This is the first of a series that will run biweekly, intended to describe, explain, and unravel myths and mysteries about the process of writing a book — from vision to completion and the all-important means of reaching readers in today’s enormous array of options. The focus is nonfiction, because that is my background, but there should be useful insights about the process for writers of fiction also.
Books are ubiquitous and elusive. Everyone who can do so has read books, either by choice or obligation. Almost everyone with enough space has books on shelves. Books have been part of human life, as long as there have been people creating and reading them. Scrolls were followed by codex manuscripts, the format that still exists today, with pages to turn, alongside digital, audio, and a variety of graphic formats.
Books are resilient. If discarded, they can be replaced as long as the words or pictures have been saved.
Books are also elusive because the making of them, especially the writing, defies easy explanation or description. Every book is the property of a writer; while artificial intelligence programs can conjure book-length texts, their output is derived from words and ideas that originated with a person who has put them together.
There was a long-held belief that by putting a finger on almost any address in a phone book, you would encounter someone with a story about his or her life or experiences that is worth sharing. Phone books are no longer the popular registry they once were. But the principle remains that if prompted or motivated, every person can write a book.
This is why books are ubiquitous and why they are elusive. They are everywhere and as different from one another as each of us chooses to compose them.
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As an editor, publisher, and writer myself, I am regularly asked about how to write a book. My answer is that if you write one page a day for 365 days you will have a book. There is no such quip for what should be in the book and what to do with it once you have the pages in hand.
That is what this series is meant to be: a guide based on decades of experience in every aspect of the process, from inception to completion, one that reflects insights and wisdom from the scores of people I have worked with and learned from.
And here is a caveat. While from childhood I was an avid reader, my focus was almost always nonfiction. At the Saint Agnes branch of the New York Public Library in the 1950s, my favorites were Random House’s admirable Landmark history series, notable because the books were written by established authors in versions accessible to children on the brink of adolescence.
I have read fiction over the years but never felt qualified to edit novels or short stories, although I published a number of such books edited by colleagues of mine. And I have never tried to write from just my imagination.
Still, there is considerable overlap in how genres are published, publicized, and marketed, so to that extent there should be insights worth considering from my experience as a publisher. The mysteries of creating fiction are best explored and explained by the people who understand them far better than I do.
I am a journalist by background. I became a newspaper editor, a book editor, a publisher, an author, and then a publishing entrepreneur. I am not an academic, a scholar, an economist, or a philosopher. If I show a bias toward journalists as writers, that is because I have found that writing well for a general audience is challenging, and many specialists could do well by remembering that.
I will not presume to tell specialists how to become sufficiently expert to write books in their respective fields. But no matter who the writer is, every book starts with a blank page and then through stages toward the goal of reaching readers. What surprises me is how often I encounter writers of experience who do not understand the publishing process, which results in frustration, confusion, and disappointment.
Inevitably, there will be publishers, agents, editors, and booksellers who may disagree with my descriptions and prescriptions about how this process unfolds. By nature, such descriptions will always be in some measure a matter of considered opinion.
These, then, are mine.
The writing of a book is not inherently technical (like building, say, a computer), although there are many ways of researching and committing thoughts to words — on screens or, as so many writers do first, in notebooks with favorite pens or pencils. Each writer needs to decide what works for himself or herself, knowing that strategies will evolve through time.
There are morning writers (I am one), nighttime writers. Writers who spend hours in the process. Others (or as I heard the biographer Stacy Schiff say) who write until the caffeine wears off. What is a good day’s work? That depends. The novelist Hortense Calisher, who was the college professor who managed to engage me with fiction as no one else ever had, said she would set a daily goal of one good paragraph. Nonfiction writers in full gear can turn out thousands of words at a sitting. The work of editing your own work and then revising, based on editorial mandates, is again widely variable.
There is no one formula to accomplishing the writing challenge.
The point is that each of us starts out as a beginner and over time, with effort, can develop the means to produce pages, using the technique that seems to work best for each person, some that come instinctively and some with guidance and support.
Ultimately, the quality of written work comes down to inherent skill, talent, and commitment and is going to be judged by other people, who will be knowledgeable or ignorant, supportive or hostile. Writing for others to read delivers a considerable range of criticism and acclaim. And the writer needs to be aware of this inevitability and accept it.
When it comes to the publishing process itself, many writers — too many, I think — don’t understand or misunderstand what is happening to their book, which is why I so often hear expressions of this kind:
I can’t find an agent.
I can’t find a publisher.
The publisher didn’t promote my book.
I got great reviews, but the book didn’t sell.
Why didn’t the publicist get me more bookings?
Everyone says I should hire an outside publicist because the publisher doesn’t know how to get the attention I want.
Why don’t I get reports I understand from the publisher (or my agent)?
Why can’t my friends and my family find my book in stores?
Why is my book on a remainder table?
And there is the issue of remuneration, the crucial matter of getting paid for your effort and performance. Questions like these: What is an advance? How are royalties calculated? Is it true that most books sell fewer than a thousand copies? Is it possible to live on what most writers earn? Can you make money if you self-publish?
For as many of these issues as possible, I will explain the process and answer the questions. Undoubtedly, some answers will raise more questions.
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Anticipating that not every question will be addressed in the chapters to come, I am adding a new feature to the Substack, a subscriber chat:
This is meant to be a conversation space accessible to subscribers — a place for comments, questions, and the kind of observations we all have and might want to express if there were a place to do that. Comments are fine, but I’ve observed that over time comments sections tend to become more for denunciation than discussion. The principle of the chat is to engage less publicly than X, Bluesky, Threads, or the other social media platforms and to do so with people who have shown enough interest to follow or subscribe.
I came to Substack after decades writing in and for many other places. This is different because only people who have asked for it will get it. This suggests that we have common interests and instincts, and here is a means of sharing them.
Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
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