I’m writing a book. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Writing articles is easy. It didn’t use to be, but when you’ve done it 2,000 times, anything becomes frictionless. Articles are low-stakes. If one flops, I’ll just write another. It only takes a day. With a book, well…
If your book tanks, you’ll have wasted a year. You won’t get paid for work you’ve already done. If people hate your book, they won’t hate 1,000 words — they’ll hate 200 pages. That’s a lot of bad karma, and, quite frankly, it scares the hell out of me.
Other people, it seems, aren’t as afraid. Everyone’s writing a book these days. Books are the new business cards. Haven’t you heard? I hate this trend. It leads to shitty books, and we already have too many of those.
If you’re writing a book solely for money or clout, I suggest you reconsider. You’ll make careless mistakes driven by greed and fame-seeking. Chances are, it’ll be exactly one too many, and you’ll get neither gold nor groupies.
If you’re one of those rare specimens who — gasp — write a book for the reader, I’d like to issue a warning, a reminder to myself, really: Right now, you don’t care enough about your book. If you don’t start immediately, your supposed masterpiece will flop like a Michael Bay movie at Cannes, and, worst of all, you’ll deserve it. It’ll be your fault and your fault alone.
Let me show you two examples. The point here is not to ridicule the authors, so I’ll blur their names. My goal is to show you how “small” mistakes add up to a book that looks sloppy overall — and will inevitably fail. Look at the cover and backside of this book. What’s your first impression?
Two strong colors, slight accents. Good. But the title begs a lot of questions: Who won? What? And how? And why? And who is “I?” Those are too many questions, and that’s the first big problem with this book.
The second is that the “I” is someone you’ve never heard of. Blurred or not, the author is not Obama, and unless you’re world-famous or at least famous to me, I don’t care whether you’ve won. I have enough to worry about. How will your story help me? Show me that instantly, or I’ll toss your book aside.
Looking at the back, a series of questions could do well in adding context — but only if my head wasn’t already spinning from the title’s ambiguity. Here, more questions only hurt.
Finally, I stumble over the very first line: “Am I am doing what I do because I love it?” That’s right. There’s a typo in the first line. Now, I am offended, and it is absolutely clear to me that not only will I not waste my time on your book, it is bound to be a flop and deservedly so. You didn’t care enough to spellcheck the back cover. Let me repeat: You didn’t. Care. Enough. To spellcheck. The back cover!! In a world with a million books vying for my attention, and a billion things more beyond those, this is unforgivable. Case closed.
Now, look at the cover and back of this book:
Once again, strong colors, and a bold, better title. It presents a benefit (be rich), even if the “how” remains unclear. There’s some mystery, the words “rich” and “money” in bold letters — it feels more like an essay title than a book title, and it’s clickbait, but overall, not bad.
The back cover offers more context than the last but still makes me think hard whether I want to open the book at all.
For one, the grammar is clunky. “What school got us used to.” Passive voice in line two. Next, we start “making up facts.” Isn’t the whole point of a fact that you can’t make it up? Someone needs to brush up on their definitions.
Finally, the last line of an otherwise intriguing text leaves me as lost as I was when I started. You already told me working for money is bad in the title, but now I do need hard work once I have it? Also, how will I make money? What’s the solution? Who are you? Why should I trust your financial advice? And why the bait-and-switch with “hard work comes later?” Isn’t the point of getting rich not working hard anymore? Ultimately, this book, too, drowns me in a sea of questions, and they’re not the kind that makes me eager to dive in.
Last example. Look at the front and back of Atomic Habits by James Clear:
Do you see the difference? Of course you do. You instantly see the difference.
A strong, memorable title. Clear, concise benefits. Social proof. The author’s name in big letters. The first line of the back cover? An irresistible promise. The text? Provides just enough background while filling your brain with vivid images of how you’ll achieve that promise. More social proof.
This is a book I’m dying to open. No typos. No ego. I can tell from the first second: This book was written for me.
The only way to make sure your book will make me feel the same is to actually write your book for me — and to do that, you must give a damn in the first place. Truly caring about your book means loving and respecting your reader. It means devoting yourself to them, and then letting that devotion fuel an obsession with getting your book just right.
James Clear took three years to write his book. Three years. The other two? My guess is three weeks to three months — and it shows. The other day, I spent ten minutes deliberating whether I should use “both…and” or “either…or” in the last section of the following sentence:
There was no sleek glass screen next to my bed, behind the gates of which lay an entire universe to get lost in; a universe full of unanswered messages, scary news from places I’d never seen, and more distractions than either heaven or hell could offer.
If I use “both heaven and hell,” it makes it sound like they’re connected. Most people, however, see them as very distinct destinations. It doesn’t sit too well in your mind, does it? Imagining heaven and hell side by side.
If I use “either heaven or hell,” it indicates that both are vast yet distinct places and that, regardless of which one you end up in, you’d still be hard-pressed to find more distractions than inside your phone.
Details like this matter. In fact, such details are everything — and every author who neglects them provides further evidence that being obsessed with them is absolutely appropriate.
Am I wasting time? “Absolutely,” an entrepreneur would say. “Get on with it,” the author of 15 self-published, half-assed titles might tell me. “It’s about volume. Publish more, and you’ll do fine on Amazon.” Well, I don’t want to just “do fine on Amazon.” I want to help the reader change, and the way change works is that the more energy you put into something, the more energy someone can feel when they take that thing into their hands.
It is impossible to waste time on making art. There is no overcommitment. There are commitments that succeed and commitments that fail. That is all.
For every painting Da Vinci didn’t finish, it is not that he should have lowered his expectations, it is that he was neither ready nor capable of living up to them — and that’s okay. That too is art. It was not his job to paint the Adoration of the Magi or Saint Jerome in the Wilderness. Those were someone else’s destiny.
Making art does not preclude you from getting feedback, but it does carry an inherent sense of “this is finished.” The genuinely driven artist will achieve this feeling much later — and much more definitively — in the process than a hustler looking for a quick buck and more Twitter followers.
The single greatest way to make something successful is to care deeply about what you make.
Will my book be a hit? No idea. Cover, timing, product-market fit — it could go wrong a million ways, and I can guarantee only one thing: It won’t be for a lack of trying.
I hope you’ll make the same promise for your book — because it’ll already be more than most authors can say.