What kind of book I can order from a ghostwriter? Briefly about the types of books

Sometimes an author doesn't immediately realize what kind of book wants to write. 

Once we worked with a manager of a large company. The author clearly stated her goal, we agreed on a concept, and started working on a "how-to" book. We had to rewrite the beginning of the book several times until it became clear that the author actually wanted to write a personal success story. The business book became a motivational book.

Let's understand how to differentiate books by type, that is, depending on what their main purpose is — to guide, to teach, to motivate, to inform, to entertain.

This article was originally published in 2015 on our old website.

Business book

 «Many professional firms make available to their partners free-lance journalist ghostwriters who do the actual writing subject to the partners’ dictating and editing», — says business consultant David H. Maister in a 1992 article that later became part of a book «Managing The Professional Service Firm».

David Meister knows what he's talking about, because he himself has become one of the most sought-after business consultants thanks to his publications. The book helps you promote your personal brand and your own business. Even if you have to pay a ghostwriter and fail to make money from selling the book, it will bring in clients who will buy the author's professional services. This is why writing business articles and books has long been an extremely effective marketing strategy for professionals in various industries.

It remains to be seen what a business book is. We once heard an experienced publisher call Nassim Taleb's «Black Swan» a business book. Company histories or CEO memoirs are also often referred to as business books. Truth be told, early in our careers, we too had a hand in spreading such myths.

A business book is a book about business practices. In other words, it's a book that provides practical advice on how to set up a business, run a business, hire employees, negotiate, promote your goods and services, and attract clients. That's why David Meister's book «Managing The Professional Service Firm» is a business book and Nassim Taleb's book «Black Swan» is not. That is, the main criterion by which a business book is distinguished from other business books is its application function.

In business books, authors share their own experience or give advice based on their own professional practice or market research. The best business books are written in a how-to style, i.e. they explain how to solve typical (less often atypical) marketing, management and business ownership problems.

History, theory, and business philosophy are quite different genres that have their own laws, but if these topics are presented in such a way that they have an applied nature, then these books can also be considered business books. For example, American entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie told the story of the creation of his shoe company in the book Start Something That Matters. Majkoski's company is called TOMS. Mycoskie gives half of his shoes to charity: one pair is sold, one pair is given to a poor child. Mycoskie's goal is to attract as many people as possible to his charitable business. Thanks to the book, potential partners, suppliers and customers learned about the company, which means the company made more money and more poor children got shoes for free. Of course, this book is an Ostreiter book, Mycoskie wrote it with Gene Stone.

Motivational book

Sometimes, at the moment of mortal danger, a person's whole life flashes before his eyes. This happens because, as the American psychologist Gary Marcus wrote, the brain is the largest organ of survival. Before the risk of death, it begins to look for a way to save itself and at a frantic pace it goes through all the accumulated experience in search of a solution. A human being can use both his own experience and someone else's, that's why books with the message «I succeeded and you can do it» are so popular.

All books with stories of success and self-improvement, or, as they used to be called, self-help, can be considered motivational.

The formula for a classic success story has three components: problem, struggle, victory. For example: the author was poor, worked hard and got rich. Or so: the author had an addiction, he struggled with it and got free. Or, perhaps, so: the author had a dream, for the sake of its realization, he did everything he could, and he succeeded. It could even be like this: the author worked hard on something, failed at first, but later still won. By the way, there should be a happy ending.

Self-improvement or self-help books were long ago considered part of the so-called «wisdom literature» or edification genre, because the author gave instructions to young people from the height of his or her life and professional experience and high social status. Now authors communicate with readers more democratically and kindly advise how to solve problems or share their own success stories in personal life, career, business. From personal success stories, which can also be referred to the genre of memoirs, self-development books are distinguished by their more applied nature and reference not only to the author's experience, but also to the experience of other people and research results.

In truth, motivational books have a reputation for being frivolous, empty, or harmful because many authors make unrealistic promises to readers and lie about themselves. The author should be wise and honest enough to encourage readers to take action and achieve what they want, but not to harm them.

Study book

Above we wrote that a motivational book contains words that encourage you to act. We should add: but they don't explain exactly how. For explanations, there are training books: textbooks, manuals, guides, checklists. They are written to demonstrate their professional competence and/or to teach their clients, employees, colleagues.

