Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction

by Rob Fitzpatrick, Adam Rosen (Editor)

The goal of book marketing is to stop needing to do itLearn how

Scope your book into the world's best solution for a certain type of readerTest, improve, & iterate your ToC without needing to rewrite anythingDesign a engaging reader experience that makes your book a delight to readDiscover the hidden analytics of boredom & confusion to identify book-killing problems & make the most of beta readersTreat marketing as a temporary activity instead of an ongoing obligation by designing a strong recommendation loopEvaluate which of the four seed marketing options are best-suited for your goals, constraints, & skillsWrite a book that endures & grows for years instead of fading into swift obscurityBoost long-term growth by optimizing your pricing, platforms, & purchase funnelMost books don't workWriting a nonfiction book is a wonderful project, allowing you to preserve & share the most important things you’ve ever learned. Plus, a successful book will improve your reputation, your career, your earnings, & the lives of your readers.

Up until fairly recently, it was possible to receive at least some of these benefits by writing any book, regardless of its quality. But today, a million new titles are published per year and it’s no longer enough to simply join the pile. Instead, you must create something that is able to stand out & succeed. And the most reliable path toward that goal — especially for an unproven author who lacks a pre-existing audience — is to write a book so startlingly useful that readers can’t stop talking about it.

This guide proposes a different way of planning, writing, & refining nonfiction, drawn from the hard-won lessons of product designers & entrepreneurs. Applied properly, it leads to books that can grow organically via reader recommendations for many years, without relying on either heavy marketing or a large author platform.

The preconceptions about "writing a book" are so deeply entrenched that most authors don't even ask themselves whether a better way exists. Which is crazy, because the normal approach doesn't work! For

The average NYT nonfiction bestseller loses 95% of its peak sales within a year70% of traditionally published titles fail to pay out a single dollar in royaltiesVanishingly few nonfiction books sell even 500 copiesThese are not good results, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

By following a more modern approach, my first two books (2013 & 2019) now do more than $150k/year in royalties (and growing). You can do it too. It's not easy, but it is reliable & repeatable. And in the normally hit-driven, feast-or-famine world of writing, there's something to be said for reliability.

What this book is This isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. If you want to write a mediocre book the easy way, then you probably want to look elsewhere. But if you want to write a successful book the right way, then this guide will help.

This isn't about prose or creativity. I'm assuming that you know how to write a coherent sentence and are able to do the work. Instead, this guide is about understanding how to design, test, and refine nonfiction that succeeds as a long-lasting, high-impact, and recommendable product.

This isn't a self-publishing guide.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Business, Self Help, Communication, Productivity, Startup

158 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 4, 2021

Reviews

[Matt Hutson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved how straightforward and precise this book is. At only 136 Pages, it's exactly according to what the title says, Write Useful Books.

It's not a book about how you should write, on the contrary, it's about how you should position your book so that it will sell and keep selling. And I think this is refreshing because there are so many books out there about how you should write the book, the style, and the structures of writing, but not about the marketing or self-publishing the side.

The tips are extremely useful because they talked about the beta readers, and the seed readers, and basically anything about the process of helping to make your book an evergreen one. And I think that would be the purpose of writing useful non-fiction books is to try to make it Evergreen! Something that people always refer to and return to and recommend to their friends and family.

That's what really excites me about this book. I highly recommend it if you are considering or are in the process or already have published books and you want to publish more.

[Nopadol Rompho · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to write a non-fiction book, I strongly recommend you to read this book. It is really helpful.

[Sairam Krishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timely, well-written, and straight-to-the-point.

[Eddie LaRow · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on books I’ve ever read.

[Barry Kayton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lives up to the title!

I found the book tremendously useful. I’ve just started co-writing a non-fiction book, and the aim was always to make the book actionable and valuable. “Write Useful Books” has taken our thinking in new directions that will make it a far better book than it might otherwise have been. Great products are the result of great processes, and that’s what Rob Fitzpatrick has described in this book: great processes. I would recommend this book to anyone planning to write a non-fiction book.

[Blake Atwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

To title your book "Write Useful Books" is a high and confident promise to the reader—one that Fitzpatrick capably meets and exceeds.

I wish this book had been available before I published years ago and then simply wished for the best.

If you're writing and releasing nonfiction aimed at helping others, this is a must-read.

[Erin Weigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most helpful book about writing books out there.

It’s short, sweet, and jam-packed with actionable tips for while you write your own.

I also joined the author’s writer community because I’m super interested in the beta reader feedback tool he developed.

