When Your Story Matters (and When It Doesn’t)

“Everyone tells me that my story is amazing and I should write a book.”

“People will learn from my story.”

“By reading what happened to me, readers will be able to change their own lives.”

Unfortunately, that’s not true. 

People read books for themselves and their own purposes — whether that’s to be entertained, to learn, to change, or to get results. 

Most of the time, folks only care about you to the extent that you and your book can help THEM.

The idea that “my story can do all the work” especially falls flat when — 

You want to write a book that shows readers How To do something (like change their lives).

You want people to learn how to offer a way for folks to help themselves (Self Help).

You want to show how to handle a troubling or stressful Issue. 

Or you want to tell people what to do by offering step by step Prescriptive advice.

(Spoiler alert: The terms in bold are also the broad types of books I work on.)

When your goals are to write a book that makes an impact and actually changes the lives of the people that read it — your story is only one small part. 

Mind you, it’s an important part because your story can support why you’re the person to write the book, create commonality between you and the reader, and even be proof that your advice works and that this book is worth reading.

But don’t get it twisted — no one is going to read your book solely for your story.*

*The exception to this is memoir — but in that case, the writing has to be extraordinary AND the story transcendent and universal. Accomplishing all of that is a Simone-Biles-level-triple-double of publishing. Which is a big reason I don’t work on it.