Step #6
Decide If Your Book’s Content Matches Your Initial Vision

At this point in the process, you get to do some real writing. Whoo hoo! How much writing you do in Step #6, Decide If Your Book’s Content Matches Your Initial Vision, depends on how you plan to publish and what you plan to write. You will write more at this point if you plan to self-publish or if you write fiction than if you hope to traditionally publish or if you write nonfiction.

Before you dig in and begin composing any amount of your manuscript, you now want to add more detail to the map you created in Step #5, Examine the Structure of Your Book. In this step, you add directions for those using that map, your TOC. In the language of a book proposal, this step involves writing the section called Chapter Summaries for a nonfiction book or the synopsis for a fiction book. This section is necessary for your writing guide, which is why I recommend both nonfiction and fiction writers produce a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. To complete Step #6, you will write a synopsis of each and every chapter you listed in your TOC and place it in your business plan.

For all nonfiction books, this is included in a proposal even if your nonfiction manuscript is complete, and it should be included in your business plan if you self-publish. It allows an agent or an acquisitions editor to quickly scan not just your proposed chapters but the content of your book to determine if the book has substance, is unique, flows, makes sense, is necessary, and is compelling. It allows the editor to judge if you have carried through on the premises you laid out in your Overview and TOC. Your chapter-by-chapter synopsis helps publishing professionals determine if they are interested in your project without having to read the whole manuscript. In fact, for nonfiction, agents and acquisitions editors rarely read the whole book unless it is a memoir; they usually just read one or two chapters, or about twenty to thirty pages of your manuscript, along with the chapter summaries.

Even if you don’t plan on seeking a traditional publisher, write a chapter-by-chapter synopsis for your business plan so you can evaluate your content just as a publishing professional would.

For fiction, your synopsis is typically a short (usually a page or two at most) description of your entire novel that details the most important information about your story, such as plot, theme, characterization, and setting. It allows an agent or acquisitions editor to get an overview of how these elements coalesce to create a compelling story without reading the entire novel. Most agents and acquisitions editors will ask novelists to send a synopsis and three consecutive sample chapters prior to sending the whole manuscript, which they request only if they find the synopsis compelling. However, I’ve known agents who ask for three pages, thirty pages, a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, or just a synopsis. Be prepared to give them whatever they prefer. Writing a chapter-by-chapter synopsis now will accomplish this task and also help you write the full synopsis by clarifying the heart of each chapter, and as a result, the book as a whole.

By “fleshing out” your novel with chapter summaries, you will know exactly what material must go into each chapter and if your story works. As I mentioned earlier, the chapter-by-chapter synopsis offers a superb writing guide even if an agent or editor never gets to see it. You are developing that guide as part of your Training. (More on this later.)

If you’re writing nonfiction, keep your summaries for each TOC section to no more than a page each, preferably just a paragraph, thereby forcing yourself to be as specific as possible. For fiction writers, try to keep each chapter summary to a paragraph or two. Your full synopsis will only be a page or two long, so brief summaries help you cut to the heart of what you are trying to say. Write your summaries now.

Bring Your Book to Life

In the last chapter, I said the TOC gives your book form, like a backbone, thereby allowing an agent or acquisitions editor to “see” your book taking shape. Imagine the TOC as a skeleton, the most basic outline for the body of your book. But as you write each chapter synopsis, you “flesh out” your ideas so the skeleton of your book idea gets muscles, tendons, organs, and limbs. It comes to life. Unlike a parent who sees her child as perfect at birth, you must look at the book you bring into the world, the idea you create, with critical eyes—just like an agent or acquisitions editor. It is not yet perfect—far from it—and that’s okay for right now. The detail provided by your chapter-by-chapter synopsis gives you the opportunity to clearly see the content you plan to write and determine if your book matches your initial vision. You can also evaluate if it has the constitution and character to survive in the world (in the market) or if it has some inherent problems that will cause it to struggle to stay alive or to suffer an early death. Those are the things you must look for and focus on, just as agents or editors will if given the chance.