A+++ highly recommended.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delivers on its promise

He would hope that a book about writing useful books would turn out to have useful things in it! This book does not let you down.

It is full of practical ideas, explanations on why things work, and leaves you with a sense that it is possible to write not just a useful book, but a book that sells a lot. If you are a nonfiction writer I highly recommend this book.

[A.C. Bauch · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I didn't know anything about this topic, I would've given this book a higher rating. Even so, I think it would be a useful primer for authors (especially first-timers) preparing to venture out on their nonfiction book writing and publishing journey. It also validated many of the things I tell the authors I work with, which was affirming, and I picked up several helpful tidbits throughout.

[Eric Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book works, I have begun using its advice immediately. Recommended.

[Emmy Laybourne · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book!

I’m considering writing my first nonfiction book and I will definitely be using the approach that Rob sets forward in this clever, easy to read, and hugely helpful book.

[Kevin Wyckoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good if you want to learn to sell your books. I was hoping for more pointers on writing effectively. This is a marketing book

[Héctor Iván Patricio Moreno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Te explica todo lo necesario para publicar un libro que sea fácil que otros recomienden, sin soluciones mágicas sino todo lo contrario, con pasos concretos que te hacen aumentar el trabajo que normalmente le pondrías a tu libro sin esta guía.

La idea principal es que tienes que tratar a tu libro como un producto: debes de platicarlo con la gente antes de siquiera empezar a hacerlo, probar la idea, encontrar a tu lector ideal y escribir para él, hacer pruebas de la estructura y el contenido mediante enseñarlo, tener lectores de prueba e iterar para terminar tu manuscrito. También de consejos acerca de la longitud, la estructura y sobre todo el valor: su densidad de valor (relación longitud o número de palabras con la cosa que enseña) debe ser excelente, es decir, te debe enseñar mucho desde el principio.

Después te algunos consejos para lograr difundirlo al máximo posible, incrementando la posibilidad de que sea más recomendado, y pueda crecer solito como una bola de nieve, pero para que esto funcione, debe de ser un libro que resuelva un problema de verdad.

Creo que es una graaaaaan lectura para todos aquellos que queremos publicar algo que importe y que por lo menos le sirva alguien.

[Miguel David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Write a Useful book is… well, useful. It it’s meant to be very practical and has a lot of tidbits around writing for the reader. The beta readers took the author created is the most interesting thing about the book.

[Adam Ashton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A useful book about useful books. Gave me a new binary classification for the books I read, but also completely shifted mentality for potential future books I write

[Kevin Halloran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really helpful. Plenty of advice to implement as I work on my next book(s).

[Xenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really well written guide on how to write useful books! This applies to blog articles, speeches, etc, as well. Basically it’s similar to one how designs a product: create a first draft / hypothesis, then do user testing and iterate until you get to a point that it’s decent, and then launch it!

[Tatyana Prokopenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is amazing!
I did create a plan how to improve and deal with my book.
I think for me it was just a right moment to read it. It gave me push to act on knowledge that I already knew but did procrastinate a lot.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOTS of proven strategies

Having written three books myself with plans to do more, I’m always searching through books like Rob’s in order find the best marketing and promotion strategies. As I read, I’m on the lookout for that one gem of an idea that more than pays for the book and my time to read it. In this book, that gem was conceiving the launch window as a year rather than a week or a month. It takes a lot of pressure off me as the author and it gives me time to experiment and adjust my strategies. Thanks Rob!

[Balint Erdi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Write Useful Books" has the same structure and writing style as one of Rob Fitzpatrick's other books, "The Mom Test" that I also really liked. It's practical, concise and extremely dense with good advice.

It feels like a guide (and that's the intention) on what steps to follow to write useful, non-technical books which will be very successful without you, the author, having to do any marketing except a little bit at the beginning.

It bolstered my ambition to write another book, and to follow Rob's step-by-step recipe to make it a stellar success :D Now I only have to come up with a right topic!

