Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books (Wiley Books for Writers Series) (Paperback)

by Jean Marie Stine (Author) "Self-help/how-to books are easy to write..." (more)
Key Phrases: other interactive elements, troubleshooting list, selling your book, Selling Self-Help, Simplifying Permissions, Peak Learning (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Jean Marie Stine has created perhaps the ultimate how-to book: Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books. Among the many editorial positions Stine has held in her 15 years as an editor (and sometimes ghostwriter) of self-help and how-to books is editor in chief at the esteemed self-help publisher Jeremy P. Tarcher. She edited more than 50 self-help titles, including Women Who Love Too Much and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. If an author's qualifications, as Stine says in her book, are of utmost importance for a book's credibility, she is supremely qualified to write such a book.

Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books is less about writing than about every other element that goes into making a successful self-help/how-to book. Since "publishers," as Stine says here, "buy 90 percent of their books based on proposals," she addresses in detail every element of the book proposal, from overview ("mak[e] your book sound like a must-have") and analysis of the competition to sample chapter and annotated table of contents. Her insider information on everything from title creation--"the right title alone," she confides, "can make your book a success"--to the importance of including interactive elements such as checklists, quizzes, and exercises is invaluable. Still, for the beginning writer--and Stine seems to assume that the reader of this book is an expert in a field other than writing--there is surprising little, given the book's title, about the writing process itself. --Jane Steinberg

Review
With Jean Marie Stine's Writing Successful Self-Help And How-To Books, aspiring authors can learn how to write effective self-help and how-to books with the aid of a guide which provides an insider's view to the writing process. From producing a salable proposal to negotiating permissions, preparing a manuscript, and assessing a market, this reference book provides an editor's view of what works - and what doesn't. -- Midwest Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 185 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471037397
• ISBN-13: 978-0471037392
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57,135 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive, January 11, 2002

By	TOL (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

I should begin by saying that this book does contain some useful information. However, I have three main gripes with the presentation:

1. The author repeats herself over and over again from one sub-chapter to the next. For every five pages of writing, there's one page of information that has been stated in 5 different ways. This makes for a very boring and often frustrating read.

2. The book attempts to capitalize on the specific genre of 'Self-Help & How-To' books. However, the advice is not at all specific to this genre. This is the same advice that is given in many other, and much more complete, nonfiction author guides that are available in the same price range as this book. The author attempts to make specific references to the 'Self-Help & How-To' markets. But one gets the impression that these references are thrown in just to keep the content somewhat true to the title - which one quickly comes to believe is a front to sell this book to a specialized target market. In reality, this book does very little to help the 'Self-Help & How-To' author specifically.

3. Much of the book focuses on how to write a book proposal. However, there are no full examples of book proposals to be found! At best, we get disconnected snipets taken from proposals which may or may not even be real because most come without references. So, this becomes a very bad 'How-To' book on how to write 'How-To' books. With that said, one has to question the validity of her advice since her own 'How-To' book is really not very good.

In short, this is a condensed and content-lacking version of the more complete books on this subject by authors such as Snell, Herman, Lyon, etc. Again, I should say that there is some useful information to be found if you can dig between the lines of repetitive fluff. But, after you extract the few worthwhile tidbits, you are left with little more than a genre-specific title, and a space in your wallet where $16 used to be.

My advice: Invest elsewhere.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I read it, I used it, I got my book published., April 17, 2000

By	William May (USA) - See all my reviews

This is one book that I not only read but referred back to again and again. I have read this book over three or four times; I have marked up paragraphs and highlighted important passages. This book really crystallized my planning for a book I had in mind. In chapter 4: the author's five ways of structuring a How-to book gave me an idea for the overall structure (I chose method 4 the "component-based book"). Her extensive and helpful discussion of titles and subtitles and how and why to choose them (chapter 3) lead me to spend a great deal of time in considering this critical book element. Finally, the chapters about proposal writing for a How-To book were simply great. Several other books discuss proposals and give examples, but many are for fiction proposals which aren't close to what I was trying to do. The narrowing of focus to just How-To/Self-Help proposals was just what I needed. Highly recommended.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Shallow and repetitive, April 4, 2003

By A Customer

Jean Marie Stine's book seemed very lazily thrown together. There were no samples of query letters, outlines, or book proposals included! There were only 3 pages discussing how to submit to an agent or publisher. I'm going to chuck this book and go back to "How to Write Attention-Grabbing Query and Cover Letters" by John Wood. There were no big big secrets revealed in Stine's book--the only good news is that it made me realize I already know what I have to do to publish my own self-help book, and I just have to go do it!