Ten tips to write and sell a non-fiction book

My girlfriend Kattya at a bookstore in Porto, Portugal

I quite often get asked for advice on bringing a book to market. I’ve written four books so far, and had very different experiences with each of them. My first book, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, took a long time to get published, but when it finally did (by Random House) I had the pleasant experience of it being a success — it was published in 25 countries and sales and publicity far exceeded my and the publishers’ expectations.

My second book, The Art of Losing Control, was published by Canongate in 2017. It did less well than my and the publishers’ expectations, which was emotionally hard at the time, but I’m philosophical about it now. I still like the book and the path it took me down. After that, I co-edited a book about ‘spiritual emergencies’, published by a much smaller publisher, and I self-published a little book about ayahuasca tourism. So I have quite a wide experience of publishing options. It’s possible my next book will be published by an academic press, which will be another sort of experience I imagine.

Anyway, I can’t tell you how to make a million, but I do have ten tips.

1) Are you sure you want to write a book?

Writing a book is a dream for many people, but are you definitely sure you want to do it? It’s like starting a restaurant — the reality is very different to the dream. Your book will be coming out in a market saturated by books. There are about one million books professionally published a year, and another three million self-published. The average book sells 200 copies. There are other ways to get your message out there — YouTube, or an online course, or a podcast — and these may appeal to people more. Our attention spans are diminishing and people prefer to stare at their phones than read books, sadly.

2) Don’t expect to make money

If you’re still sure you want to write a book, great! But don’t rely on this as a way to make your fortune. Again, the average book sells 200 copies, and if your book is published by a publishing company, you get 10% of that. So you’d on average make $200 for what could be years of work. It’s an insane way to try and make a living.

Your book might be a success. My first book sold, I don’t know, maybe 80,000 copies globally, which puts it in the success category. But that’s still only £80,000 — and the book took me four years of writing and a lot of promotion. Nonetheless, it did create a platform for me to become a self-employed writer / researcher / teacher / public speaker.

3) Know what’s out there and make yourself an expert

Are you sure what you have to say has not been said already? Check what’s out there, make sure you know your subject, look what has done well, and where there might be a gap in the market. And then make yourself an expert on your topic. Why should people bother listening to you on this particular topic?

For my first book, for example, I was interested in the revival of Stoicism and other ancient Greek philosophies in modern life, because Stoicism had been very helpful to me. In 2008 I started the Philosophy for Life blog, and used it to interview experts on Stoicism like Martha Nussbaum. I also started working for the Stoic Registry (the first online Stoic group), writing their newsletter and helping to organize the first Stoic gathering for two millennia. Through that newsletter, I found and interviewed ordinary people who’d used Stoicism in their lives. I joined and started to run the London Philosophy Group, the largest philosophy group in the world. So I gradually turned myself from a journalist into an expert on modern Stoicism and philosophy outside of academia. Now, ten years later, there are a lot of books on modern Stoicism, so it’s a bit less original.

My second book was on ecstatic experiences and how they’re becoming more common. Again, I took four years to write this book and turned myself into something of an expert on the subject. I interviewed countless people on the topic, from Brian Eno to Derren Brown, I read countless books on the topic, from anthropology to mystical theology, and I tried various ecstatic practices myself. It was actually a pretty hard subject — because it combined a spiritual search with a massive analytical research effort, and those two things are not the same! Nonetheless, I now get invited to conferences and organisations to talk about ecstatic experiences. You can conceivably become an expert on any topic…But it helps if the topic is relatively undercovered, and you need to put the work in.

4) Don’t try to cook the meal until you have all the ingredients

By ‘all the ingredients’ I mean you’ve done all your research and interviews, and you know you have enough to be getting started. Don’t sit down at your computer and expect the book to appear magically — that’s not generally how non-fiction books work. They arise out of research. Make sure you have all your ingredients ready, washed and chopped before you turn the stove and get cooking.

5) Write a proposal and check the structure

You don’t necessarily have to write the whole book before trying to sell it. You can sell the book based on a proposal. This is usually a covering document with sections introducing you and the book idea, and explaining why you think the book will succeed, accompanied by the introduction to the book and two more chapters, plus a chapter synopsis. The proposal is usually what gets sent to agents and then circulated around publishers.

An important part of a proposal is the chapter synopsis. This is really useful for you as well, to see if your idea really is a book, as opposed to an essay or article. Is your chapter structure strong all the way through? Does it lead the reader on a clear journey? Does it tell a strong story?

Non-fiction books are like buildings or bridges. You need a good structure underneath it all, a good architecture. Does it hold up and support the reader’s attention the whole way through? Does each chapter earn its right to be in the book? Is every ‘song’ on the album good, or is there some filler?One bad chapter and most readers will put down the book and pick up their phone, and that’s it, you’ve lost them. Working out your chapter structure is important for working out the story you want to tell — where does it end up, what are its conclusions? If you summarized it as a five-minute talk, what would be the takeaway point?

While working on a book I continually examine the structure and chapter synopsis, thinking about what I put where, which stories and content I should put in each chapter, and which chapters I should possibly ditch.

6) Consider hiring a professional reader or manuscript doctor

I tried to sell my first book for months, and couldn’t even get an agent. I sometimes got agent rejections so quickly I thought the email had bounced back. Then I took my first three chapters and proposal to The Literary Consultancy, and paid them about £300 for their feedback. They gave the proposal to one of their professional readers, who often also work for publishing companies. The reader — her name is Sue Lascelles — loved the proposal and said she would pitch it to the firm she worked at, Rider Books. They made me an offer and Sue became my editor. Clearly, that was the best £300 I ever spent.

7) Find an agent?

