you have overcome an obstacle or problem and have learned some important life lessons; now he wants to write a self-help book and share his experience and wisdom with others. you are ready to give them the tools they need to grow and improve their lives.
This post walks you through the entire process and shares some tips from expert self-help publishers in the reedsy marketplace. this is how you can write your own self-help book:
You are reading: Writing self help books
1. identify a specific problem that your book will solve
To some extent, all nonfiction books (except memoirs) try to identify a problem and offer a solution. this could mean practical step-by-step advice or a deeper, more nuanced understanding of an existing situation that changes the reader’s perception. self-help books are no different: your job as a writer is to zero in on a particular problem and provide the reader with a way to solve it.
accept that you need to limit your scope
many self-help writers start with a very general idea, such as overcoming mental illness or becoming a happier person. Broad, abstract topics like this are great as a first instinct, but you’ll need to refine the scope of your book for the sake of your readers, their sanity, and their business potential.
Abstract concepts are difficult to comprehensively address in a useful way that provides concrete information and advice. they’re also notoriously hard to sell to a traditional self-help publisher, who will be looking for something new and unique with a defined target audience. As of March 2022, there are over 70,000 titles in the self-help category on Amazon, so writing a generic book about “finding happiness” won’t cut it.
Distill your idea
A good way to focus the scope of your book is to fill in the blanks of this imaginary promise to your reader:
if you are ____ and your problem is ____, I can help you in ____.
This engagement helps you identify your audience, the problem they’re facing, and your solution. We’ll use Changing Parents: Ten Universal Truths That Will Change The Way You Raise Your Children by Wendy Thomas Russell, Linda Hatfield, and Ty Hatfield as a vehicle to explore all three.
audience
Understanding your target audience is crucial when writing any type of nonfiction. Not only will it help you market your book, but it will also be the driving force that shapes your book and helps you write it well. after all, how can you help someone if you don’t know who they are and what they need?
so ask yourself who will benefit most from the material in your book. the answer should be as specific as possible. Let’s take a look at parentshift: ten universal truths that will change the way you raise your children.
It’s safe to assume this book is aimed at parents, but what kind of parents? well, the heart of this book is about transforming the way parents deal with tantrums and timeouts, so we could say that this book is specifically aimed at new parents who have run out of options.
And don’t stop there, think about location, cultural context, and occupation: Full-time working parents may especially need quick fixes, with triple shifts, playdates, and a mountain of housework to keep up with. Therefore, ten universal truths may be all they can handle. The more details you have about their demographics, the easier it will be to target them.
problem
After you’ve located your target audience, discover the precise aspects of their problem (or “pain point”) and identify the many forms it could take. parentshift, for example, immediately creates a problem: you’re struggling to raise your children, you know, and common parenting methods aren’t working for you.
When you’ve identified your core problem, make it visible in the title, subtitle, or blurb, so your audience can know this book is for them right away.
solution
How does a book about terrible teenagers and young children solve the problem of mediocre parenting? well, as parentshift’s blurb points out, “it challenges some of our most popular disciplinary tools and replaces them with more than a dozen ‘tool kits’ designed to help parents solve virtually any home without sabotaging their long-term goals.” “. In other words, this book helps you look at your problem in new ways and shows you alternative courses of action.
Presumably this is the kind of perspective that made you want to write a book in the first place, so we’ll assume you have a good understanding of your own ideas here, but just in case your thoughts get confused. your mind, try discussing your ideas with a friend to make sure they are easy to understand and you can communicate them clearly. then put pen to paper and repeat the process!
2. make your readers believe that you can help them
The success of a self-help book hinges entirely on your credibility and authority as a writer. After all, you wouldn’t wander down the street asking random people to help you improve your life, would you? That’s why you’ll often see beloved media personalities publish self-help books: they have an inbuilt audience of people who already trust them.
But how can you build trust with potential readers if you’re not Russell Brand or Oprah Winfrey? Two ways to do this involve sharing data about yourself: the third, and sometimes overlooked, has to do with style and structure.
ratings tell readers that others can vouch for their knowledge
One way authors can demonstrate that they are authoritative sources is to note any relevant qualifications. For example, Brené Brown regularly cites her work as a researcher and professor of psychology when examining the kinds of people who struggle to be vulnerable in her highly daring book. but university degrees are not the only qualification that matters: take matthieu ricard, for example, whose book the art of meditation is made infinitely more appealing by the fact that its author is a buddhist monk, and therefore someone in whom the reader trusts to know the meditation. good.
personal experiences say “been there”
By opening and sharing stories from your personal past, you show readers that you are speaking from real, first-hand experience, not just theorizing from a distance. For example, Louise Hay’s self-help classic The Power Is Within You follows her many years of working with HIV/AIDS patients and her own experience with cervical cancer, focusing on how positive thought patterns can help improve well-being. if she didn’t speak from experience, skeptical readers might have a hard time seeing why they should read her book, but by letting millions of readers walk a mile in her shoes, she gave them a reason to listen to what she had to say.
persuasive style and structure are the most important
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While it’s important for readers to be able to see that you’re worthy of their trust, resist the urge to turn your book into a linkedin page of your expert ratings.
elaine o’neill, former commissioning editor of hay house, points out that self-help writers often miss a trick in making readers believe them by neglecting style and structure:
“one mistake I find new self-help authors make more often than anything else is forgetting about their reader. they think they have to include everything they’ve learned in their manuscript, without thinking about what the reader needs learn, and how to give it to them bit by bit Authors can show their authority by really knowing their reader inside out and speaking directly to them, sharing their own recovery from the same problem.