Writing chapter summaries may give you new insight into your book idea. Rhonda made many changes to her memoir idea during Step #5, and during Step #6, as she wrote each chapter synopsis, she continued to revise and improve upon her idea. In fact, during the two-step process, she broke her initial idea into several books instead of one, and she began the Author Training Process again. My client David realized he had fleshed out a different book than the one he outlined in Step #5 and also had to start the process over.

Without chapter-by-chapter summaries or a synopsis, it’s hard for an agent or acquisitions editor to visualize your book’s final form. It doesn’t come to life for them otherwise. Most of the editors and agents who read my students’ business plans (some of which I will include later in this book for your benefit) were only given a TOC (no chapter summaries). Agent Sheree Bykofsky commented that she could not really offer feedback on the TOC of the memoir she reviewed because the TOC was not descriptive enough. She needed chapter synopses.

I dislike composing chapter summaries and synopses, and I dread this part of the Author Training Process and of proposal writing. I write nonfiction and find chapter-by-chapter synopses a monotonous exercise. One colleague completed this part of her nonfiction book proposal first because she said “it scared her”; she’s primarily a novelist. Fiction synopses are difficult for me as well—cramming a long story into three to five paragraphs can feel painful.

The worst nonfiction chapter summaries are those that simply say, “In this chapter, readers will …” The best ones are crafted creatively to give readers a sense of the book’s angle, how they will benefit from reading it, and what the author’s voice sounds like. Try to use active sentences. If you plan to polish your business plan into a book proposal, these summaries are particularly important.

For the Author Training Process and your business plan, you need only jot down a few sentences or a paragraph that describes what you will include in each chapter of your book. After you evaluate the content and determine if it is sound, this section of your business plan will act as a written reminder of the content you plan to include in your book and a phenomenal writing guide. You can review it before writing any chapter to remind yourself of what you plan to include. It also becomes part of a larger writing guide. (More on this later.)

Final Content Evaluation

No matter what type of book you plan to write, once your chapter summaries or your synopsis is complete, evaluate everything you have written thus far. If your summaries don’t sync up with previous steps, you need to go back and repeat those steps until it does. Otherwise, the structure of your book will not be solid, and the content you produce will not result in a marketable book. At this point, however, your content should be closely aligned with your original idea, angle, theme, market, etc. To evaluate if you have indeed succeeded at this exercise, answer these questions one at a time:

• Does your content match your TOC?
• Does you content match your pitch?
• Does your content provide the benefits you claimed your book will offer readers?
• Do you have enough to say to fill a whole book?
• Is the content unique and necessary? How so?
• Is there anything that feels unnecessary? Why?
• Does your content target your market? How?
• Will your content interest your ideal reader? How so, and why?
• Does your book fill a hole on the shelf in its category? How or why?
• Have you told a compelling story?
• Will it take readers on a new journey? How so?
• Is your book marketable? How so?

Having considered these questions, determine if you need to re-angle, retarget, or retool the work you did in Step #2 … one last time. Take another look at your angle, theme, and purpose. Edit your pitch, summary, and benefits based upon your TOC, chapter synopses or synopsis, or both. Make sure all of these elements (pitch, summary, and benefits; TOC; chapter synopses; full synopsis) still target your market—that the market remains the best one based on your content—and that your book still falls into the same category you have chosen and, therefore, your competition continues to be the same. If so, at this point your book should fill an empty spot on the shelf.

As you review your Overview, add another 100 to 300 words to the summary of your book, bringing it up to 300 to 500 words. By expanding and refining this part of your business plan, you should now discover you really really know what your book is about. When you initially wrote the summary, you may have had only a general idea of what you were going to write about. Now you know. Your TOC provides a rich source of information on your book’s content, but the chapter-by-chapter summaries or full synopsis provide a more in-depth description.

At this point in the Author Training Process, most aspiring authors feel confident about writing their books. After finishing Step #6, my client Deborah says she could see her book’s structure, and she felt secure about filling each chapter of her nonfiction book with valuable content. She was glad to have the precious moment that came after writing chapter summaries. She now felt eager to begin writing.

