Hit the ground running with an in-depth, six-week video course, then stay on track with a year's free access to the Useful Books Community and Help This Book, our modern beta reading software.
Write a book that outgrows you.
Instead of betting on either marketing, luck, or fame, this course helps you follow the path of craft: to create a book so useful that readers can’t help but recommend it.
You’ll learn to build your book as if it were any other product, iteratively improving and debugging it — even before it has been written — by using real data from real readers.
This means embracing some potentially scary activities — like beginning beta reading while you know the book still has some problems — and requires doing a bit of seed marketing to get things started. But after that, marketing will become more of an option than an obligation, and your book will continue to grow.
Useful Books Academy
- 6 week, self-paced course
- 60+ video lessons
- Digital copy of Write Useful Books
- And inludes 1 year of membership for free:
- 1 year of Help This Book
- 1 year of Useful Books Community
Learn who this course is for, and how it helps you write better non-fiction
Dive right in with lesson one — The goal: A book that sells itself
Sign up with your email and receive the next three lessons for free
Each module focuses on mastery over a crucial book-killing blunder.
Throughout the course, we’ll cover all major tools and techniques of writing a useful book, including plenty of worked examples and actionable next steps. Dive right into lesson 1 for free, right now.
Module 1: Crucial foundations
Designing for recommendability: promise, problem, and ideal reader.
1.1 — The goal: A book that sells itself
1.2 — A useful book is a problem-solving product
1.3 — Title, subtitle, and cover set the promise
1.4 — The process: Better feedback, better book
1.5 — Cautionary: All the stuff that doesn't matter (yet)
1.6 — The 3 crucial habits (and teasing out the resistance)
1.7 — Case study: The Mom Test's path to 200,000 copies
1.8 — Workshop: Putting the promise on the cover
Module 2: How recommendations really work
Module 3: What keeps a reader reading
Module 4: Faster better feedback
Module 5: The 80/20 solution to showing your work (and finding your fans)
Module 6: Continuing to the finish line
What our students say about Useful Books Academy.
I almost didn't take the course because I thought, well, I'm a pretty good writer. I know what I'm going to write […] But I went ahead and took the course and it was so good […] took it from just a great book that nobody wants to a great book that people are recommending and my beta readers are telling me they can't wait for it to get out in the world, and can't wait to recommend it to other people.
Through the Useful Books Academy course, I've completely reoriented the theme, content, format and target reader for book #4. Every module and lesson was laser focused and put me on track to write an even more useful book than originally planned!
One of the most useful tips was the idea of recommendation triggers […] That completely changed the focus of my book and helped me write the first few chapters in a different way […] got some amazing feedback from the beta readers already.
The course was not just useful; it was very motivating, and it was visible that experienced authors made it. The questions I didn't even know I had got answered. I feel much better about my process, and I am now sure that publishing is going to be an attainable goal. The way each lesson was set up gave immense value, and it's something that needs to be experienced, and it will change your approach to the process.
This lesson was spectacular. I feel like I got my money's worth for the course in this one lesson alone. Mind shifting!
I started out with a manuscript that I thought was great — until a beta reader told me that it really wasn't. The academy taught me how to write and design a book that works for my target audience, and much more.
I’ve seen hundreds of courses over the last decade or so and this is low key the most useful and engaging course I’ve ever been through. Short lessons with useful assignments, relevant visuals on-screen and then video clips where they add to the story? Incredible. That is all.
Taught by Rob Fitzpatrick.
Author of The Mom Test, The Workshop Survival Guide, and Write Useful Books. Combined he has sold more than 300,000 copies as an independent author.
Rob
Who this course is for
For useful books
This course is for “useful” non-fiction that is intended to help its readers to solve a problem, achieve a goal, learn a skill, grasp a concept, or something similarly concrete.
That are still in-progress
In terms of progress, you should be committed to your book, but not finished with it (no later than revising, rewriting, or beta reading).
By authors who care
Plenty of other groups exist that will teach you how to release a mediocre book as quickly as possible. That’s not us.
We believe in spending the time to make the best book possible, even when that means diving into yet another rewrite after seeing a crucial chapter still not quite working for beta readers. For your book to be worth a reader’s time, it must be worth yours as well.
What this course won’t cover
We focus on product, not prose
Unlike some authors’ groups, we don’t do readings or feedback on your prose itself.
Instead, we’ll spend our time on improving how your book functions as a product (i.e., who it’s for, what it’s promising to do for them, how effectively it delivers on that promise, and how it stands out within a crowded marketplace), as well as on the process you’re using to build it (i.e., iteratively, at least partially in public, and in early contact with real readers and real feedback).
The point of book marketing is to stop needing to do it
Although we will indeed cover book marketing best practices (spoiler: podcast book tour, writing in public, Amazon PPC, and bulk sales when possible), there’s no marketing magic bullet that will allow a badly built book to soar.
As such, if your book is already finished and you’re just trying to figure out how to sell the thing, you won’t have much to gain from this course.