Now that you have your book topic, it’s time to look at how you will go about creating your book outline with all the different elements you will need for its basic structure. You’ll also start creating your writing plan with goals and deadlines, so you can make time in your schedule to complete your book.

Create Your Draft Book Outline

Your book outline is a roadmap that takes you from writing your first sentence to finishing your book. Drafting an outline helps keep you focused and organizes your thoughts and efforts. It makes sure you have a good flow for your book. As you continue to write and meet deadlines, you’ll be able to see how much progress you’re making to help motivate you towards the finish.

Step 1. Brainstorm Your Key Content

Brainstorm ideas to flesh out your main topic. The ideas you generate can be used for chapter titles, subtopics, and key points within each chapter. Set a time limit, say 60 minutes, and write as many ideas, thoughts, even single words, as you can. Go crazy and just get everything down – ignore your inner editor. At this point, all ideas are valid.

If it helps, frame your ideas as questions you think a reader might ask about your book topic. You may already have ideas for this from questions your customers have asked you in the past.

You can record your brainstorming ideas in Word, or in a mind map software, or with a pencil on big sheets of paper or small Post-its. Research indicates we connect better with ideas and information when we write with pen and paper, rather than typing on computer, but choose the method that works best for you.

Step 2. Write Your Draft Outline

Chapter Titles

Using the ideas generated by your brainstorming, start your outline by writing the titles of your chapters. They should give your readers a clear idea of what they can expect chapter-by-chapter. They should also be compelling, but you can work on getting the wording just right later. For now, the main purpose of these chapter titles is to guide the content of your book and make sure you have the structure and flow you need.

Subtopics and Key Points

Next, add any subtopics and key points you have identified during your brainstorming. Remember, this is only a very high-level outline, and you’ll probably change or improve it as you start writing. For now, this overview will give you a flow and content ideas that will help you start writing, and stay focused while you are writing.

The Key Elements of a Nonfiction Book

It’s not essential to include all the following elements in your book. The accompanying short explanations for each will act as a guideline and help you decide what you need to include in your book.

Copyright Page. You’ll need components such as your book title and subtitle, your Copyright Statement or Notice, and your “All Rights Reserved” statement. It’s important to get these rights, so look for examples online.

There are templates you can copy and complete with your information.

Dedication. If there’s someone special to whom you’d like to dedicate your book, this is the place to do so.

Acknowledgements. This is where you acknowledge the help of the people who played a part in the process of creating your book. It’s your opportunity to thank them for their assistance.

Table of Contents. Your table of contents lists your chapter titles and any subheadings.

Foreword. The foreword is basically a short introduction to a book written by someone other than the author. This is usually someone whose status adds credibility to the book.

Preface/Introduction. This includes things like:

• Your background, and how you came to write your book
• Who the book is for
• What readers can expect from your book – the content it covers, and how it will help them

Chapters. These make up the main body of your book’s content.

Bibliography. This is where you list any sources you may have drawn on indirectly or referenced directly while writing your book. If you have quoted anyone in your book, you would acknowledge that here too. Your bibliography could have details of books, podcasts, articles, research papers – anything you have referred to in your book

About the Author. Your author bio goes here, with any contact details you want to share and links to places such as your website or Amazon page.

Create Your Writing Plan

Your writing plan is a detailed schedule of what you’re going to write and when. It’s important to set your goals and deadlines now to help keep you on track to complete your book within your desired timeframe.

• First, set your deadline for completing your book research.
• Then, set your ideal deadline for finishing writing your book.
• Next, set your deadlines for writing each part of your book. In your outline, you broke your book down in to chapters and chapter subsections, and you can use those sections as the basis of your plan.

Make your writing goals manageable, not huge and overwhelming. For example, if your goal is, “Finish Chapter 4 by 30^th April” – break that goal into smaller goals. Make it, “Finish Section 1 of Chapter 4 by 7^th April”, “Finish Section 2 by 14^th April”, etc.

Write down the tasks you need to do to write your book, in the order you need to do them.

Schedule completion dates for them.

Scheduling your tasks by working backwards from your proposed finish date is a useful approach.

To keep to your writing plan and finish your book, you need to make writing a habit and a priority.

Write Every Day

Set aside a certain amount of time to write every day, and make it achievable. Start off with an hour, or even half an hour – just make sure it is a manageable amount of time to fit into your daily schedule. You could also set yourself a goal of writing a certain number of words a day. Some people find it easier to establish a set routine by sitting down to write at the same time every day, such as an hour before bedtime. The more you write, the easier it gets. With a proper routine and good plan, you’ll soon find yourself making great progress with your book.

It’s Time to Write Your Book!

Gather Content You Already Have, and Organize it

What relevant content have you already written or created that can be repurposed for some of your book’s content? This can include blog posts, articles, coaching content, podcasts, information from videos, webinars, speech and presentation scripts, and more. You’ll definitely need to rewrite or reframe this content for your book, but it can be useful to create the basis of sections, or ‘the bones’ of your book, and can help you get started quickly. If you use any content you’ve written that’s already available online, Amazon will need to verify that you own the sole rights to that content.

Research Content Ideas

Your research will help you with your chapter subtopics and key points, and with theories, concepts, statistics, and supporting examples for your chapters.

Your information could come from reading books, or from online sites. You could also conduct a survey asking your audience what specifically they want to know about your book’s topic.

It’s easy to get lost down the rabbit hole when you’re researching content for your book. Set a deadline for finishing your research so you don’t spend too long on it and never start writing.

Tools for Writing Your Book

You need to think now about which tools you’re going to use to write your book. 

You can use Microsoft Word for writing your book, Open Office, or something like LibreOffice (another free alternative to Word).

There’s a variety of excellent writing-specific software available, offering a range of features that will help you edit your work and collect and organize your notes. Options include:

Scrivener helps you concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on “helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.”

Sigil. Sigil allows you to work directly in EPUB format so you can see what your book will look like on e-readers such as Kindle.

Amazon has the Kindle Create Add-in for Microsoft Word that will help you format your book as you write, so it’s ready for publishing to Kindle.

Kindle Previewer is another application that will allow you to preview exactly how your readers will view your Kindle eBook.

Ideally, you’ll also have somewhere where you can capture all your book-related research, information, and ideas. OneNote and Evernote are good software options for saving and organizing information. Choose the system you’re most comfortable with.

TIP:

Start writing your main content first, starting with your first chapter. It’s more motivating for you and gets your book underway as soon as possible. You’ll feel like you’re making progress quicker. Although it seems counter-intuitive, write your introduction when you’ve finished your book as you’ll know exactly what to put in there only when you’ve finished writing.