Category Archives: Fiction

Every writer, regardless of their genre, hopes to write books that become bestsellers after publishing. But these hopes are usually dashed when the books don’t perform well.

Nonfiction writing isn’t a walk in the park. From the planning to the publishing and promotion stage, many creative and strategic processes are involved.

It can be quite challenging but rest assured, you can write a best-selling nonfiction.

So, if you are writing a nonfiction book already and hope to write one that will become a bestseller, this article is for you.

In this article, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to write a best-selling nonfiction book.

What Does ‘Nonfiction’ Entail?

Before diving into the steps, it’s important to understand what nonfiction writing covers and what it doesn’t.

Nonfiction is majorly a genre of writing based on facts and realities. Nonfiction books focus on biological and historical events. The genre is not make-believe like fiction is; rather, it is based on real experiences. It covers a broad range of sub-categories, from autobiographies to memoirs and self-help books.

Thus, a nonfiction book covers not only real-life events but also covers practical solutions to real-life situations.

A nonfiction book can cover any topic of interest. It could be a technical book on wild animals or anything that happened or exists. Aside from books, you’ll find nonfiction writing in blogs, newspapers, websites, magazines, and social media platforms.

What Makes a Best-Selling Nonfiction?

Publishing a bestseller is not just about fame and money but more about the impact and influence your book has on society.

So, what makes a best-selling nonfiction is its originality. Any writer who dreams of becoming a bestselling author needs to publish a book that is authentic.

The second point that makes a nonfiction book is the depths the book carries. And, of course, your book must be relatable. It has to offer fresh ideas and opinions to any situation your readers find themselves in.

How to Write a Best-Selling Nonfiction Book

Writing a bestseller doesn’t happen instantly. But your book can attain the bestseller status if you put in the required effort.

Take this as a guide to successfully writing and publishing your book this year.

1. Map out your book’s outline: Mapping out your outline gives you a clear direction to your destination. It prevents you from getting anxious about what to write and what not to include in your book. Before mapping out your outline, ensure you know whom you’re writing for.Your book will hardly get any publicity if you don’t know whom you’re writing for and address their pain points since nonfiction is all about facts.

• Don’t be in haste: We understand the eagerness to publish your book and start selling. But quality is what you need to make your dream come true. Therefore, the process shouldn’t be rushed. Take a cue from some bestsellers. It could take one or two years or more for them to write and publish their book. Set out some time to write at least one chapter daily or in two days.

Nonfiction requires excellent research, and that takes time.

• Hire a professional designer: The saying, ‘First impression matters’, is true when it comes to becoming a best-selling author. When you’ve led your audience to buy your book, the first thing they see is your book’s cover. So, you need an attention-grabbing cover design that will make your book irresistible to readers. Hire a professional designer and get your book rolling to the top level of becoming a bestseller.

• Edit and proofread your book: While it is good for you to self-edit, it could be very exhausting to go over your manuscript again. There will be things you’ll miss out on as the writer, which a more qualified person, an editor, would recognise. Hire a professional editor and proofreader to do a perfect job for you.

• Have a marketing plan: Do you plan to publish your book on Amazon? That’s fine, but not enough. A marketing plan helps your audience find, buy, and refer others to buy the book. A marketing plan would also focus on the appropriate keywords, articles, or nuggets from your book, increasing your book’s publicity.

These five steps should be modified and expanded to suit your publishing goals.

You can write a best-selling nonfiction book as long as you put in the work.

Need help writing your nonfiction book?

Reach out to us today at hello@sabiwriters.com to begin your journey of becoming a bestselling author.

There are different reasons why people become authors, from making an impact to giving other people a voice. However, unless you want to give out all the books at no cost, you need to sell your book.

As humble as writers like to be, your book can have a wider reach only if you sell it to as many people as possible.

So, authors shouldn’t shy away from talking about book sales, and in this article, we share tips on how you can boost your book sales in 2023 and beyond.

5 Tips You Need to Boost Your Book Sales in 2023

1. Make your title attention-grabbing

Sounds like something you have heard before?

Well, it’s true.

When your book has an attention-grabbing title, it is likely to sell more. Readers want relatable and interesting books. And they determine it from the title of your book. Whatever title you come up with, ensure readers will be drawn to it. Also, ensure that your book’s title isn’t misleading from the content of the book. What good will it do if you end up confusing your readers with your book title?

Another thing to note is that before readers purchase your book, they want to be sure it will be worth it. Your book title should tell them what your book is about without giving away too much.

Once you’ve come up with the title, you should do a title reveal along with the book cover, which brings us to the next tip.

• Hire a professional book cover designer

A captivating title isn’t enough to attract readers. Your book cover must be equally captivating. Ignore the saying, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. Readers judge books by their titles and covers. If they are not held spellbound by your book cover, they will scroll past your book and move on to the next eye-catching one.

This is why your book can’t have a mediocre cover design. You should hire a professional designer and get a design that translates your title and the content of your book just enough to get a reader’s attention.