Of course, your content might change as you produce your manuscript, but what you have created in these steps is as close as you can get to a solid description of your book’s content prior to writing the actual book.

I made some major changes to the first chapter of this book. My business plan, or proposal, described “business hats” and “special glasses” that would help writers see themselves and their projects from a publishing professional’s perspective. A few students in my Author Training 101 class, who served as beta readers of the manuscript, told me the concepts were confusing. As I began editing chapters, I realized they were right; these concepts didn’t work well. So I rethought and revised; I combined “hats” and “glasses” into Author Attitude. That required a fair amount of rewriting and reworking of several chapters. It happens to all of us, so be prepared and make sure you take on the upcoming challenges with the correct Author Attitude.

After completing Step #6, you may discover you have made significant changes to the work you did in Step #2. That is why I advise not writing your sample chapters or your manuscript until this point in the process. It is also why I advise starting the Author Training Process when you first get an idea instead of sitting down to write each time a book idea pops into your head.

Also, if your book idea changes drastically for any reason, restart the process from scratch. For example, Charlene began her book about finding work-life balance with the idea of targeting a general self-help market. She then put the book aside for several months before beginning her coaching sessions with me again. In that time, she changed jobs and decided to re-angle her book to align it with her new work position, which required speaking to entrepreneurs and corporate employees. If you recall, she also retargeted her market, this time choosing a business-related one. Her book’s focus remained work-life balance, but she needed to change its title and subtitle, create a new pitch, write a new summary and list of benefits, conduct new market and competitive book analysis, and rework her TOC and chapter synopses—all to fit the new angle of her book. With her revised business plan, she could move forward to create a marketable book that better served her new audience.

It’s almost time to begin writing. First, make one last pass through the work you completed in this step and make sure you have done the following:

• evaluated your chapter synopses and/or your synopsis
• made any necessary changes based on your evaluation of your chapter summaries
• made any necessary changes to the work you did in Step #2 so you have synched up your pitch, summary, benefits, TOC, and chapter summaries/synopsis so they all align perfectly—and all target your market and make your book unique and necessary in your category

This is now the point when you should feel, “I now know exactly what my book is about, why someone would buy it, who will buy it, what it will look like, what will be in it, and I’m ready to write it!” You have a map with great directions. And you’ve got an Author Attitude.

Knowing How Large Your Book Will Grow

As you prepare to write, it’s handy to know approximately how many pages and words your book will be when complete so you can use these estimations as guides for writing your book. You’ll need to have a word or page count in mind if you plan to approach a traditional publisher with a nonfiction book, and you’ll be required to provide this estimate in a book proposal. It’s just as important to know these numbers in advance if you plan to self-publish.

To estimate the cost of book production, you will need to know the length of your book. The longer your book, the more expensive it is to produce. A book that costs more to produce must sell more copies before it becomes profitable. As an indie publisher, this is important to consider since it’s your money you need to earn back.

You must consider other factors as well, and sometimes a longer book actually proves more financially feasible than a shorter one. I tend to think readers prefer shorter books—many people are busy and enjoy a book that can be read in less time. I used to think a shorter book would prove less of a risk for a publisher, so I proposed several short books (under 40,000 words) to Writer’s Digest Books. However, the shorter books weren’t getting approved at the pub board meetings. The consensus among the marketing and production team members was that I needed to write at least 50,000 words to make the book financially feasible. Only when I agreed to write a longer book did I receive a contract.

My publisher, Phil Sexton, explained that the larger physical shelf presence of a longer book gave the sales team more confidence that the book would be seen. “Once a book is spine out, it’s the only real estate you have to work with when it comes to customers who are browsing the shelves,” he told me. “A spine that’s very thin is easily overlooked. Also, a larger book justifies a larger retail price, which can make a big difference in how the profit and loss statement works. So one reason is financial; the other is more practical.” You’ll want to consider these same issues when you plan your self-published book.