A free practical manual is far more useful than other types of advertising," according to scholars and authors Anthony R. Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson of The Age of Propaganda.

Instead of spending more, selling more, sponsoring more, try teaching your audience more than your competitors, recommend entrepreneurs and authors of Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

A textbook is always a compilation of known theoretical and/or practical knowledge in a particular field that provides basic training. Textbooks do not contain new ideas, but may present known information in a new form.

The main purpose of a textbook is to explain how something works. A textbook contains objective information based on the results of scientific research, not on the author's personal experience. For this, textbooks are often criticized for excessive theorizing, but without theory it is difficult to understand and improve practice. Only good theoretical training allows you to find solutions for non-standard problems. 

Practical guides help you learn a certain topic in any of the possible ways. For example, a collection of sources, additional explanations of topics from the textbook, or the case study method, which teaches how to perform routine tasks and solve typical problems.

An instruction or checklist contains a clear list of actions that must be performed to achieve the desired result and not harm yourself or someone else. Specialists who write instructions are called technical writers because there is no creativity in such work, but it requires a deep understanding of the subject.

Today, everyone needs to create useful materials in order to be more visible in the public space and get more orders for their products or professional services. Someone becomes famous thanks to the world's most effective radio - word of mouth, someone - thanks to massive and expensive advertising, someone - thanks to a professional blog, comments, articles, books, brochures. Creating a tutorial, manual or instruction manual is not a very common marketing solution, but it is worth it.

In the early days of the Internet, company websites and online stores often offered visitors free useful books in exchange for subscribing or providing an e-mail address, and it worked well. Now, useful materials are posted on their websites, on social media pages, as well as published in professional journals and published as books the old-fashioned way.

Popular science book

As William Zinsser puts it in his writing textbook On Writing Well, science devoid of mystery is just one of the topics a non-fiction author can choose for his or her next work.

A popular science book can be written by anyone. You don't have to be a researcher or a scientist to conduct research or describe the results of the work of scientists, it is enough curiosity and desire to bring new knowledge to a large number of people. For example, Susan Cain wrote the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. She is not a scientist, before writing the book, Susan worked as an attorney and negotiation consultant. Then she studied the topic of introversion up and down and wrote her own book.

Examples of excellent popular science books:

Forty Studies that Changed Psychology by Roger Hock's.
The Odd Brain: Mysteries of Our Weird and Wonderful Brains by Stephen Juan.
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus.
Scientists conduct new research every day, and most people don't even know the results of previous research. Creating a popular science book makes scientific knowledge accessible and practical; for the author, it's a great way to start a business or make a name for yourself on a good cause.

Entertainment book

The general principle of writing is to avoid the boring parts as much as you can imagine, advises researcher and writer Eliezer Yudkowsky. Especially if you are writing a book whose main goal is to entertain the reader.

You probably know that laughter rejuvenates, heals and prolongs life. People instinctively look for something fun and light, so they often read light, cheerful books. Such books are sometimes referred to as «binge-read» or «devoured in one evening». Just what you need to take a break from problems, get distracted and have fun.

An entertaining book can be a novel, a collection of funny stories or jokes, a book about unusual or little-known facts, a story about work or the creation of a company, or witty stories from your personal life. 

The best choice: informative and entertaining; this genre, if one can characterize it that way, is called infotainment from «information» and «entertainment». Readers love it when motivational, popular science and educational books are written this way. For example, Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel.

Reference book 

It may seem that in a world where any information can be easily googled, dictionaries, manuals, encyclopedias, and bodies of knowledge have lost their significance, but in fact, the opposite is true. The more information there is, the more it needs to be structured and interpreted.

Body of Knowledge as well as professional standards are large ambitious projects that are usually only undertaken by professional organizations. For example, the Project Management Institute, a global non-profit organization, has created a Project Management Body of Knowledge. An independent professional can create any other reference book.

A reference book, encyclopedia, or dictionary are types of useful books that many people need. Such a book can tell the story of a person, thing, profession or type of activity. She can not only teach and prompt, but also entertain, motivate, develop imagination and thinking.

A reference book can be written on any topic: history, science, business, art, folklore, traditions, martial arts, religion, humor and many others. There are no restrictions on the topic or volume of text: it can be either small or huge.

Change: Oct. 18, 2024, 1:02 p.m.