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The Painful Mistake Most Non-fiction Articles Make (And How to Avoid it)
How to Write Useful Books is a must-read for authors.
Rob Fitzpatrick wrote The Mom Test and The Workshop Survival Guide, both packed with actionable insights for beginners and experts alike.
How to Write Useful Books is all about crafting high value, recommendable books and in it, Rob highlights a painful mistake most non-fiction authors and bloggers make.
Let’s dive in.
The big pitfall of non-fiction: Lipstick on a pig
Most non-fiction is extremely polished.
It’s written, edited, and marketed extremely well.
The books reference literature and present new ideas. They have beautiful prose that are easy to understand. They’re filled with examples and interesting stories.
But despite the finesse, they’re missing something critical.
The problem is the content.
Despite all the effort that went in, the ideas don’t hit home. They’re not giving you helpful stuff you can apply to your life. The book feels empty and unusable, so despite making a solid effort to read it, these books are banished to the shelves.