“you want the reader to feel seen by you, and once they do, they’ll trust your expertise because you’ve been there, and can see that they have too.”
didacticism never works
Fiction readers are notoriously intolerant of didactic narratives — self-help books are a slightly different story, because the writer is, by default, in the position of a teacher. That said, no one likes to be spoken down to, and a superior tone will not help you assert your expertise. You aren’t running for president of the Nobel committee — you just want a reader to like you enough to listen, so make an effort to communicate your knowledge in a style of language that speaks to them.
📚 Still not sure how to introduce yourself? Head over to our list of the 50 best self-help books of all time and see how each of these authors comes across as an authority figure.
3. don’t forget you’re telling a story
Self-help books rarely follow a single overarching narrative arc. they are usually not guided by a narrative but by an argument or thesis, with chapters structured around stories that help to illustrate the points made.
intuitively structured for a great reading experience
How do you make sure your book is readable, compact, and flows logically from chapter to chapter? committing to a detailed outline before you even start writing. In traditional publishing, a book proposal will almost always be drafted first, which will serve as an excellent blueprint. But even if you’re self-publishing, it’s worth making a plan to make sure every chapter is needed and adds value.
As with novels, good beginnings can make or break a self-help book. Your introduction should tell readers a little bit about you and why you’re writing a book. it should also give you a quick rundown of what’s to come. Chapter 1 is where you’ll start to get to the heart of things, outlining the intricacies of the core problem. after that, it’s up to you how the rest of the book will be structured.
If this is a point you’re really struggling with, focus on getting all of your thoughts out there and writing down any questions or concerns to raise with your editor later. Speaking of publishers, you can request quotes from some of the best self-help publishers in the industry for free, right here at reedsy:
solidify through anecdotes and emotional narratives
Ideally, you should structure each chapter of your self-help book around a specific point or idea, and the best way to illustrate each point is through a story or anecdote, be it personal, hypothetical, or entirely fictional. stories have the great effect of eliciting an emotional response or more active interest by involving a character that readers can empathize with or look at with curiosity.
need an example? Think of the way the teachings of Christianity are shared through the parables Jesus taught: The story of the Good Samaritan is infinitely more memorable than “Be Kind.”
Storytelling also builds interest and suspense, keeping readers engaged. Take a look at How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, the first chapter of which begins as follows:
“On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City had ever known reached its climax. After weeks of searching, ‘Two Gun’ Crowley, the killer, the gunman who didn’t smoke or drink, was cornered, trapped in his beloved’s apartment on West End Avenue.”
only tell stories that add to your message
self-help editor danielle goodman emphasizes the need to only tell stories worth telling: “when it comes to self-help books, proof of concept is absolutely necessary. that’s why storytelling can be so powerful. It takes your advice off the page and into the real world of real people, like you and your readers.
“The main question you should ask yourself when telling parts of your story is: is what I am writing serving my message? In other words, how does this story underscore what you want the reader to feel, understand, and act on?
“once you know the answer, be explicit in connecting the dots for the reader. tell them exactly why you included this story and what you want them to get out of it. And if you can’t understand why this story is important to your message, leave it for now.”
4. give your readers specific actions they can take
The self-help genre is often more abstract than, say, how-to guides or even memoir, so your book may run the risk of being too woolly in its advice. And if you’ve ever tried to get travel directions from someone who sorta kinda knows the way to the library, you’ll know how frustrating vagueness can be.
self-help editor kate victory hannisian says that “an indicator that you haven’t made your self-help advice completely clear is a comment from editors or beta readers like this: ‘great, but how does anyone actually do that? ?’
“sometimes the solution is to see if you can break that advice down into short, practical steps. other times, adding specific examples and vivid anecdotes with a few well-chosen details can help make your advice real and understandable to your target reader, and therefore more useful to them. Depending on the type of self-help book you’re writing, these examples may come from your own experience or from other sources, but the key is knowing that it’s important to show, not tell, even in nonfiction writing.”
To make sure your action points don’t get lost in the narrative, you can offer a summary at the end of each chapter. heather heying and bret weinstein’s hunter-gatherer’s guide to the 21st century reiterates each of its chapters perfectly, summarizing the main points in bullet points, but can go one step further and offer a checklist of actions to take or questions the reader can ask themselves to diagnose their own needs.