It was only once I got an offer from Rider Books that I managed to get an agent. And really, you have to wonder, why bother getting an agent at all at that point? Why give them 10% of your earnings for that book, for life? I was new to the business, and wanted to be sure the contract was legit — but I could have paid a lawyer say £500 or £1000 to look at it.

To be honest I wanted to be a ‘professional writer’ and I thought ‘professional writers’ had agents, and they went for boozy lunches in Soho and were friends for life and so on. And that an agent would more than pay back what you pay them. I don’t think it turns out like that for most writers.

If you want to get a big deal from one of the main publishing firms, you probably do need an agent — you’re basically paying them to get the attention of the publishers, and if you’re lucky, to get the attention of multiple publishers so you are in the enviable position of being in an auction, with publishers bidding for your book. They increase the size of your advance.

The advance is what a publisher pays you to secure the rights to your book. It’s an advance on your royalties — so let’s say you get a £10,000 advance (which is what I got for my first book). You don’t earn any more royalties until your royalties have paid off that advance. If a publisher gives you a big advance, they are more invested in your book and will put more into promotion.

To find an agent, look for who represents similar authors to you, or ask friends to recommend an agent. Then email them, briefly introducing yourself and perhaps attaching your proposal. Don’t expect the agent to put much time into improving your proposal — they’re busy people and they will help you when your proposal is good to go. That’s why going to a literary consultancy can help — you’re paying them for proper feedback on your proposal and book.

If you’re not going for one of the big publishers, but rather for a smaller independent publisher or a university press, you may not need an agent and could contact the publisher directly. Find who has published similar books to yours, and send them a brief email with your proposal.

Expect a lot of rejections. It’s part of the job. Usually the rejection says something template like ‘really interesting but not for us’. Sometimes they give useful feedback but not usually.

8) Prepare your marketing

Let’s say you have a strong proposal, an agent, and a publishing deal. Amazing! Don’t expect your publisher to do very much in the way of marketing for you. They have loads of titles coming out, and their publishing team will be mainly focused on the big titles which they expect to make them money. Unfortunately, these days writers need to be their own hype-merchants.

Most writers spend 99% of their time on their content, and about 1% on their marketing. Smart American authors spend about 30% of their time on their content, and 70% on their marketing. Work out a marketing plan. Make a list of people to contact, copies to send, who could possibly review the book, where you might give talks on it, what podcasts to contact, how to shape the talk into a 15 minute TEDX talk, and so on.

You slaved over the content, and that content deserves a proper marketing strategy.

9) Consider alternative routes to publishing

Let’s say you didn’t get a deal with a big publisher. That’s OK! There are other routes to get your content out there. You can try a smaller publisher or a university press. You can self-publish — that means you keep a much higher percentage of royalties, but it also means you won’t get into bookstores like Waterstones, or get reviewed in newspapers, so you need to put more effort into your marketing campaign. Or you could go another route, and turn your content into a podcast, or online course. An online course could potentially be more profitable than a book, and you could include the book as part of it.

10) Once you publish and promote, let it go.

Finally, writing a book is an emotional rollercoaster. In some ways, my favourite bit of it is the research, the joy of discovering something new you want to tell the world. The publishing bit of it is like suddenly being in a cattle market and your book is another piece of meat among thousands and thousands of cattle. It’s a massive rush when your book gets noticed or receives a nice review. It’s intoxicating. But there’s also the experience of a bad review — a sudden very public kick in the stomach. Or, the more common experience for the millions of people who publish each year: no review.

Once your book is out there, you have to emotionally detach from it a bit. Let it go. It will find its readers. It may find millions of readers who read it then forget it. It may find ten readers whose lives it changes. It may find readers now, or in a few years. It may find very few readers but lead you in a life-enriching direction. You can’t be too fixated on immediate success. Enjoy the journey.

Writing a book is an insane thing to do, but humans have been compelled to do it for millennia, and it’s through these countless moments of insane enthusiasm that civilization has emerged. The vast majority of those people did not make much or any money for their efforts. Do not give up the day-job just yet. A survey by the UK Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ACLS) found that the average income for a professional author is £10,500. It’s fallen by 42% since 2005. In the US, it’s slightly better: a whopping $16,800 a year, or £12,800. Hardly anyone lives off the earnings from their books — maybe 10,000 people in the world, maximum. Everyone else supplements their income with other stuff — journalism, teaching, copy-writing, tutoring, consultancy work, academia, or something completely different. It’s a mad way to try and make a living, so don’t! Make a living some other way and anything you make from books is a bonus.

I think people often have a dream of what it means to be a ‘published author’ — when I was younger, as an Oxford English grad, I dreamt of one day being recognized as part of the high-brow ‘literati’. That never happened. Writing about spirituality basically disqualifies you from the chic literary crowd, and I guess I’m not a high-brow literary writer. But one can’t measure oneself up against some imaginary idea of success. I make a living as a writer, and get to spend my days nerding out over the history of ideas. That is wonderful success and I’m grateful.

Bonus tip! Test out your material as you write, and earn along the way

It is also possible to earn as you write the book, by for example publishing parts of it on Medium, or selling parts as articles, or even doing talks to test out material. I worked on a book about Aldous Huxley, which never got published — or rather, it turned into the book I’m working on now. But I did some talks on Aldous Huxley which were hugely popular, earning me thousands. So one can earn along the way, and use talks or articles to test out material and see what lands well with readers.

Find out more bonus tips in this 90-minute video seminar on ‘how to make a living as a writer in the digital age’. It costs £20. I explore all the ways I’ve made money as a writer: blogging, newsletters, Patreon, Substack, books, online courses, talks, tutoring, academia, think-tanks and so on!