• Create a blog or a website

If you don’t have a blog or website as an author, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities, one of which is having a sales funnel for your book. Besides that, having an author’s blog or website gives your readers access to you, making them feel even more connected to you.

Through your blog or website, you can inform them about your writing progress, book releases, and other updates. You can also write articles regarding your book or topics and themes discussed in your book. This creates anticipation for your book (if it’s yet to be released) or just enough interest for them to buy it.

If you cannot afford to get a website, build an email list and reach your readers through email marketing.

• Give your book out for reviews

Before you launch your book, you should give some copies to beta readers, public figures, and literary critics to get reviews. If you get mostly positive reviews, you can use them to promote your book on your social media platforms or your website. Reviews create hype, and hype can sell your book.

• Launch a pre-order campaign

Creating a book launch campaign can drive massive sales for your book. You can hit various best-seller lists with this strategy. Also, a pre-order campaign helps build your reach and visibility. Get creative by posting different forms of content around the launch of your book. Show up consistently.

Above all, the quality of your writing should be your main priority. These tips will only work when your writing is good enough to keep readers going till the end and wanting more. Once that is covered, you can implement these tips and boost your book sales.

While proofreading and editing are two distinct steps in a continual review process, they have varied impacts on a manuscript. Editing (also known as copy editing) tackles problems of style, vocabulary, and formatting, and occasionally also involves rewriting and restructuring the content. Proofreading, on the other hand, focuses on grammar and punctuation. However, to know the best editing process your work needs, you must know the difference between these two terms.  

Some writers regard proofreading as a science because of its systematic approach. Nevertheless, the aim of proofreading is to find all grammatical, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. Additionally, proofreading detects inconsistent referencing, formatting, and terminology. But generally, proofreading offers minor changes to a work’s overall outlook or beauty.

Effective proofreading requires specialised training and experience (and goes well beyond what the spell-checking program on your computer can do). This is because the human brain is not perfect at spotting errors at a glance. But with training and practice, you can master the science of proofreading.

On the flip side, editing can be said to be an art because it emphasises the overall beauty of the work. In editing, the focus is to make a write-up as good as possible. It is the act of enhancing the overall quality of writing. It employs a lot more creativity and often considers the reader’s emotions.

As a result, editing can significantly alter a text, raising queries like: Have I used the best words to communicate my meaning successfully? Did I use passive voice? Does my tone fit my reader? Are there extraneous words or sentences that are too long? Can the structure of my work be adjusted to strengthen my argument?

The main goal of editing is to communicate a piece of writing’s meaning and ideas as effectively as feasible. It also entails paying more attention to the material itself, employing subject-matter expertise to make the language more understandable, and frequently double-checking your facts’ accuracy. Additionally, it’s an opportunity to review spelling and grammar in-depth, as it is with proofreading.

Going forward, you can set aside your writing for a day or two before editing or proofreading it so you can view it from a new perspective (or seek feedback from someone else). This helps you detach yourself from the work and give an unbiased view of how you presented your facts, grammar, sentence structure etc.

For more editing tips, click what-type-of-editing-is-most-suitable-for-you/ or visit www.sabiwriters.com for quality editing services.

Punctuations add silent intonation to your work. By observing a comma, a full stop, an exclamation mark, or a question mark, your reader can pause, stop, stress, or ask a question. Punctuations make your writing more precise and clear, especially when used properly.

More so, while we use sentences as the basic building components, punctuations clarify the idea and indicate how the sentences should be read. For this reason, all sentences must start with a capital letter and end with a full stop, an exclamation, or a question sign, depending on the context.

Nevertheless, here are some punctuation marks and the correct way to use them in your writing:

Full Stop (.)

• Used at the conclusion of sentences.
• Used with acronyms: St., Govt., etc.
• Used in punctuated abbreviation in a sentence. For example, work begins at 9 a.m.
• Additionally, when quoting from an author’s work without including the entire statement, you can use an ellipsis (…) to indicate that some words are missing from the quote.

Semicolon (;)

• Used to divide two closely connected independent clauses without a conjunction.
• Used to break up two clauses connected by transition words like although, nevertheless, and therefore.

Colon (:)

• Used to clarify or demonstrate what comes after a sentence.

How to cook Afang soup is as follows: Slice your water leaf.

• Used to introduce a list or series of examples.

Three directives are given:    1. Pull up the gear.

2. Reverse the car.

3. Drive out of the premises.

• Used to set titles apart from subtitles.

Sabiwriters: The Story of Africa’s Award-Winning Writing Agency

• Used to start quotations that are four lines or longer (block quotes).
• Used in formal correspondence following a salutation

Dash (–)

• Used to replace colon.

It is available in four colours –  red, white, blue, and yellow.

• Used to introduce a notion into a sentence.

Chizim – my favourite writer – won best in writing

• Used to add more details or information to some word, phrase, or clause in a sentence.