[Hots Hartley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impressionable Quotes:

"Books are inexpensive products. As such, investing loads of time into active, hands-on marketing is unlikely to sell enough copies per hour to return a meaningful income." (5)

"Confusingly, nearly all of the advice you've ever heard about 'writing a book' is actually about writing a pleasure-giver, and is at best irrelevant and often harmful when applied to a problem-solver." (13)

"The reason this matters is that nobody recommends the second-best solution. So you need to become the best. Not for everyone, but for someone. And the easiest way to manage that is by speaking directly to their situation and context by excluding everybody else. Far better to be loved by someone than ignored by everyone." (17)

"Once you start measuring the student's actual results (the outcome) instead of the teacher's performance (the input), you'll find that a polished and energetic delivery is owrthless unless the teacher has first spent the time ensuring that the underlying lesson works." (21)

"A recommendation loop will function even if people don't know that they're looking for a book." (24)

"Asking for opinions is just fishing for compliments. The most impactful reader conversations happen early in the process, while you're still figuring out the scope and Table of Contents and are free to make big, sweeping changes without rewriting anything." (30)

"Treat your Table of Contents as what it really is: a detailed blueprint of your book's education design, learning outcomes, and takeaways." (36)

"Given the typical reading speed of 250 words per minute, cutting 10,000 words (while maintaining the value) saves 40 minutes of your reader's time. (51)

"Spend more effort tightening the earlier sections than the later ones. A strong start can keep folks going through a weaker ending, but a strong ending can't save a disappointing start." (56)

"I aim to find a new set of 3-5 deeply engaged beta readers per iteration, which typically requires inviting 12-20 people who claim that they'd love to read it. Roughly half of them won't even open the document, and another half will submit approximately one comment before giving up. So expect to invite about four times the number of potential readers as you hope to end up with." (61)

"You'll rarely be able to reuse beta readers across multiple iterations. This is partly because they've already given you a lot of their time, and partly because the helpfulness of their feedback degrades on subsequent reads." (62)

"Most people will only review your manuscript once." (66)

"The most helpful feedback of all is about where readers are becoming bored." (77)

"Distracted and busy readers are a fact of life. And if your manuscript was sufficiently valuable, they would have made the time." (77)

"For most useful books, Amazon's native book ads will hugely outperform the ads on any other platform. When someone searches on Google or Facebook, they're looking for information or entertainment. When they search on Amazon, they're uniquely open to the idea of paying for a book." (88)

"Avoid the Kindle Lock Screen ad type" (89).

"Stop trying to figure out how to 'market your manuscript' and start realizing that your manuscript is the marketing." (94)

"You can easily update and improve your cover after launch. The title and subtitle, however, are significantly more difficult to adjust. Ensure that either title or subtitle is descriptive enough to define who the book is for and what it will do for them." (113)

"For the Mom Test, I earn approximately $17 per paperback ($30 retail price, 55% royalties after accounting for printing costs), $7 per ebook ($10 price, 70% royalties), and less than $3 per audiobook (since they're usually bundled into an Audible subscription)." (117)

The concept checks out. Write short nonfiction books to address an acute problem, for people who have the problem and thirst for a surgical solution. Ruthlessly prune fluff, optimize the cover thumbnail and intro copy to stress your solution to the problem, and cycle through beta reader feedback until beta reader signal for getting through the entire book is strong. Let their recommendation be the marketing and growth engine.

But like the teacher, this book sounds good and performs well, but in practice, you need more to achieve performance. More guidance on choosing a topic and a problem about which to write. More tactics on finding and recruiting beta readers. More specificity on the self-publishing process, i.e. how to improve the quality of the book within the constraints of Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

Furthermore, issues I found:

1.) Most additional resources are linked. Some pages may not exist. Others require an internet connection to content that has changed. Just summarize this information in the text.

2.) Doesn't address finding beta readers. It's impossible to execute this book's concepts without a willing audience to test on.

3.) Doesn't address choosing a problem to solve. Any single ambitious creative will have 100s of ideas that could turn into a useful book. How do you narrow it down? How do you fit the beta reader audience when you don't have one?

4.) Help This Book tool requires a subscription.

5.) Doesn't address quality, a number one inhibitor for people buying self-published books.

To make matters worse, the author doesn't respond to email. Despite including his email address and encouragement to send feedback, it's like writing into the abyss. Maybe that's training for writing to an audience of zero?

[Massimo Curatella · Rating 5 out of 5]

## Book Review of "Write Useful Books" (2021) by Rob Fitzpatrick

It's a book about applying Design Thinking to independent book publishing.
By adopting a Human-Centred Design approach, an author can design a book like an entrepreneur using the Lean Startup approach to plan a business. The author never mentions Design Thinking and only marginally Lean Startup, so most Designers and Entrepreneurs will find few new concepts.

There is a clever and honest attempt at idea re-branding without delving too much into the disciplines of UX Design first and Product Design. Those disciplines already applied a Human-Centred Design philosophy based on building products that people really want.

