The definitive guide for the next generation of bestselling nonfiction authors.
— Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable
Rob's first two nonfiction titles have grown organically to reach more than 100k happy readers and are now generating $160k per year in royalties. All with nearly zero active marketing. This is due to how the books were built.
The process for building useful nonfiction is iterative, data-driven, and reader-centric. It's the polar opposite of the standard gamble of “plan, polish, publish, and pray.”
Write Useful Books contains everything Rob knows about how to design, test, and refine nonfiction that is able to endure for years, get recommended, and grow on its own. Whether you're aiming for royalties, reputation, reach, or impact, this guide can help you get there.
Rob Fitzpatrick wrote a short book in 2013 called The Mom Test, aimed at teaching entrepreneurs how to gather more useful customer feedback. In its first month, the book earned a modest $535. However, thanks to steady word-of-mouth growth, six years later it surpassed $10k per month in royalties and has continued to rise ever since.
Today, The Mom Test is taught at prestigious universities like MIT, UCL, and Harvard. It's recommended by notable startup investors including Y Combinator and Seedcamp, and utilized by teams at companies like SkyScanner and Shopify. The book reached the #1 spot in most of its Amazon categories and has been translated by passionate readers into nearly ten languages. Remarkably, this success occurred with Rob largely ignoring the book and performing essentially no active marketing. To date, reader recommendations alone have put more than $550k into Rob's pocket. The growth in monthly profits, depicted in the accompanying graph, highlights that there was no flashy launch or secret strategy—just steady, organic growth.
Rob's second book, The Workshop Survival Guide, coauthored with Devin Hunt, focuses on designing and teaching educational workshops. It appears to be following a similar trajectory to The Mom Test—but even better. At month five, its sales already matched those of The Mom Test at year five, purely driven by reader recommendations. It continues growing steadily, has organically achieved #1 rankings in its key Amazon categories, and already generates enough royalties to comfortably cover Rob's entire living expenses.
The Workshop Survival Guide had no flashy launch, massive mailing list, or sophisticated marketing campaigns. Its success is rooted purely in effectively solving a significant problem for readers, prompting genuine recommendations. This recommendability wasn't accidental—it was deliberately planned and thoughtfully executed. With the right approach and tools, Rob believes that others can achieve the same.
“Write Useful Books is an incredibly useful book. With Rob’s lessons, I was able to write my own bestseller, and I kept referring back to it, underlining and highlighting, throughout the process. If you’re thinking of writing a book, I cannot recommend Useful Books highly enough.”
“Even if you aren’t currently planning to write a book, Write Useful Books is so helpful for thinking about the jobs-to-be-done of readers and for writing useful things. It was so helpful for writing my own book.”
“I’m in the beginning stages of writing the draft manuscript of my upcoming book, and I’m SO happy I picked up this incredible book by Rob Fitzpatrick.”
“Write Useful Books is the blueprint that nonfiction writers have been waiting for, and my own books have benefited from all the lessons Rob lays out in it. From writing for a clearly defined audience to involving readers in the process as early as possible, Write Useful Books will help you to create a book that you are proud of, and that your readers can’t stop talking about.”
“I read *Write Useful Books* and I love it. It’s *the best* book on designing, writing, and publishing nonfiction. It walks you along a clear, viable path of realistic and actionable steps and doesn’t just rehash the usual vague advice.”
“I like the way “#1 new release” looks beside the title of my book. Thanks :)”
Write Useful Books is now available on Amazon. A digital copy is also included, free of charge, as part of the Help This Book subscription, our purpose-built beta reading platform.
Help This Book also includes access to our Author Community—a group of 300+ determined nonfiction authors ready to help you get unstuck, gather feedback, and keep moving forward. The community features both first-time and experienced authors covering topics ranging from nutrition to Node.js.