If you want to write a book, you’re going to need a lot of people to read it. And if you want your book to be read, you need to write it in a way that engages your audience.
There are many tactics that you can use to engage your audience, but here are a few of the most common:
1. Make your book easy to read.
2. Write in a conversational tone. Don’t write in a monotone voice.
3. Use active voice. Active voice is when you use verbs, not nouns. It’s much easier to understand and remember than passive voice, which uses the verb “to be” as a noun. For example, instead of saying, “The book was written by the author,” you can say “The author wrote the book.”
4. Keep your sentences short and to the point. Long sentences are hard to read, and they’re hard to remember, too. Keep your sentences as short as possible, and use as few words as possible. This will make your book easier to read and remember, and it will also make it easier for your readers to understand what you’re trying to say.
## Getting Your Book Published
In this chapter, we show you how to prepare your book so that it’s ready to be published. We start by talking about the different kinds of books you can write, and then we explain the different ways you can get your book into the hands of readers. Finally, we talk about some of the steps you can take to make sure your book is as good as it can be before you send it out into the world.
Before you start writing your book, make sure that you have a clear idea of who your audience is and what your book will be about. If you don’t, you may end up writing a book that nobody wants to read!
## Figuring Out What Kind of Book You’re Writing
The first step in getting your book published is to figure out what kind of book you’re writing. There are several different types of books, and each type of book has its own advantages and disadvantages. The most common types are fiction, nonfiction, and self-help books. We talk more about each of these types in the following sections.
Before you write your book or even think about getting it published, you have to decide whether you want it to be a fiction or nonfiction book. A fiction bookis a book in which the author tells a story. Nonfiction booksare books that are based on real events or real people, such as biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies. Fictionand nonfictionare often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. A fiction book can be based on a true story, but it doesn’t have to be. A memoir, on the other hand, is based on the author’s personal experiences, and an autobiography tells the story of an author’s life. The difference between fiction and nonfiction can be a little confusing at first, but after you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to tell at a glance whether a book is fictional or nonfictional. (For more on this topic, check out the section “Determining the Difference Between Fiction and Nonfiction,” later in this chapter.)
## Fiction
Fiction books are written in the first person. First personmeans that the story is told from the point of view of the main character. In a fiction book, the author is telling the story as if it were his or her own personal story. The main character may be a real person or a fictional character, but either way, he or she is the focus of the book. The story may be told in chronological order or in a nonchronological order, depending on how the author wants the story to be told. Fiction books can be written in a variety of genres, including romance, mystery, science fiction, and so on. ( Romance,by the way, is a genre of fiction in which a man and a woman fall in love and get married. Science fictionis fiction that takes place in the future. Mysterybooks are about a crime that has been committed. Horrorstories are about scary things that happen in the real world. Westernsare about cowboys and Indians, and adventuresare stories about people who go on adventures. You get the idea.)
Fiction books tend to be easier to write than nonfiction books because they’re easier to tell a story in. Nonfiction books are harder to write because the author has to tell the story in such a way as to make the reader understand how the events in the book actually happened. In fiction, the events of the story take place in a different time and place from the reader’s life, and the reader doesn’t need to worry about whether the events actually happened or not. In other words, the reader can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the story without having to think too hard about whether it’s true or not!
If you’re thinking about writing a novel or a short story, fiction is the way to go. But if you have an idea for a memoir, autobiography, or biography, you might want to consider writing it as nonfiction instead.