Writelife

When you read Seth Godin’s post Advice for authors, pay attention to how often he uses the word idea. There’s a good reason for this. I think many writers of books aren’t aware of what that reason is and therefore make one of the biggest mistakes writers of non-fiction books make. (Fiction writers often make the same mistake, but things are a bit different in that case.)

The mistake? They think books are about writing. They’re not. A non-fiction book is about an idea. Writing just gets in the way of it.

Look at Seth’s books. For the moment, don’t read them. Just look. Pay particular attention to his most recent books, All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside and Purple Cow.

Look at the layout. How long are those chapters? Not very. What’s the word count? Not great. How many headlines and sub-headlines are there? Quite a few. How many images, graphs, bullet lists etc. are there? Again, a good number.

Like a well designed Web site, the text content is chunked. It’s also augmented by design elements that break up the words and make it easy to read. And quick to read. And anything but daunting.

In other words (no pun intended), the text – the words – don’t get in the way of the book’s idea. They communicate it. Many writers of non-fiction make the mistake of over-communicating, and that results in the idea not being communicated at all.

They overwrite. They go on and on and on. (As I just did there. I should have just left it at, “They overwrite.”)

Something else you’ll find in Seth’s book – apparent redundancy, or repetition. You’ll see something stated once, like the primary idea, then repeated later on, usually in a somewhat different context, or at least in another form, often augmented.

You might think that’s a mistake, or padding, but it’s not. It’s how ideas are communicated, and how we learn. Yes, if he kept repeating it word for word it would be a mistake. But well-written repetition reinforces an idea and helps us to see how a particular notion applies in various situations.

Finally, one other thing Seth knows which helps to explain why his books are the way they are, and why they are successful where others are not – he knows his audience.

It’s a business audience. Put bluntly, this means they don’t read – they certainly don’t like reading. They prefer to pick up a book and scan it, and call that reading. So the shorter, easier something is to read, the better. (This doesn’t mean his audience is a bunch of illiterate buffoons – remember, I’m his audience too and I’d rather not think of myself that way. It means they are busy people and don’t like having their time wasted by unnecessary words. And yes, as Seth mentions, a lot of people just don’t like reading, sad as that may be.)

If I can add to the advice Seth gives, I would suggest paying close attention to his books. Look at how they are written and look at the layout, especially the layout of the text. Pay attention to his tone (very casual – conversational without being flippant). Look at how often he uses examples to illustrate what he is saying.

Mostly, however, look at how little he writes. And how much of what he does write is focused on his primary idea.

(One note: when I refer to "…how little he writes," I’m not talking about word count but about unnecessary words.)

Tag: Writing, Non-fiction, Books, Seth Godin

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