How to Write Non-Fiction: Turn your online content into a book
Many non-fiction authors start out with online content in other formats, which they later turn into a book.
If you have high traffic articles on your website or Substack, or videos that go viral on YouTube or TikTok, or posts that resonate with people on Instagram or other social media, then it might be worth considering how you can expand that material into a book.
The idea for my book The Successful Author Mindset came from an article on the rollercoaster of being a writer, which took off in my community. The popularity of the article gave me the confidence to expand the initial idea into a full-length book.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre and I also decided to write The Relaxed Author after a podcast discussion about stress in the community resonated so much with our audience that we knew we had to delve deeper.
Why write a book if you’re already serving an audience in other ways?
A book is a completely different medium than online content and it can help your audience in a different way, as well as helping you think more deeply about your topic. Online content is shorter and more ephemeral. It’s quicker to produce and faster to consume. Books allow readers to spend more time with your material, take notes, and revisit important ideas.
A book also provides credibility and authority and can provide you with other forms of income, through book sales in multiple formats but also through speaking opportunities.
You can also reach people who read books as their preferred way to learn. For example, I don’t watch videos online but I do read non-fiction books and listen to non-fiction audiobooks and podcasts, so if you want to reach people like me, then a book is the best way to do it.
A good example is Gary Vaynerchuk, who has an extensive online presence on multiple channels but still turns his ideas into books sharing how his online process works. Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World is a handbook for online marketing which includes screenshots of viral TikToks, effectively bridging the gap between online and print to reach a new audience.
It’s not just repurposing content
Mining your existing content is always a good starting point, but a book is a very different product to a video transcript or podcast discussion. You still need to decide on the angle of the book and the transformation you want for your target market.
You will also need to write more chapters or rewrite what you have to fit into the structure of a book. It needs to be a coherent journey for the reader, not just a selection of formatted soundbites.
Write a book online first
Another way to do this is to actually write the book online, which will help you build an audience who might buy it later and allow you to learn about your target market along the way. You might even make some money while you write.
Bestselling author of fiction and memoir Toby Neal wrote her travel memoir, Passages, about traveling the USA during changing times in her Substack newsletter and has used the platform to sell subscriptions and build her audience. Toby is an experienced author, so she understood how to structure her online writing in a way that also enabled the finished book to emerge coherently. This method might not be the best way to start a book if you’ve never written one before.
From book to online content
While I have used ideas from my online content as the basis for chapters in my books, I generally prefer to go the other way.
I use chapters from my books as evergreen articles and I’ve made videos and podcast episodes based on the content. These are more shareable online and drive traffic to my website, where people find links to my books and may also sign up for my email list or join my community.
“A non-fiction book is a souvenir, just a vessel for the ideas themselves. You don’t want the ideas to get stuck in the book… you want them to spread. Which means that you shouldn’t hoard the idea! The more you give away, the better you will do.”
—Seth Godin, “Advice for authors,” Seth’s Blog
Questions:
• How could you turn aspects of your online content into a book?
• How can you create a coherent journey through the material and differentiate it from the online version?
• If you want to go the other way, from book to content, how can you incorporate chapters in a way that will make them more shareable and bring the text alive?
Resources:
• Toby Neal’s Substack newsletter — tobyneal.substack.com
• Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World — Gary Vaynerchuk
• Seth Godin’s advice for authors — https://seths.blog/2006/08/advice_for_auth/
