice! It is readable and a great guide to not only thinking like an editor, but thinking about argument altogether.
September 4, 2009
A good, carefully thought-out approach to designing a book project, writing a proposal, writing a nonfiction book that will sell, and selecting an agent and/or a publisher. The author's many years of experience as an editor and an agent are very evident, and the book is written with style, humor and grace making it a fun read. A sample proposal at the end gives you a good idea of what a winning proposal looks like. Unfortunately the book is slanted towards academic publications, biographies and how-to books, but much here applies to other genres.
April 5, 2009
This is an extremely useful book. The author's intelligence and good sense ooze out of every page. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to write serious nonfiction, or gain some insight into how agents and editors think, or learn how to make their own writing more interesting and readable, regardless of whether publishing a book is the ultimate goal.
November 30, 2012
So far this book is very surprising. It actually is much like my book for Hollywood, only it deals with the publishing industry. Although I've already experienced many of these issues first hand, it is fascinating to see that, with a little research, I might have been better prepared on my first foray into the world of books. So far so good.
October 15, 2012
Practical and directly applicable, easy to digest advice. Read before you research, and barring that, read before you write. Definitely read before sending anything to a publisher. We will see how this plays out.
February 25, 2016
Excellent and reassuring. Some of the most basic advice is no different from what I've read online, but the expansions and explanations make it all clear - and so much less intimidating.
At least for people who, like me, are more intimidated by ignorance than by information.
At least for people who, like me, are more intimidated by ignorance than by information.
June 15, 2012
Super practical. Which is fine if that what you're after. I wanted more.
February 17, 2013
There are multiple ways to disseminate an idea. Like so many others, I've found the blog post to be my greatest vehicle. Over the past ten years I have published over 1,000 such posts, of which at least half set out to express an opinion, make some argument, or test out a hypothesis.
It's not the only medium — and it's certainly not the most compelling — but the blog post is the most frictionless channel to transmit complex arguments that build on the works of others. No, my writing doesn't show up in magazines or academic journals that boost the perception of the writer's authority, nor does it serendipitously find itself in the hands of bookstore customers exploring the jackets of the latest nonfiction; but it's remarkable that every post I publish is somehow read by thousands of individuals without any intermediaries beyond search engines and social media. I have found it extremely satisfying to contribute ideas and arguments to the public discourse with little intervention from gatekeepers, profit motives, and power brokers.
At times, however, I'm tempted to explore other forms of narrative argument. I've long dreamed of producing a documentary film that tells the human stories behind the institutionalized corruption that underlies all aspects of the importation of Chinese products into Mexico. I want the film to be an empathetic look at our basic desire for cheaper goods, and the social, environmental and cultural consequences that desire brings about.
I would also like to write a book. Several, in fact. There are topics that refuse to be neatly encompassed in a single blog post, or even a series of many posts. A well-delivered argument that adds substantially to our understanding of how the world works can take at least 300 pages to articulate. As an avid consumer of ideas, I find myself spending more time reading books than blog posts. (Though admittedly, many of those books would have been better off as blog posts while others are, in fact, polished collections of an author's blog.)
One of the books I'd like to write, Smart Cities, Dumb Democracies builds on Edward Glaeser's argument that cities should strive to alleviate poverty while promoting social inclusion and personal freedoms. It argues that the current fixation on "smart cities" leads policy makers to focus on the creation of "consumer cities" that appeal to the tech-savvy "creative class" without taking into consideration social inclusion, education and civic participation.
I have an outline of chapters, each of which makes a specific argument backed up by data and anecdotes. In aggregate they will hopefully convince the reader to re-think how we approach the development of urban life in the 21st century. Sounds ambitious, I know, but a nonfiction book should be ambitious, or else I don't see why one would take the time to write one.
Having spoken with various friends who have published nonfiction books with major publishing houses, I came to realize that I had a lot to learn about the publishing industry. I didn't understand the pros and cons of an agent, the difference between publishing with an academic press or a trade press, nor that publishing houses actually pay bookstores to place books on particular shelves.
In hindsight, I was clueless. Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get It Published is an eye-opening look at the nonfiction publishing industry and what it takes to get a work of serious nonfiction published. Several of the book's suggestions are counter-intuitive until they are explained in greater detail. Publishers don't want groundbreaking ideas, we are told. Rather, they look for the authoritative version of an argument that has already provoked public interest. In other words, publish plenty of book reviews and Op-Eds to seed your arguments in public before you publish your book.
The first half of the book explains step-by-step how to prepare your submission package for an editor at a publishing house. The second half deals with the actual writing process. Most first-time writers, especially academics, the authors write, struggle to effectively encompass narrative into their non-fiction. Clearly some academics simply don't have the natural ability or the learned experience to make arguments with compelling stories. But the authors mention another reason for the hesitation to use stories that illustrate arguments: the increasingly fuzzy line between fiction and nonfiction. The authors point us to the scandal around Edmund Morris' almost-factual biography of Ronald Reagan, which was sold as non-fiction despite its use of fictional characters. A more contemporary example is Jonah Lehrer's bizarre fabrication of Bob Dylan quotes, despite the fact that they hardly contributed to his book's larger argument.