Nonetheless, the book stands on its own. It has a logical narration of the entire workflow suggested for an independent author who wants to write the right book for the right people at the right time. It's well-written, it's concise, and there's no fluff. While you can read it in almost one sitting, you would benefit by referring to it according to the different phases of your book writing.

The author practiced what he preached in the book. There is a tidy, logical structure to the chapter sequence. All titles are short and effectively summarize their contents. Navigating the book through the index or skimming over the chapter titles is very efficient.

A lot of insights and data about the author's experience with successful books give him the authority to what he writes in this one.

The author launched a community and a tool for independent book writers to get support during the draft writing iterations. There are a lot of external links and books as examples of positive and negative applications of the framework.

I recommend this book to those authors who want to have a solid approach to writing a book by codesigning it with actual people and fostering a fertile environment where they can plant their knowledge seeds by being efficient and effective.

Rob Fitzpatrick:
- Personal Website: https://www.robfitz.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/robfitz
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-fitzp...
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/robfitzpatrick

Write Useful Books:
- Book Website: https://writeusefulbooks.com/

[Pablo María Fernández · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew about this author’s first book: “Mom’s test” and looking for his other books found this one. Being a book fan and an eternal aspiring writer, after reading its title I didn’t doubt and gave it a try.

I think it’s fine, it delivers what it promises. If you are thinking of writing a non-fiction book to help improve one person's life on a specific subject Rob will give you tools for the whole process after you have an idea of which topic you would like to write about. Interestingly, most books focus on that first mile: how to find the idea. He doesn’t spend time there but helps you navigate from the first draft to the publishing. Apart from citing Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King tips (which I don't think it really applies here because writing fiction and not fiction are two separate arts) he gives recommendations from his experience: we should notice that he wrote only two books before this one -successful ones, that's true- but maybe we have to take his extrapolations with a grain of salt and not take so many quick conclusions as he does. Getting beta testers, which tools are better for this back and forth process (he offers one built by himself and a partner for free), how to market the book using Amazon, your own platform or other options are some of the useful stuff he teaches.

If you are a writer or aspiring writer and new to marketing stuff you’ll find this helpful to get started. If you have read a couple of books of digital marketing or work in a related area maybe there is not so much for you in the second half, but the first half provide solid advise on the iteration process to improve book's value, structure, power, likeability and more (I didn’t found similar content on any of the many books I read on the subject).

In conclusion, this is a two-hour read at most that provides nuggets of useful advice to turn a vague idea for a book into a final product. The author’s style it’s also inspiring and I’m myself motivated to give it a try.

[Richard Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, good book on what's really important when writing non-fiction.

Firstly, most non-fiction is for something other than pleasure. It's about solving a problem for the reader. That's two pieces of information in one. Who is your reader? What do they want? Maybe your goal is to teach, inform, or persuade. Okay, but who? Writing a non-fiction is about the reader, not the writer, so you must get into their mind and you must do it before you write the book!

Secondly, once you know what the book is about, there's a good chunk of information on how to make sure your book is evidently valuable to the reader, from how to pace the book and some tips on editing, to how to make sure you get the right kind of feedback and how to take it and use it to make the book better.

Finally, there's a section at the end, which I admit I mostly skipped as It's about what happens when you're in the launch phase. I'm been there and I can see things I missed last time, so I will be going back to this book at some point as I'm sure, closer to the time, this book will become useful and recommendable again on that slightly different subject.

It makes a change to be proven that the book you are reading is written by someone who knows what they are doing that I am definitely finding the book to be useful and recommendable.

The reason for four stars? Simply that it still reads like it's not quite finished yet. The layout and typesetting are rather amateurish. The content is uneven in when (chronologically) it's useful too, but I think that might just be a problem of the subject matter. What would make it a five star book? Probably deleting the stuff on the launch phase and leave a taster summary of what a launch phase version of this book would contain. As the writer says, delete that which the reader does not need or would otherwise skim.

[Tim Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rob Fitzpatrick’s Write Useful Books is a refreshing and indispensable guide for authors aiming to create impactful nonfiction. Fitzpatrick draws from his own experience to illuminate a practical, reader-centric approach to writing. Rather than focusing on traditional publishing metrics or formulaic advice, he emphasizes understanding the reader's needs and crafting content that genuinely solves their problems. The book is filled with actionable insights on refining drafts based on reader feedback, ensuring clarity, and developing a compelling voice. Fitzpatrick’s clear, conversational style makes complex concepts accessible, making this guide suitable for both novice and experienced authors.