The things Chidimma excels in, like writing, speaking, and teaching – seem out of my league.

Parentheses ( )

• You use parentheses to provide clarification or explain.

The possibility (he might be sacked) never gets to Olumide.

• Used to encapsulate acronyms or abbreviations of spelt-out forms or the other way around.

Kehinde frequently provides advice to Nigeria Football Association (NFA).

• Used to cite content within a text.

Kunle’s articles have been published in several journals (Journal of Humanities, 2022).

Hyphen (-)

• Used to link compound nouns.

My brothers-in-law are coming to visit.

• Used to join complex verbs.

Ensure you double-space that letter.

• Used to fuse compound adjectives when they come before the noun.

The up-to-date copy is in the drive.

• Used to show that a hyphenated compound’s first and subsequent words are suspended.

The low- and high-performance lever differed from one another.

• Used to divide spelt-out fractions into their numerator and denominator.

Two-third.

• Used to separate a word with more than two syllables at the end of a line.

Comma (,)

• A comma is used to break out two phrases linked by a conjunction.

Olaitun likes to play golf, but she has other hobbies as well.

• Used to distinguish opening clauses and phrases from the body of a sentence.
• Used to divide items in a sequence.

Adedamola is an excellent dancer, poet, singer, and orator.

• Used to break out clauses and phrases that don’t belong in the main clause.
• Used to break apart a succession of adjectives.

This is a straightforward, uncomplicated technique.

• Used to distinguish transitional words from the body of the sentence.

In addition, she is consistently productive.

• Used to emphasise the names of those being spoken to in a sentence.

Well, Uduak, you’ve made it.

• Used to distinguish items in dates, addresses, and places.

On June 30^th, 2022, Onyinye released her debut book.

In conclusion, knowing how to use the correct punctuation in the right place is a cardinal rule for good writing. Therefore, you must learn to use these punctuation marks effectively if you want to build a sustainable writing career.

Click HERE for more insightful writing tips.

Grammar, punctuation, and sentence construction are issues that many authors struggle with, and although these issues are significant, the editing process should not typically begin with them. Why? Because expressing your thoughts as clearly as possible is the fundamental goal of editing. Therefore, it is better to start by concentrating on the overall order and clarity of your writing.

Nevertheless, it is important you ask yourself some of these questions as you embark on your self-editing process: Can my reader follow the logical progression of my ideas? Am I using the best points to express my ideas?

This is because the overall effectiveness of your writing is more dependent on the strength of your argument. So, here are five major things to look out for when you self-edit your work:

• Punctuation and Grammar

Reading through your original draft a few times to check for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors is the first step in self-editing.

Without proper grammar, your sentences will lack structure. Grammar entails how you arrange words to create meaning in your sentences and paragraphs. Homophones (it’s/its, they’re/there, here/hear), verb forms, or the subject-object-verb arrangement are a few examples of the many grammar rules.

In addition, paying attention to punctuation is very important when self-editing your work. Knowing where to insert basic punctuation marks like full-stop or period, commas, and question marks is crucial as they make your sentences more comprehensive.

• Remove Filter Words

Filler words are extraneous or superfluous words used to lengthen sentences without providing new information. Realised, so as to, actually, basically, just, well, you know, and in order to, are some examples of filler words you use.

When self-editing your work, you should pay attention to terms and phrases that don’t improve your writing because they frequently take the reader’s focus away from the point you’re trying to make.

For instance, instead of ‘I was actually thinking if you can help me with my morning chores.’ say, ‘Can you help me with my morning chores?’ The second question implies that the situation calls for an urgent reaction.

• Replace Complex Words

Making sure your language is easily comprehensible to your reader is the next step when self-editing. Always remember that your writing is not to wow your audience but to deliver a message. Therefore, when there are simpler word options available, there’s no need to complicate your writing by stuffing each sentence with flowery language, which can addle your reader.

• Recurring Words

Another thing to watch out for is repeating terms inside a single sentence or paragraph. It is more intriguing and engaging when you vary the word choices in your sentences.

For example, if you are writing on the importance of education, instead of:

Education is important because it is important in boosting your confidence and also important in giving you access to greater opportunities.

Write:

Education is important because it boosts your confidence in public and gives you access to greater opportunities.

Ensure you substitute weaker terms for repeated ones to create a stronger argument.

• Avoid Passive Voice

Lastly, be mindful of the passive voice. When a statement uses the passive voice, the action is received by the subject rather than being done by them. On the contrary, active voice concentrates on the person performing an activity, making sentences written in them more straightforward, precise, and engaging.

The passive voice adds ambiguity and vagueness to your work. For example:

The strike was called off because our demands were met by the government. (Passive voice)

We called off the strike because the government met our demands. (Active voice)

However, click on what-type-of-editing-is-most-suitable-for-you/ to read more on editing. Or, if you need quality editors to handle your editing processes, visit www.sabiwriters.com.