The authors mention George Chauncey's Gay New York and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point as prime examples of effectively mixing narrative with argument. They are also prime examples of why I began to feel uneasy as I read through the second half of this book, passing from one suggestion to the next about how to craft serious nonfiction. In aggregate, those suggestions don't quite make up a formula, but they get pretty damned close. In parallel to reading this book I was also listening to the audiobook of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography, and I became annoyed when I detected those same rules of thumb in the book's structure.
The nonfiction book no longer felt like an exciting new medium to explore. Rather, the best practices of the nonfiction publishing industry began to feel like a formulaic corset that restricts the author's creativity and voice. The publishing industry knows how their customers consume nonfiction, and they ensure that the authors don't stray too far outside of the lines.
I am still left with three options: self-publishing, approaching an academic press, or working with an agent to pitch a trade press. Thanks to Thinking Like Your Editor, I'm much more informed about the pros and cons of each option.
It's not the only medium — and it's certainly not the most compelling — but the blog post is the most frictionless channel to transmit complex arguments that build on the works of others. No, my writing doesn't show up in magazines or academic journals that boost the perception of the writer's authority, nor does it serendipitously find itself in the hands of bookstore customers exploring the jackets of the latest nonfiction; but it's remarkable that every post I publish is somehow read by thousands of individuals without any intermediaries beyond search engines and social media. I have found it extremely satisfying to contribute ideas and arguments to the public discourse with little intervention from gatekeepers, profit motives, and power brokers.
At times, however, I'm tempted to explore other forms of narrative argument. I've long dreamed of producing a documentary film that tells the human stories behind the institutionalized corruption that underlies all aspects of the importation of Chinese products into Mexico. I want the film to be an empathetic look at our basic desire for cheaper goods, and the social, environmental and cultural consequences that desire brings about.
I would also like to write a book. Several, in fact. There are topics that refuse to be neatly encompassed in a single blog post, or even a series of many posts. A well-delivered argument that adds substantially to our understanding of how the world works can take at least 300 pages to articulate. As an avid consumer of ideas, I find myself spending more time reading books than blog posts. (Though admittedly, many of those books would have been better off as blog posts while others are, in fact, polished collections of an author's blog.)
One of the books I'd like to write, Smart Cities, Dumb Democracies builds on Edward Glaeser's argument that cities should strive to alleviate poverty while promoting social inclusion and personal freedoms. It argues that the current fixation on "smart cities" leads policy makers to focus on the creation of "consumer cities" that appeal to the tech-savvy "creative class" without taking into consideration social inclusion, education and civic participation.
I have an outline of chapters, each of which makes a specific argument backed up by data and anecdotes. In aggregate they will hopefully convince the reader to re-think how we approach the development of urban life in the 21st century. Sounds ambitious, I know, but a nonfiction book should be ambitious, or else I don't see why one would take the time to write one.
Having spoken with various friends who have published nonfiction books with major publishing houses, I came to realize that I had a lot to learn about the publishing industry. I didn't understand the pros and cons of an agent, the difference between publishing with an academic press or a trade press, nor that publishing houses actually pay bookstores to place books on particular shelves.
In hindsight, I was clueless. Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get It Published is an eye-opening look at the nonfiction publishing industry and what it takes to get a work of serious nonfiction published. Several of the book's suggestions are counter-intuitive until they are explained in greater detail. Publishers don't want groundbreaking ideas, we are told. Rather, they look for the authoritative version of an argument that has already provoked public interest. In other words, publish plenty of book reviews and Op-Eds to seed your arguments in public before you publish your book.
The first half of the book explains step-by-step how to prepare your submission package for an editor at a publishing house. The second half deals with the actual writing process. Most first-time writers, especially academics, the authors write, struggle to effectively encompass narrative into their non-fiction. Clearly some academics simply don't have the natural ability or the learned experience to make arguments with compelling stories. But the authors mention another reason for the hesitation to use stories that illustrate arguments: the increasingly fuzzy line between fiction and nonfiction. The authors point us to the scandal around Edmund Morris' almost-factual biography of Ronald Reagan, which was sold as non-fiction despite its use of fictional characters. A more contemporary example is Jonah Lehrer's bizarre fabrication of Bob Dylan quotes, despite the fact that they hardly contributed to his book's larger argument.
The authors mention George Chauncey's Gay New York and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point as prime examples of effectively mixing narrative with argument. They are also prime examples of why I began to feel uneasy as I read through the second half of this book, passing from one suggestion to the next about how to craft serious nonfiction. In aggregate, those suggestions don't quite make up a formula, but they get pretty damned close. In parallel to reading this book I was also listening to the audiobook of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography, and I became annoyed when I detected those same rules of thumb in the book's structure.
The nonfiction book no longer felt like an exciting new medium to explore. Rather, the best practices of the nonfiction publishing industry began to feel like a formulaic corset that restricts the author's creativity and voice. The publishing industry knows how their customers consume nonfiction, and they ensure that the authors don't stray too far outside of the lines.
