What makes for a great self-help book?

4 qualities I've noticed across bestselling prescriptive nonfiction

Hey y’all!

We are fully in the back-to-school swing, complete with our first bout of sickness going around the household, just in time for my birthday and anniversary this past weekend (which we enjoyed regardless of the sniffles). But while I’m drinking my ginger turmeric bone broth, I wanted to bring back and revamp an old series that I posted years ago when I first started my freelance business. Now that I’m working in-house again at a large trade publisher, my thoughts on how to write a great book—the kind of book that the largest trade publishers would be proud to take on—has evolved again.

Part of the reason I became an editor is because I’ve always been fascinated with what makes things work—including books. At a young age, I started asking, Why do I love this book so much? How did the author win me over? Why is that other book so popular? If it’s on a bestseller list, it has to have some good qualities, right? I wonder what those are.

I started noticing patterns at the micro level—ways that authors could string together a beautiful phrase, such as one of my favorite lines from Jane Eyre: “A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring…” Sentence diagramming in college was a treat. But things got really exciting when I realized you could break apart and analyze books the same way. This is the whole idea behind book mapping—if you do it with post-its, it’s kind of like a giant sentence diagram!

(Side note: Now my Hungry Authors coauthor Liz and I teach a book mapping cohort, and our next cohort starts in October! Learn more about it here.)

I’ve noticed some patterns in the prescriptive nonfiction books that not only get published, but the ones that succeed (for now, we’ll define this as earning out their advance and actually making the authors real royalties!). For over a decade now, it’s been my job to identify and describe these patterns in books, and try to acquire new books that exhibit these same patterns.

It’s important to say that these are just the qualities of the books themselves. There are other things about you that greatly increase your chances of getting a prescriptive nonfiction book published successfully—like having a large and engaged audience. But for now, I’m just talking about what I want to see in your book.

Bestselling books have a distinct audience that you already know how to reach.

This is the first, most foundational piece of a bestselling book idea: Knowing who you’re writing for. But why can’t your book be for everyone? Maybe you think, “But my topic literally applies to everyone! If everyone read my book, the world would be a better place!”

And that might be true. But the reality is that not everyone will read your book—in fact, most people will not. That’s true even for the all-time bestselling books of the world. So you and your publisher need to make sure your book gets in front of all of the possible people who would be interested in your book. And those people need to be convinced to buy it. You have to maximize all the possible sales.

And publishers know from lots and lots of experience and failed marketing campaigns that the people most likely to buy your book are the people who trust you to solve their problems. That means you need to have a track record of solving people’s problems. In other words, a platform with a community of people who trust you, who look forward to what you have to say, and who consistently feel that their lives are improved by the content you create.

Your job is to think deeply about what those people need, because if you succeed in delivering a book—likely the most expensive investment most of those people will have made in you—that they love, they will become the champions and cheerleaders of that book. They will share it with their friends, creating a chain reaction of people who buy and read your book. That is how you’ll maximize sales for your book. (And hint: that’s the most important thing publishers care about—your book getting into as many people’s hands as possible.)

• In Quiet, Susan Cain clearly identifies her distinct audience as introverts themselves. Her audience is defined by who they are.

• In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo’s distinct audience is people who feel overwhelmed by the stuff in their lives, who struggle with maintaining a peaceful and clean environment. These people are defined not necessarily by who they are, but by the problem they have.

Bestselling books solve a sticky problem.

No matter who your audience is, you have to address a deeply felt problem that they have—a problem so pernicious that your audience is constantly seeking a solution. This is what keeps your audience up at night. I call these “sticky problems” because they’re not easily solved; they’re often multi-layered—lots of smaller problems adding up to one big mega problem.

What are some good sticky problems that have dominated the New York Times bestseller list in recent years?

• How to fix my kids’ social media dependence and anxiety (The Anxious Generation)

• How to form habits that actually stick (Atomic Habits)

• How to understand the impact of trauma in your life (The Body Keeps the Score)

• How to stop trying to control the wrong parts of your life and make progress where progress is actually possible (The Let Them Theory)

To be honest, I find that most authors we work with don’t have a problem landing on a sticky problem. This is the easy part. The hard part comes next.

Bestselling books offer a novel approach.

Bestselling books not only address a sticky problem; they promise a compelling, novel way to solve that problem or an insight that goes against traditional, common advice. Sometimes these books introduce a framework or model to follow. Often they give the reader a mindset shift that will help them get closer to their goals. They’re able to hook the reader (catch the reader’s attention) by promising to solve the terrible, sticky problem for them—and then they deliver with their novel approach.

Examples:

• I Just Wish I Had a Bigger Kitchen - Stop wishing for something else and start elevating/rethinking what you already have to get the life that you want.

• The Book of Alchemy - Journaling isn’t just writing down anything and leaving it there; it’s a sacred meditation process that can transform your life.

• The Courage to Be Disliked - You already have everything you need to be happy. But you have to rethink everything you’ve been through and everything you’ve been taught.

Looking at these, you can see that these big ideas/novel solutions are debatable. Some people will disagree with them. Perhaps your mind immediately thinks, “Yeah, but…” That’s okay! They’ve got your attention. And even if you disagree, you might be compelled to pick it up because you want to know just how the author’s going to defend their case. That’s where the next part comes in.

Bestselling books deliver a transformation with simple genius.

Great books guide the reader on an intellectual journey of persuasion that is enormously satisfying. They take that sticky problem and lay it out plainly, giving the reader a dopamine-filled “So that’s why I’ve been suffering so much!” right from the beginning of the book. Then they systematically walk the reader—with examples, anecdotes, and confident, friendly authority—through the steps needed to tackle that problem.

Examples:

• Donald Miller’s book Business Made Simple is a perfect example because it is really is, well, simple! He takes the complexity of running a business and delivers super short, practical chapters that guide you through all of the pieces you need to be successful. It’s written like a daily devotional. Every day, you learn one more little piece about building your business.

• Mindset by Carol Dweck doesn’t necessarily use the organization of the book to deliver simple genius; she delivers it in her clear, practical writing about her novel approach, a growth mindset. Carol walks the reader through what having a growth mindset looks like when we are children, and how it might show up in marriage or at our jobs. Through the power of her clear writing and strong examples, you can understand and start to apply a growth mindset to many areas of your life.

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If you want to write a self-help or personal development book, think about how you might integrate these four qualities into your own idea.

And if you want more help thinking through your book’s idea and how you’ll deliver something truly compelling to the reader, join me and Liz to Map Your Book in October!