5. choose an attractive and informative title (and subtitle)
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Self-help titles are often quite formulaic and almost always include a subtitle:
[catchy phrase]:[book description]
You can see this formula in action with self-help titles like:
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
- The Self-Love Habit: Turn Fear and Doubt into Serenity , Peace and Power
- The Conscious Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive
So what do you need to keep in mind when you title your own book? Let’s do a super quick linguistic analysis of the common title elements of this genre. 🧠
a) direct address
Many self-help titles address the reader directly with the second person pronoun ‘you’. As with fiction written in second person point of view, directly addressing your reader has an immediate and personal effect, especially if the title catches a reader’s eye on a store shelf or online. Here are a few examples:
- you’re a badass for jen sincere
- make your bed for admiral william h. mcraven
- declutter your mind de s.j. scott and barrie davenport
- your money or your life by vicki robin & joe dominguez
b) imperatives
authoritative statements draw attention in the same way as the second person: by being immediate. Titles that use imperatives use this most powerful grammatical mood to grab the reader’s attention. I can’t think of any? here are some:
- stay sexy & don’t get killed by karen kilgariff and georgia hardstark
- keep on exercising for life by robert hopper
- find your artistic voice by lisa congdon
- keep going through austin kleon
c) an inspiring tone
Whether they evoke a sense of magic or are simply a sweet combination of words offering a momentary glimpse of possibility, self-help headlines are particularly prone to taking on an inspiring tone. Inspirational titles can mention happiness, success, or a host of other positive abstract nouns: growth, change, improvement. How do they work? promising us wonderful things ahead. some examples for you:
- big magic by elizabeth gilbert
- radical acceptance by tara brach
- the magic of thinking big by david j. schwartz
- smart street disciplines of successful people by mark mullins and john kuhn
d) search-optimized subtitles
When self-help covers feature these inspirational titles, they often need a subtitle to contextualize the book’s content. these relatively prosaic second titles provide a more informative overview of what readers might expect.
that’s obvious: what less people realize is that titles are usually search-optimized, which means that they are written to contain some important keywords or terms related to the topic being discussed. This helps the book be found by readers searching for those terms on Amazon. Take a look at the headings below and note the keywords in their subheadings, in bold for your convenience:
- the power of now: a guide to spiritual enlightenment by eckhart tolle
- deep work: rules for success focused on a distracted world by cal newport
- stolen focus: why you can’t pay attention — and how to think deeply again by johann hari
- tired as f*ck: exhaustion at the hands of diet, self-help and food culture hustleby caroline dooner
confused? It has to do with the way Amazon’s algorithms work, as Reedsy co-founder Ricardo Fayet explains in his free book on How to Market a Book.
“If your book is ‘indexed’ for a keyword, that means it will appear as a result when a customer types that term into the amazon search bar. For example, over nine thousand e-books are indexed in the store kindle for “herbal remedies”. […] the closer the match between your title, or a part of your title, and the search keyword, the higher your book will rank.”
Looking for more marketing information? you can download ricardo’s book for free below:
6. always cite your sources
It is unlikely that you will be the first person to write about your topic, or even give advice on your topic. that’s ok: different people can give different and helpful advice on the same problems, so don’t feel like your idea is “taken”.
The important thing is to acknowledge those who have informed your research, clearly giving them credit for the ideas they have contributed. by all means add to or expand on them, but, as many disgruntled college students can attest, you should never present them as your own: that’s IP theft at worst, and very unattractive at best. /p>
Be nice instead: cite your sources, describe their positions if they differ from yours, and position yourself as one of the many voices in this dialogue. take cal newport for example: his introduction to previous contributions on the topic of distracting technology is a masterclass in outlining an existing discussion and clarifying your place in it:
“[This idea] is not new. [Nicholas Carr’s] The Superficial was just the first in a series of recent books to examine the internet’s effect on our brains and work habits. These subsequent titles include William Power’s Hamlet’s Blackberry, John Freeman’s Tyranny of E-mail, and Alex Soojung-kin Pang’s Addiction to Distraction—all of whom more or less agree that network tools distract us from work. it requires uninterrupted concentration, at the same time degrading our ability to stay focused. given this existing body of evidence, I will not spend any more time in this book trying to make this point.”
— cal newport, ‘deep work: rules for focused success in a distracted world’
7. give readers something extra at the end
Consider this an extra step, particularly useful for those writers hoping to make a living from their writing careers. Assuming a reader has finished her book, you know you have a common interest with him, so it’s possible that she can learn more from you.
If you’re active on social media, teach a video course, or offer more resources on similar topics freely available on your platform, mention it in your book. Even if you don’t have any of these things right now, you can offer a simple, free resource that complements your book, such as a printable checklist that the reader can download for easy reference. the idea is that you direct the reader to your website and offer them a “reader magnet”, in other words, allow them to download something in exchange for them signing up for your mailing list… which you’ll need to set up if they haven’t already! you have one!
Why bother with all this? Because, as Reedsy’s Ricardo Fayet asserts in his free Reedsy Learning course on mailing lists, “your author mailing list is the one main tool you’ll use to build a long-lasting relationship with your readers, turning them into repeat buyers and unconditional fans. Every sale you make while your mailing list is not in place is basically a lost opportunity.”
When written carefully, self-help books can boost your writer’s career, become very profitable, and actually help people improve their lives. it’s a win-win if there ever was one, so take the time to polish yours and you won’t regret it. good luck!
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