What sets Write Useful Books apart is its emphasis on iteration and the author's candid approach to the challenges of writing. Fitzpatrick advocates for a feedback loop where reader input is integral to the writing process, ensuring the book remains aligned with the audience’s evolving expectations. The inclusion of real-world examples and personal anecdotes adds a layer of relatability, reinforcing his advice. By focusing on creating genuine value rather than merely chasing bestseller status, Fitzpatrick provides a roadmap for writing books that resonate deeply with readers, ultimately making Write Useful Books a must-read for any aspiring nonfiction author.

[Adam Harnish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since I started reading, I always thought a book was more impressive if it was longer. I revered books like the Harry Potter series when I was younger, and in present day titles like The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt or Lonesome Dove. The more words, the better the author.
However, that idea has definitely started to shift for me over the past year or two, and now Write Useful Books has put that idea on blast. Author Rob Fitzpatrick introduces the much-needed metric of value-per-page in nonfiction - how many words does a reader have to get through before hitting on a bit of actionable advice? He also explains the difference between pleasure-givers and problem-solvers. Especially with problem solvers, you need to deliver value early and often in order to keep your readers hooked. (For fiction books, we could use a similar metric of enjoyment-per-page or entertainment-per-page.)
With value-per-page in mind, this book is loaded with useful information from front to book. It feels like there’s hardly an unnecessary paragraph in all 120 pages. It’s like a light meal loaded with nutrients and calories. This should also be your first stop if you’re thinking about writing nonfiction - it’ll be hard to find a more useful book (ha!) than this.

[Susana Caicedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book hoping to find a practical tool to launch my digital product business with a book. It helped me realize that writing a nonfiction book is no easy task, and I might need to start with something less ambitious.

That said, the book itself is quite good. The author practices exactly what he teaches. It's a very clear and straightforward read, filled with practical advice on how to write a nonfiction book that is genuinely useful. I appreciated that the author pointed out how many nonfiction books today are designed primarily for pleasure—they leave readers with a sense that they've read something “interesting,” but without anything concrete to act on. I’ve had that experience with several commercial books, which is why I’m cautious whenever someone recommends the latest popular self-help or pop-psychology title. Often, their popularity seems driven more by savvy marketing than true value.

Interestingly, while I may not be able to apply all the advice to writing a book just yet, I found many of the ideas useful for my YouTube channel as a content creator. Books and videos share a common challenge: competing for people’s attention. In that sense, the principles in this book are widely applicable.

A great book—clear, practical, and easy to read.

[Andrew McAllan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Write Useful Books" by Rob Fitzpatrick really surprised me. I’ve read a lot of advice about writing, but this book took a totally different angle, focusing on designing a nonfiction book like a product that people actually want to read and share. It’s not about just writing well—it’s about writing smart.

What I liked most is how Rob breaks down the process into something manageable. He talks about testing your book with real readers early on, which made me realize how much you can improve before it even hits the shelves. The idea of using beta readers to figure out what parts of the book are boring or confusing was a lightbulb moment for me. It’s like you're constantly improving before you ever publish. That’s way better than just crossing your fingers and hoping it works.

Another thing that stood out is how he tackles marketing. Instead of telling you to promote endlessly, he says if your book is really useful, it’ll market itself through word-of-mouth. That made me think differently about the kind of book I want to write—not just one that sells fast, but one that people talk about long after it’s published.

[Omes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written so clear and concise, it's baffling.

The frequency of my highlights and pondering stares into nothingness, has never been this high with a book I read. Absolute recommendation.

Just see the brevity of points on writing for a specific audience:

“Take a moment to reflect on who your book is really for. If you’re writing for beginners, should you worry that an expert finds it all a bit elementary? Or if writing for experts, should you worry that the beginner is confused? Probably not.
The reason this matters is that nobody recommends the second-best solution. So you need to become the best. Not for everyone, but for someone. And the easiest way to manage that is by speaking directly to their situation and context by excluding everybody else. Far better to be loved by someone than ignored by everyone.”

[Santosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical tips for non fiction & self help genere

As title suggests, this book helps you to write "useful" book.

Generally curse of knowledge is to include everything one knows, making book/article comprehensive. Another curse is to ignore what reader or audience may not understand. This book with practical tips and a process flow tells how to overcome this.

It argues, that book written in this fashion will grow organically through word of mouth. It supports argument through his couple of books n few more.

Sounds logical.

Last bulk of material is spent on attracting buyers n increasing sales. I find that part little bore, but that may be peculiar to my nature.

Overall a good book.

I am certainly like to revisit, if I plan to write any book in these genre.