“Immediately practical, eminently insightful, tried and tested, Fitzpatrick has written a book worth its weight in gold.
Write Useful Books is the definitive guide for the next generation of bestselling nonfiction authors.”
“Immediately practical, eminently insightful, tried and tested, Fitzpatrick has written a book worth its weight in gold.
Write Useful Books is the definitive guide for the next generation of bestselling nonfiction authors.”
“Write Useful Books may be the least abstract thing I’ve ever read. It straightforwardly explains both the logic and the specifics. It’s also delightfully self-demonstrating. As a useful book, it practices what it preaches.”
“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.
“Write Useful Books was instrumental for helping me push my book out the door.”
“If you’re thinking about creating a book or course, I recommend purchasing early access to Write Useful Books. It was hugely useful to me. I just recommended it to another founder working on their first book, and they loved it too.”
“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 like the way “#1 new release” looks beside the title of my book. Thanks :)”
“Write Useful Books is a must-read for any nonfiction author. Rob provides a specific, detailed, and modern approach to writing, improving, beta testing, launching, and marketing a book. Applying these concepts helped my book, Product-Led Onboarding to become a #1 best-seller in its Amazon categories. Do yourself a favor—get this book now!”
“I’m inherently suspicious of any “how to” content, so this book had to pull double duty. Happy to report that it’s passed the test! Write Useful Books breaks down how nonfiction books really work as products, which has helped me scope my project WAY down, get feedback WAY earlier, and execute with WAY more confidence.”
“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 @robfitz.”
“I’ve recently read Write Useful Books and it’s kind of mind-blowing. It’s about how to write prescriptive nonfiction so good (useful) that it succeeds on recommendations alone. And now here I am earnestly recommending it. So I guess it works.”
“Book writers: this is worth your time to read and re-read, especially with your favorite beverage in hand. Someday, the big publishing companies will get this new business model… until then, it will be us ‘little’ guys/gals that win.”
“Just had a major breakthrough thanks to Write Useful Books. I’ve been dragging around multiple book ideas for years now. Started and stopped on several books, multiple times. Today? Clarity. Absolute effing clarity!”
“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’ve found the approach described in Write Useful Books really helpful for thinking about how to write books that resonate with the audience.”
If you want your book to thrive, you need a better process.
My 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.”
This guide contains everything I know 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.
By Rob Fitzpatrick, author of The Mom Test and The Workshop Survival Guide.
Hello, I'm Rob Fitzpatrick. Back in 2013, I wrote a short book called The Mom Test to teach entrepreneurs to ask for better customer feedback. In its first month, it earned a paltry $535. Six years later, thanks to steady word of mouth, it passed $10k in monthly royalties and has continued to grow from there.
It’s now taught at universities like MIT, UCL, and Harvard; recommended by startup accelerators like Y Combinator and Seedcamp; and used by teams at companies like SkyScanner and Shopify. It has hit #1 in most of its Amazon categories and has been translated by enthusiastic readers into nearly ten languages. All of this happened while I was largely ignoring the book and doing approximately zero active marketing. To date, it has put more than $550k in my pocket, all via reader recommendations. The growth in monthly profits is shown in the graph below. You'll notice that there was no big launch or magic bullet — just a steady, organic climb:
Just over a year ago, I released my second book, The Workshop Survival Guide, about designing and teaching educational workshops (coauthored with Devin Hunt). The book’s ultimate success is still too early to call, but it seems to be following a similar trajectory to The Mom Test — except better. Its sales at month five were the same as The Mom Test’s at year five, all via reader recommendations. It’s growing steadily, has organically hit #1 in its main Amazon categories, and is already generating enough royalties to comfortably cover my entire cost of living.
As before, The Workshop Survival Guide didn't benefit from any sort of flashy launch, a big mailing list, or clever marketing. It just does a good job of solving an important problem for readers, so they recommend it. This recommendability wasn’t an accident; it was our explicit goal, and we worked hard to achieve it. And with the right process and toolkit, you can do it too.
Thanks :)
To learn more about myself or my other books, check out robfitz.com or youtube.com/c/robfitzpatrick.
Contact: rob@robfitz.com
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