The main ideas from the world of product design applied to the process of writing a non-fiction book. Work in public, interview target users, aim for timeless appeal, design around a recommendation loop, optimise for value-per-page. Specific to 'useful' (problem-solver) books. The author practices what he preaches, this is a good book.
Even if you were recently an amateur in your topic, fear not. By still remembering how it feels to stand in the shoes of a beginner, you’ll write with an empathy and understanding that is impossible for the “natural expert” or “world’s best” to match. That’s a real edge.
Useful books are problem-solving products. The word “problem” in “problem-solving” is being used somewhat loosely, and could include helping a reader to receive any sort of tangible outcome, such as to:
For a problem-solver to be recommended frequently enough to endure and grow, it requires four qualities, represented with the acronym DEEP:
Here’s the secret to a five-star Amazon rating: be clear enough about what your book is promising that people can decide they don’t need it. It may seem counterintuitive to try to drive potential readers away. But good books receive bad reviews after making too broad of a promise and luring the wrong people into buying.
Savvy authors have recently been choosing to self-publish their first 10,000 copies and then transition afterwards into a publishing deal. If you’re able to go this route, you’ll receive full royalties from the first 10k sales (worth approximately $55k more than the royalties you’d receive from a publisher on that number of copies sold) and can then enter contract negotiations from a position of strength since your book is already de-risked. This approach was used by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares (authors of Traction) and by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur (authors of Business Model Generation), who each ended up getting insane deals for first-time authors. It’s a strong hybrid model that maximizes early profits without sacrificing eventual scale.
Three helpful lines of questioning to strengthen your scope:
The recommendation loop for The Workshop Survival Guide is triggered by the stressful preparation before an important workshop or presentation. The cost of failure is high and the event’s date can’t be moved, which makes it an urgent, must-solve priority. At some point during those tense days or weeks, the soon-to-be-facilitator mentions their stress to a friend or colleague (triggering the loop) and gets pointed toward the book as the best available solution (fulfilling the loop).
Stop writing for an anonymous crowd; imagine yourself writing to a specific individual who you know, and who wants your help. Stop trying to sound smart. Use the same tone and language that you would use to explain something to a friend or colleague.
Beyond creating something DEEP and useful, you must obey two additional requirements for your book to enter the back catalog:
As absurd as it sounds, that’s exactly what most authors do with books. They write in secret, piling up a manuscript’s worth of beautiful words and only then start figuring out whether people want it and it works.
In most cases, a good listening conversation is just a friendly exploration of the reader’s experiences, worldview, and decision-making:
You’ve been dealing with X recently, right? Would you mind talking me through what you did and how it went? How did you decide to do it that way? What else did you try? What did you give up on or find unhelpful? Where did you search for help or guidance? What were the most frustrating moments? How did you eventually get over them? Did you read any books or blogs about it? Why (or why not)? Which ones were helpful and which were a waste? Why? What’s still worrying or blocking you? Are you doing anything about it, or is it not that big of a deal?
This line of questioning leads to all manner of insights that will directly strengthen your scope and recommendation loop.
From a reader’s perspective, your book is a multi-hour journey experienced as value received over time spent. If too much time passes before arriving at the next piece of meaningful value, a reader’s engagement drops and they’ll drift away.
The most common way to ruin your reader experience is to spend too long on foundational theory before getting to the bits that people actually want. This feels quite natural as an author (“Let’s get the theory out of the way”) but is grueling to readers.
By arranging the content around the learner’s goals instead of the teacher’s convenience, the experience stops feeling like a drag and begins to feel easy and engaging.
With one small adjustment, your ToC will become an x-ray view of your book’s “takeaways over time,” allowing you to visualize, debug, and improve its reader experience. You do this by adding word counts to the titles of your sections and chapters, allowing you to see how many words (and thus how many minutes — 250 words per minute is typical) are sitting between any two pieces of value. These word counts will be removed prior to publication, but they’re invaluable while the book is in development.
You’ve got three main ways to front-load your book. We’ve touched on some of these already, but to put it all in one place:
The third approach is the most controversial. Authors often feel that by “giving it all away” too soon, readers will take the goods and run. But I haven’t found that fear to be justified. The Mom Test delivers most of its big ideas in the first three chapters (about 7,500 words or thirty minutes’ reading time). The rest of the book is really just supplemental detail for folks who need a bit more guidance around putting it into practice. Every page is valuable for beginners, who read it cover to cover. Meanwhile, more advanced readers are able to quickly get the value and then move on, grateful that I haven’t wasted their time. This structure has done wonders for both engagement and word of mouth.
You can also reframe a book’s brevity as part of its value. [A good example of this is] Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series. Small enough to fit in a back pocket and quick enough to read on a commute, these books have been wildly successful.
Identifying the value can fundamentally change a book. In the early versions of The Mom Test, I had included a silly mock conversation to demonstrate how getting feedback tends to go wrong. I felt a bit sheepish about its goofiness and had only used one such example. But beta readers loved it, saying that it solidified a normally abstract concept.
People will only recommend your book if it has successfully touched their lives. “Sounded good in theory but didn’t work for me” is a death blow to an otherwise recommendable book.
Successful marketing isn’t really about marketing at all — it’s about product design, testing, refinement, and ensuring that you’re delivering real value to your readers.
To find willing events, you must first understand that from their perspective, even a “free” book is never free — any sort of giveaway carries a high reputational risk by acting as a tacit endorsement. So the organizer must believe, first and foremost, that the book is useful to their attendees. One slightly sneaky trick is to research relevant events while your book is still being written, and coax a few organizers into becoming beta readers. This is a smaller request (asking for their time instead of their reputation) that allows you to begin demonstrating value and building a relationship.
You probably can’t write the world’s best book about a huge topic for every type of reader. Decide who you’re serving and how you’re helping them, and then write just for them. Better to be loved by someone than ignored by everyone.
I'm James—an engineer based in New Zealand—and I have a crippling addiction to new ideas. If you're an enabler, send me a book recommendation through one of the channels below.
