Five common mistakes non-fiction authors make

Originally written for Jericho Writers

As an agent who’s been taking submissions for over ten years, I’ve seen authors make every mistake you can imagine – and a handful of really imaginative ones you honestly can’t. But when it comes to non-fiction, there are a few that crop up time and time again.  

I’ve invaded your regular Jericho newsletter this week to let you know the five mistakes I’d most like all the non-fiction writers out there to stop making. Starting with… 

Writing your book upfront 

Don’t do this, because the vast majority of non-fiction books aren’t acquired off the back of a full manuscript.  

Unlike in fiction, over here in non-fiction we primarily work with proposals. This is a shorter 35-50 page document that is effectively a business pitch for your book. It tells an editor what your book is, what it’s for and who’s going to read it, as well as including a decent amount of sample material to demonstrate that you can do all the amazing things you’re promising to do.  

Save yourself a lot of time by starting here. 

Figuring out your argument as you go 

When you’re writing that proposal, don’t develop your argument in the process. I’ve seen so many proposals that read as the author picking their way towards what they want to say, but there’s nothing harder to edit into a completed proposal than purpose.  

Know what your book is for and use that purpose as the spine of your proposal, everything starts from there. I once turned to two writers co-authoring a book and told them that I loved their proposal, and that I could clearly see the journey they went on to figure out what they wanted to say. Then I told them to scrap it all and start again, with that end point as the new starting point. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, but the next draft of the proposal was terrific. 

Writing a book that someone else could write 

Don’t write a book that someone else could write. The thoughts, ideas, experiences and arguments have to be content that can’t be found elsewhere. Otherwise, they will be found elsewhere – there’s simply too much out there.  

Your book needs a USP if you’re going to reach your market and a big part of that USP should be you. Maybe not you personally, but your unique research, interest or niche knowledge.  

And as a follow-on to this that I’ve only had to add on in the last few years – don’t write a book that a Large Language Model (LLM – generative AI) could write. If you’re synthesising other people’s ideas and research into an accessible format, and if those ideas are broadly available, then you’re going to struggle. People go to non-fiction for unique expertise. If an LLM could write your book, it’s not going to be easy to ask someone to pay to read it from you. 

Writing a book that’s not ‘actionable’ enough 

Here’s another one I see time and time again. Don’t write a book that only feels useful in the hands of policy makers. Readers want books that are going to affect their lives, they want you to change their minds or change their behaviour, and they want your book to feel empowering. If you write 75,000 words about a specific aspect of how terrible the world is and then 5,000 words about the high-level global policy changes that need to happen to fix it, your reader is going to emerge from your book downhearted and disempowered.  

Instead, give your reader things they can use. If your book is issues-led, let them know what they can do to address those issues (and I don’t mean telling them to vote better!). If you’re looking over your manuscript and can’t see what the reader is meant to take away from it, then you might have more work to do. This needs to be a book that you can imagine every reader pressing into the hands of their neighbours, parents and colleagues. If you can’t imagine them doing that, ask yourself how your book needs to change until you can. 

Focusing too much on social media 

Finally, this one might seem counterintuitive but – don’t build a platform. You’ve probably heard people saying that platform is hugely important in non-fiction. And it is! But the kind of platform we’re talking about is not something you’re likely to be able to build on a reasonable timeframe.  

When we discuss platform, we’re often talking about platform-led books. That is to say, we find an author with a huge platform (a consistently top-ranking podcast, a popular business course, a food-themed Instagram with a hundred thousand followers) and we get them to write a book that appeals to their audience.  

The important thing is that the profile comes first. It wasn’t built for the book, the book was built out of it. If you don’t already have that, there’s nothing you can do about that, and trying to build a profile from scratch will likely work against you. In lots of ways, having no profile is better than having a small one, and profiles in the early stages of being built look a lot like profiles that aren’t doing very well. Your time is better spent making your material so unputdownable that profile stops mattering. 

The key takeaway

That was a lot of don’ts. I want to leave you with some positivity. So yes, it’s tough, but yes, you should do it anyway. Do write the proposal. Do edit and redraft and revise until you fall asleep at your keyboard. Do remember why you love this subject and why it’s so important that everyone else falls in love with it too. Do bring us into a world we’d never have access to otherwise and do let your passion for it sing out from every page.  

People will tell you it’s hard – it is. Do it anyway.