As much as possible, your book should encase your teachings and knowledge in stories. Those can be your stories, or they can be stories of other people. Either one works.

I don’t mean this to say selfishness is bad. It’s not. Like fear, selfishness has its place in your life. I say this to help you refocus on a main reason you probably want to write your book: to give something back, and make an impact on other people.

The key here is to focus on your reader and how to best help them. If you’re crystal clear about what reader your book will serve, and how they will be served, then the ideal book idea to reach that audience should emerge. Once you have that, it’s easy to see if other ideas fit or not, and then finalize your book idea.

fears often partly originate from a subconscious reaction to a poor plan, or a lack of a plan (this is also where procrastination comes from).

Now, most books are published outside of the old, traditional models, and most nonfiction books are not monetized directly. Here is modern reality: most nonfiction authors make the majority of their money from other things that a book gets them, and not from sales of their books.

Be as vulnerable as you need to be to write the most impactful story for the reader.

Another thing we explained to Deb is the saying that “art is never done, it’s only abandoned.” The point is that being perfect is literally impossible. All you can do is the very best job you can right now, and then put it out to help your audience, and you’re done.

People read books in order to get expert knowledge that will help them solve a specific problem they have. No one reads books to get a firehose of unconnected information.

“Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.” —Nietzsche