You’ve got an idea for a blogged nonfiction book. Maybe you’ve even brainstormed some ideas for content, completed a mind map or come up with a tentative outline. Now you’re wondering about how to structure your book.
It’s really not that difficult to create a structure for a nonfiction book. Although not all nonfiction books follow the same structure, if you spend some time looking at a variety of them, you will discover their basic format is pretty similar.
Find a Model
For this reason, one of the easiest ways to create a structure for your nonfiction blogged book involves studying the bestselling books in the category in which your book will reside. You can also find books in that category that you like. Make note of the similarities in structure. Then copy that structure as you design your own book.
Stick with the Basics
If you don’t want to look at what other people have done, stick with the basics. The majority of nonfiction books have between 10 and 15 chapters. Each has a title that indicates what the chapter is about. The chapters are broken down by sections with appropriate subheadings or subtitles, which also clearly tell the reader what information they can find in each one.
You might also have an introduction and a conclusion.
Consider Adding Special Features
Many nonfiction books have special features. These might be epigrams, or quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Or you could mix it up and place a quote at the end of the chapter. Some nonfiction books include exercises or tips or have a workbook element. Yours could even include case studies or success stories that are set apart in some way that are “special.”
Front Matter and Back Matter
Every book should have front matter: a copyright page, a dedication, and acknowledgements. Backmatter consists of your author bio, information on your other books (if you have any), your products or services or company, or even a free offer that drives readers to your website to sign up for your mailing list.
Mind Map First vs. Structure First
Once you decide upon the basic structure of your book, you should find it fairly simple to drop your content into it, especially if you do a mind mapping exercise to develop the content of your book. Some writers like to brainstorm with a mind map (or in some other way) first and let the content dictate the structure of the book. This often works extremely well. However, you also can decide on the structure for the book and then mind map your book with the structure in mind. You may find this helps you visualize the book as you brainstorm the content; then drop your ideas into the structure you’ve created.
Extras to Consider
As you work on the structure of your book and the content, keep in mind these possibilities:
- You can include content that helps you create a business around the book or that boosts your current business. Think about how your chapters might be turned into products and services.
- You can plant the seed for spin-off books. Expand one, multiple, or all of your chapters into follow-up books or a series.
- You can include links to your business, blogs, courses, etc. This is especially relevant if you produce an ebook.
The Final Step
Since you plan to blog your nonfiction book, the final step involves breaking the chapters down into post-sized bits. Each section might be a blog post, or it might be comprised of several blog posts. Therefore, after your chapter title and after each subheading, you must determine how many topics you will cover and if they can be covered in 300-500 words. You then can create a detailed table of contents consisting of potential blog posts.
The only thing left to do is to blog your nonfiction book, post by post, creating your chapters—and the structure of your book—as you do so.
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Dear Nina,
Thank for the tips. I am not focusing on structure, I think it is the last part to worry. I like mind mapping at the first stage of writing a book.
If we have a good mind mapping, we will not have time for writer’s block. We will have plenty of things to write. I am not sure why writers complain about block.
What they need is a paper and pen.
Santel,
If you leave structure to the end, you might end up doing a lot of revising. That’s why structure is important early on. Thanks for your comment!
Hi Nina,
If you want to write a book of let’s say around 70,000 words then you need around 150 blog post of around 500 words.
This means that you need to have 150 topics to write about.
How do you determine upfront these 150 topics? I find it very hard to estimate upfront how many words a certain topic will be. While writing one topic turns out to be just 100 words while another topic turns out to be 3,000 words.
How do you cope with that? How do you chunk your topics in topics which have the same size of around 500 words?
Harry,
Determine your table of contents–the chapters in your book. Then create a detailed outline of each chapter. Now you know what topics to write about–and each should be at least a few paragraphs in length.
Hi Nina
I absolutely love this idea. Getting the structure right for any author can be tricky, but getting it done when you blog your book is even more important.
Spending those few hours structuring your book may seem like a waste at the time, but it’ll save you double that down the track.