Looking For a Good Book

I’m not sure who this book is for. Beginning writers, sure, but how ‘beginning’? I don’t know if I just feel I’m a step or two beyond this book, or if I question just how much need there is for this much of a beginner book, but I really felt put-off by how simple author Lauren Bingham treated this. One of the first chapters, two pages long, titled “Before You Start Writing” deals with the prospective author first needing to decide what type of book they want to write and attempts to help the beginner understand if that’s non-fiction, what kind of non-fiction or fiction. There are so many choices! How do you decide? Think on it. Sleep on it. Day dream about it.  Make lists. The answer of what type of book you want to write will come to you.

I’m not going to go chapter by chapter pointing out the sheer basic-ness of what is presented here. I think this early portion definitely sets an appropriate expectation on the reader. And while I do wonder what kind of writer wants or needs a book like this, the truth is that there are plenty of people who could use something like this.  Try running any kind of writing contest and I promise you will see submissions that come from people who clearly need to learn the basics.

One of my issues with independently published books is the tendency to pad the pages. I’m aware that sellers like Amazon tend to pay the author based on how many pages are in the book and so many writers (especially non-fiction authors, in my experience) stretch their page count as much as possible. Bingham has a couple of tricks up the sleeve, including using half a page to share the definition of “edit” from Merriam Webster’s online dictionary. There’s also a moment where two paragraphs are repeated, but I suspect (hope?) this is an editing error that was in my ARC but was caught before going to press.

My copy of this book appears to be two books combined into one title.  There’s How to Write a Book: Taking the Plunge into Non-Fiction and Conquering Your New Writer Fears and Doubts (86 pages) and  How to Write a Book: Non-Fiction for Newbies: How to Write a Factual Book and Actually Kind of Enjoy It (88 pages). At least the second title addresses who the target audience is.

I did appreciate one of the exercises included but if we’re told, in a bullet point that this is “15 minutes of uninterrupted time” do we really need another sentence telling us: “That means you’re going to spend the quarter hour writing about one particular memory”?

Looking for a good book?  If you need a book as basic as Lauren Bingham’s How to Write a Book compilation, then you probably aren’t reading reviews, but if you need this book, then I hope you’ll take the advice to heart and write, write, write.

I received a digital copy of this book from the author, through LibraryThing, in exchange for an honest review.

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How to Write a Book: Taking the Plunge into Non-Fiction and Conquering Your New Writer Fears and Doubts

author: Lauren Bingham

publisher: Independently published

Kindle edition, 176 pages