Fiction writers usually know the final word or page count of their books because they must finish their manuscripts before they submit to agents or publishers. Those who self-publish might want to estimate the length of their novels and try to stick close to that number because going over means you will go over your production budget and increase your financial risk. If you plan to traditionally publish your novel, you can easily include a word count in your proposal if your manuscript is complete. Of course, having an idea of your book’s length—how long a publisher expects a book to be, or how long you (as the publisher) expect it to be—will help you work smarter, not harder.

That said, how long should a book really be? The general answer is that each manuscript should be long enough to adequately tell its story or provide the information required. Thus, one could say each manuscript should be as long as it needs to be. Tell your story or share your knowledge in as many words as necessary—no more, no less. Of course, if you independently publish, you have the ability to make this decision. If you traditionally publish, you can propose the length of your book, but the publisher has final say.

The average nonfiction book, such as something in the how-to or self-help category, runs anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 words. Memoirs tend to be about 60,000 to 90,000 words long. Biographies or historical texts sometimes run upwards of 200,000 words, but be sure you have a contract in hand before you write that much. You don’t want to spend years on a book only to find out that it won’t sell or that someone else beat you to the punch.

The average mainstream adult novel is 60,000 to 120,000 words (on the lower end for new authors), while YA novels tend to be 40,000 to 80,000 words long. In terms of mainstream adult fiction, the YA novel equates to a novella.

Still unsure of how long to make your book? Go out and find similar books to the one you want to write, and determine how many words are printed from cover to cover. Then model your manuscript after that book. If you want to write a memoir, for example, look at four or five similar memoirs and determine their word counts. Then produce a manuscript that falls within a similar range. If you plan to traditionally publish, check out the length of the books produced by the publishers you plan to approach. Having a model is always a good idea.

E-books vary widely in length. An e-book might be quite short—3,000 words, or as short as you can get away with—or as long as a full-length book. In fact, many long-form printed books are turned into e-books, and according to a study released in May 2013 by Mark Coker of Smashwords.com, longer e-books actually sell better. He reports, “For the second year running, we found definitive evidence that e-book readers—voting with their dollars, euros, pounds, krone, krona, and koruna—overwhelmingly prefer longer books over shorter books. The top 100 best-selling Smashwords books averaged 115,000 words. When we examined the word counts of books in other sales rank bands, we found the lower the word count, the lower the sales.”

Here’s a handy tool I learned from agent Michael Larsen, author of How to a Write Book Proposal: He used to recommend that the number of lines written for each chapter summary in a book proposal equate to the number of pages written for each chapter. Of course, if you haven’t written your book yet, you won’t know the length of each chapter. You can take an educated guess based on the number of lines in your chapter summaries. I find this method makes me write a tighter chapter-by-chapter synopsis. A typical double-spaced one-page summary might have eighteen to twenty-four lines of copy on it. That’s 3,750 to 4,500+ words per chapter. If I were writing a nonfiction book with twelve chapters, I could now easily estimate that it would be at least 50,000 words in length.

That also gives me an estimate of page count. The average Word document (with 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced) has about 275 words per page, making a 50,000-word document approximately 180 Word document pages long.

Determining how many actual pages will be in your published book can only be done accurately if you know your page size, font style and size, paragraph and line spacing, header sizes, the spacing and style of boxes, charts, bullet lists, and of course, the total number of words. The book may also have an index, and front and back matter will be added to the final product. However, Kristen J. Eckstein of Imagine! Studios, LLC, claims that if you format your Word document using 12 point Arial (or Helvetica), and 1.5 spacing with 1 margins, you can arrive at almost the exact final page count for a 5.5 × 8.5 or 6 × 9 standard book (given that there are no charts, graphs, bullet lists, etc.). (Keep in mind that most agents and editors will ask to see a full double-spaced manuscript for fiction or several chapters for nonfiction, and this will help them get a sense of the book’s length.)

You can also determine page count and word count based on the number of chapters you plan on including and the estimated length of each chapter. Write a sample chapter or two, for example. See how long they are. Most often, books contain chapters of similar length. If your first two chapters are about 3,000 words long, you can assume the others containing the same amount of information or content (based on your chapter-by-chapter synopsis) will be that length as well. This is yet another way your TOC and summaries will come in handy. Multiply the number of chapters by the average chapter length, and then take the total and divide by 275 to get the number of manuscript pages. For published book pages, repeat the calculation above. If you write several sample chapters and chapter length changes considerably, you know you need to re-evaluate your book’s length.

