In a meeting this week, a colleague described the market for a specialized scholarly book as “very small, but inelastic,” meaning that at best, we could only hope to sell a few hundred copies, but at worst, we’d still probably sell roughly the same number. Those are the books that a university press can and will take on, at least occasionally, because we have a mission to spread knowledge, not to make a profit.
But most nonfiction books don’t fall into that camp, and the way the near future is looking, even university presses will be taking on fewer of that kind of project. How can you make sure yours is one that spreads farther than that?
You can probably remember a book you picked up because of an interest in the topic, because you knew the author, or because of a promise it made—but that you put down before finishing. Assuming it was a relatively well-prepared book, it’s likely that you put it down because it didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. In other words, it didn’t feel like it was moving.
Examining what didn’t work in those books can be as powerful as digging into what you love about your favorite authors’ work.
Most nonfiction books want to impart information to the reader. For some books, that’s the main goal, and for others it’s a stepping stone to something else, like a call to action. But whatever your goal (and you should know what your goal is), there is some connective tissue that your book will need if you want people to feel like it’s worth finishing. You need your book to make readers feel emotions.
Especially if you want people to be lined up to take any sort of action after reading your book, you’ll need to make them feel something strong. To move your book, and bring readers along, you need to build it around stories—stories that form the little gems of emotional content and stretch to create connective tissue between parts of the book. A recurring character or location can pull two chapters together. A poignant or funny scene will make readers remember whatever information was attached to it more fully and more reliably than the best image or chart you could devise.
What makes a thing significant?
And I don’t mean statistically. Several years ago, a couple of guys did an experiment that they called “The Significant Objects Project.” The idea was simple: buy a hundred items at yard sales and thrift stores, spending no more than a few dollars on each. Then enlist talented writers to create a backstory for each one and put them up for sale on ebay. They spent $128.74 on something like 96 unremarkable items and considered that to represent their typical value. We’re talking about things like a paper fan and a used bottle opener that says “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” After listing the items on ebay, they sold for a total of $3,612.51.1
It’s no surprise that an object is worth more if you attach a story to it. That’s what we mean when we say we can’t get rid of our grandmother’s egg cups because they have “sentimental” value.
Putting dollars and cents to it just helps to make it more clear that the story adds that much value to an item. And if it can do that for an object, why not a fact?
So look at what you planned for your book, and make sure it’s got stories in the right places. And not just any stories, they’ve got to be stories that work. That’s why I wrote the piece linked below, which probably needed a better headline, because almost 25% fewer people read it than an average post. Revisit it now, to make sure your stories will do what you need them to.
https://significantobjects.com/about/