An Unorganized Book is an Unread Book*

*And your reviews will suck.

People buy a book because they want information but they don’t want to have to dig for it. The value of many books and courses is that the author has taken the time to go out and research the subject and put all the information together in one place. If that information is not well-organized, then it defeats the purpose of the entire project.

There are many ways to organize the information in your book and the method you use may depend on your topic and what you want to convey. In general, books are organized as steps in a process, by topic, or in chronological order. The bottom line is that the information has to be organized in some sort of logical progression.

A Transcription is NOT a Book

I’ve seen many books or course manuals that are a straight transcription of a talk or seminar, including the “ahs” and “inaudibles.” Believe me, this is not the way to impress your reader. I often use the transcription method to create the raw material for the first draft of a book. It’s a method that works. But I know that speakers get off track. Maybe their talk wasn’t organized well from the beginning or an audience member asks a question that leads everyone down a rabbit hole. Sometimes the speaker goes off on a non-related story or even uses an example that is poor or doesn’t…