Or calculate your word count based on the number of scenes per chapter or vignettes per chapter. How long will each one be? Multiply that by the number of chapters in your book. This will give you an estimated word count, which you can then also convert into a page count.

Write Some Content!

Finally, you are ready to write. Depending on the publishing path you have chosen and the type of book you are writing, you can write:

• sample chapters for your nonfiction book (if you plan to traditionally publish and to write a book proposal)
• your whole manuscript (if you are writing fiction and want to traditionally publish or to self-publish, or if you are writing nonfiction and plan to self-publish)

The work you have done up to this point provides you with a phenomenal writing guide you can use to easily, if not effortlessly, produce a manuscript. Here’s how you put the pieces together to help write your book.

Take the Overview you created in Step #2 (pitch, book summary, and list of benefits) and Step #5 (TOC) and this current step, Step #6 (chapter-by-chapter synopsis or stand-alone synopsis) and put all of them into a document labeled “[Book Title] Writing Guide.” If you wrote a purpose statement include that, too. Next, copy and paste each chapter summary individually into a new computer file and save it as “Chapter X.” Also, copy and paste your pitch into that document and place it above the chapter summary. This will remind you of your overall message before you begin each chapter.

If you are writing nonfiction, take each chapter summary (in the individual file) and break your sentences or paragraphs into smaller segments using subheads or bulleted points. Think of these as little chunks of content you need to flesh out and develop.

If you are writing fiction and have written a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, break these into scenes. You can do this by leaving space between the paragraphs or sentences or by using bullets.

Then use this five-step process each time you write:

1. Take out the first document, “[Book Title] Writing Guide.”
2. Read the Overview, which contains your pitch, book summary, and list of benefits. Also read your purpose statement. This reminds you of the job you must do—the book you must create—and your promises to your readers.
3. Open the chapter document you are working on today and begin writing, going from bullet point to bullet point, scene to scene, or section to section as dictated by your summary until you get to the end of your chapter.
4. Reread the complete summary of “Chapter 1” (or whatever chapter you worked on); determine if you achieved all your goals.
5. Reread the first page or two of the guide (pitch, book description, and list of benefits); ensure you delivered on your promises in this particular chapter.

If breaking your chapter summaries into smaller chunks does not work well for you, then simply leave the full summary at the top of the first page of your chapter and refer back to it as you write. It still serves as an effective writing guide.

In this way you include all the material you said you would cover in each chapter—and without needing to wrack your brain to remember what you said you would write. Not only that, you will write according to your readers, your market, the book’s description, and the benefits you promised to provide.

This process will help you maintain your Author Attitude as you write, too. You get to be creative, and at the same time you retain a big-picture business view of your book—the identical view an agent or an acquisitions editor would have of your manuscript. In this way, you won’t get lost as you write but will continue steadily following your directions and map toward your destination—a completed, salable manuscript. WOOT! WOOT!

Suggested Reading:

Fiction

Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland
Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Ignore by Elizabeth Lyons
Ready, Set, Novel!: A Workbook by Chris Baty
The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master by Martha Alderson
The Plot Whisperer Workbook by Martha Alderson
Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass
Writing a Killer Thriller: An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction by Jodie Renner

YA

Writing Great Books for Young Adults by Regina Brooks
Writing Irresistible Kidlit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers by Mary Kole

Memoir

Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington
Writing and Selling Your Memoir by Paula Balzer
Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing by Linda Joy Myers
The Memoir Project by Marion Roach
Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past by William Zinsser

Nonfiction

Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writer’s Guide by Mark Kramer
Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life by Philip Gerard
Writing Creative Nonfiction by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard
The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction by Dinty W. Moore
Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction by James B. Stewart
Writing Nonfiction: Turning Thoughts Into Books by Dan Poynter