I am still left with three options: self-publishing, approaching an academic press, or working with an agent to pitch a trade press. Thanks to Thinking Like Your Editor, I'm much more informed about the pros and cons of each option.
July 19, 2025
Useful though not that beautifully written, which is perhaps understandable considering they're not professional authors, along with the fact that it's a selfhelpish book, but still somewhat ironic as they're advising authors on how to write well (or write in a way that sells well -- might not be the same thing). They seem to overestimate their knowledge of academia and academic writing and make some wrong statements as a result. They also share their politically conservative views when possible, which you'd be better off not knowing. I appreciated all the insider knowledge that are probably otherwise inaccessible to people who don't live among editors or publishers.
August 8, 2018
There is a lot of great advice in here for writers of non-fiction, no matter what stage of the process in which you currently find yourself. I am very glad I read it and took several pages of notes. This book is geared more to the perspective of trade non-fiction, which is a useful counter-point to the previous book I read by William Germano which focused more on academic books. If you're not sure which way to go, reading several books will help you get a better sense about what's different about each avenue of publishing.
April 20, 2020
This was recommended to me by an agent (not the one who wrote it :D) and I found it incredibly valuable and insightful.
I've done plenty of research on how to write a nonfiction proposal, and I can honestly say that a lot of information in this book was fresh and new to me.
I found it a little challenging to read at times because it's very dense and wordy, and it doesn't always "flow." But that just meant I had to slow down and reread parts of it. And honestly, I already planned to reread it anyway, as I'm in the process of creating a new proposal myself.
Highly recommend!
I've done plenty of research on how to write a nonfiction proposal, and I can honestly say that a lot of information in this book was fresh and new to me.
I found it a little challenging to read at times because it's very dense and wordy, and it doesn't always "flow." But that just meant I had to slow down and reread parts of it. And honestly, I already planned to reread it anyway, as I'm in the process of creating a new proposal myself.
Highly recommend!
October 24, 2020
This book offers the author of serious nonfiction a lot of information about what editors (and agents) are looking for. It offers useful suggestions about how to present your work in a proposal and writing sample. I read it in small doses in the mornings as inspiration before going to my desk to write. Although some of its suggestions about finding an editor and marketing a book are outdated, most of them are spot on. For me, its value lay in the ideas it generated about the argument I am making and how to write my introduction and epilogue.
February 24, 2025
As someone who has never edited or published, I felt like this book did a really good job explaining the process. I found a lot of Rabiner & Fortunato's suggestions for publishing a nonfiction book very beneficial & think they could definitely be helpful in the writing process. The book is a little dated and I would like to have heard more on self publishing, especially because that's a really big thing right now. I also think I could have benefitted more from some compare and contrast to explain things as someone who has not published or edited before.
December 14, 2020
A bit dated (written in 2003).
But overall solid advice on what editors do. For me the key learnings were:
- Editors care about sales. You need a highly defined audience that will buy your book the moment they hear about it.
- Your serious nonfiction needs to be read in order to get the ideas across. To make sure it's read, make it fun.
- And, clearly define your question then go through your book slowly answering it. Your audience will follow you because they want to know the answer.
But overall solid advice on what editors do. For me the key learnings were:
- Editors care about sales. You need a highly defined audience that will buy your book the moment they hear about it.
- Your serious nonfiction needs to be read in order to get the ideas across. To make sure it's read, make it fun.
- And, clearly define your question then go through your book slowly answering it. Your audience will follow you because they want to know the answer.
August 1, 2020
This is a very helpful and accessible book about nonfiction writing. Although the focus is on book writing, much of the advice applies to article writing as well. For book writing in particular, there is lots of focus on how to write a good proposal, which is a crucial part of getting a book contract.
July 12, 2020
Fantastically helpful. If you're working on nonfiction book-writing, do yourself a favor and read this book. Even if you're not working on a book, you'll likely find good writing tips here. Highly recommended!
January 7, 2021
Some of the info has dated - technology has changed a lot since this book was written. But the overall content of this book still makes it a useful resource. I’ll have to let you know later if the advice worked for me.
August 18, 2024
Very informative and well-written. I would’ve given it 5/5 based on the book itself, but because this book was written in 2002, some parts feel a bit outdated. Would be great if there was an update which took into account the e-book era and platforms like Amazon etc.
September 11, 2024
Extremely helpful to anyone trying to write a nonfiction book. Strongly recommended to me by a published best selling author of non fiction books and jump started me on my journey to trying to publish my first book.
July 21, 2025
This was pretty good in general terms, but oh my goodness, how the industry has changed! Sadly, a great deal of it is out of date.
There are more timely, granular guides out there that are now superior.
There are more timely, granular guides out there that are now superior.
December 1, 2017
Absolute must-read for anyone writing--or thinking of writing--nonfiction.
April 11, 2019
Great, practical advice.
August 15, 2019
Excellent guide to thinking through your book proposal, especially for "serious nonfiction." Most helpful in thinking through the approach to a topic and framing of a book.
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September 20, 2019808.02 R1163 2003
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