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018: How to Write a Book That Sells for Decades with Tim Grahl

The Nathan Barry Show

NOTE

Learning to Write a Great Book

Writing a great book requires more than just the intent. It involves studying masterworks in the genre, analyzing chapters, titles, word usage, paragraph lengths, and understanding when the reader gets bored. It also includes studying the structure of successful books to learn how to keep readers engaged till the end and prompt them to leave a review.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. And they have the stats. They have because that's how you get paid with Kindle. I won't go down that path, but like, yeah, but that is also like you can do that anecdotally with books. Anyway, but yeah. I mean, it's easy to say write a great book, but it's hard to actually write a great book. And I mean, this is what, you know, we pursue a story grid is how to actually learn how to write a great book. But it really just starts with looking at masterworks, which is books that you're like, if I could write a book like this, it would be a win for me. So it's like, if you want to write a book about self help, it's like you should be studying atomic habits and studying like how long are the chapters? What are the titles? How many words does he use that are more than three syllables? How long are his paragraphs? You know, read it yourself. And when do you get bored? If you get done with the book, what were your three favorite parts, you know, like analyzing books and how they do it? I mean, I remember I've done this for Ryan holiday books. Like I printed out the introductions of three of his books and I sat down and I'm like, okay, he changed subjects here and here. So how long was each section? And I literally like counted the words and put the word figure. And then it's like looking at that kind of stuff and studying that kind of stuff of like, how do you structure a book that people actually read all the way to the end and leave a review on Amazon?

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