7 Things I Look For When Editing a Non-Fiction Book

I see it all the time on social media: most authors think editing is just about grammar and typos.

And when you think about it that way, it makes it seem like hiring an editor for a book is optional. AI can look for typos, so why pay a person more to do that?

But when I open a non-fiction book, I’m not just looking for typos (although that is still very important). Nothing makes someone DNF a book faster than a bunch of typos (even subtle typos). But editing a book, even a non-fiction, is a process with many moving pieces… Most pieces AI cannot do because it requires a level of subjective reasoning and understanding. It requires thinking outside the box.

It’s about being able to emotionally invest in a text and navigate various points of view and shifts in perspective.

These things are something only human editors can do. And don’t get me wrong, I use Grammarly to help me catch typos in my own work; I’m not saying that’s not valuable, to an extent (Grammarly doesn’t always get it right because it misses the subjective nature of editing).

As a non-fiction editor myself, I worry about proofreading less than other types of editing (eg. Developmental editing, line editing, etc.). Part of my process is looking for the 7 common elements that should be in every text, but are often missing or messy. These 7 things are what separate a decent book from a powerful one.

The 7 things I look for when editing a non-fiction book:

1. Clarity of your core message

Believe it or not, so many non-fiction books start out with a very unclear core message. You can read from start to finish and still have no idea what the main driver of the book was. Readers are left asking, " What was the point? What did I even learn?”

The first thing an editor should do is ask, “What is the main transformation?" We need to identify right away what the promise of the book is. What will readers walk away with? Then, once we make it to the end, an editor should be able to say whether the main transformation was clear and was reached by the end of the book. For instance, if the book is titled, “How to make a million dollars in 30 days,” by the time the book is finished, the author should have created a clear system and process on how to make a million dollars in 30 days. Could the readers go out into the world with a proper toolkit for reaching this? Or was the message all over the place, and did the writing skirt around the topic, never clearly answering the promise?

If you make a promise in your title or the start of your book, your readers will be expecting you to make good on it. They want to get the transformation they expected by the end (the entire reason they bought the book). You’d be surprised how often this doesn’t happen.

Are you drifting into multiple topics without one central thread? This is really common in non-fiction books. It often leads to books that are long and repetitive. Authors who are just writing and getting all of their thoughts out, but don’t have a clear and precise message or transformation they’re aiming for.

This should be the first place you start when planning your book. Create your one clear message and plan out your entire book, connecting every thought back to this. If your book is on the shorter side, that’s fine. It’s better to have it be shorter than 600 pages of the same thought without any real transformation.

2. Structure and Flow

Spending time planning out your entire book, every chapter, will lead to a more organized structure and better flow overall. Books that are disjointed, jump around, and don’t make a lot of sense in terms of pacing get tossed aside and DNF’d.

I ask:

• Do the chapters build logically?

• Is there a clear progression?

• Are ideas introduced before they’re explained?

• Does the text jump around?

A reader is always looking for a book that feels good to read. Strong non-fiction books feel guided. They should still take people on a journey, a personal journey where they’re learning new things. We want our readers to want to move to the next chapter because it makes sense to keep reading.

Weak structure makes a reader feel lost or overwhelmed. Never the way you want your reader to feel. Just because it makes sense in your head doesn’t mean it will make sense to someone else. Remember, they’re not in your head; they don’t know what you know.

This is where an editor comes in. It’s a second set of eyes, another brain that doesn’t know exactly what you know in the way you know it. They can sit in your reader’s seat. If they’re confused, there’s no way a reader won’t be.

We want your book to progress. As you get closer to the end, your reader should be getting closer to their answer, to their transformation. We want to make sure each chapter builds on the next, so it logically makes sense to start at the beginning and work your way through. You cut off the smooth flow of the journey if you’re jumping around from topic to topic.

3. Repetition

The worst one for non-fiction books (even some of the best leaders and authors make this mistake). Often, to add length to the book in the name of “giving it more substance,” writers will say the same thing multiple different ways. All this does is slow the book down. Longer isn’t always better. I have a friend who once said, “Most non-fiction books could have been a stellar blog post.” In other words… There are too many words.

We often feel that in order to help someone really understand a concept, we have to over-explain it in many different ways. This is not the case. Your reader is looking for clear and concise answers. Shorter is often stronger. If you want a powerful book, find the shortest way to say something without losing depth and meaning. If the repetition is intentional for reinforcement, sure, it might stand the editor test, but typically, I’m not afraid to cut something that has already been said in three different ways.

It’s not just first-time authors that do this. Mel Robbins is a culprit here. Think of the book The Let Them Theory. It’s a great concept, and Mel is a fabulous speaker and educator; however, it felt like every chapter she was just saying the same thing over and over. She could have trimmed up every chapter and instead made them into sections. Essentially, the big takeaway of the book is that if something doesn’t go your way or someone annoys you… let them. And that was said so many times I could probably direct quote the book. I just kept waiting for a really valuable nugget to drop, but we got to the end and still the only thing I learned was to say “let them and walk away.” But the title told me that.

4. Voice and authenticity

Here’s the thing that we have to really pay attention to in this AI era. Does your book sound like a human? I’m not here to judge, but trust me, AI does not write books better than you. And even if you aren’t a great writer, but you have a great idea, you can either use your editor to really help refine your language and flow or hire a ghostwriter to help your ideas become magic on the page.

What can also happen is if you use AI for some and your own writing for some, then you end up with an inconsistent tone (and honestly, this can happen even if you don’t use AI). As an editor, I am paying close attention to whether or not there is a consistent voice and tone throughout. We want to avoid one chapter being light and fun while the next chapter is serious and direct. Yes, every chapter will have different content, and the sentimentality might shift, but we don’t want your actual voice to change every chapter.

Also, unless you are a university professor trying to write for PHD students or other university professors, you want to avoid sounding overly academic or overly expert. Your readers will tap out if your book is boring (even if your subject matter is interesting) or if they get confused by your expert talk. Nothing ruins a really good book more than a boring voice.

If you’re unsure, try reading what you’ve written out loud. You’ll hear really fast if it’s boring or engaging. Also, in the age of social media and interviews, you want to ensure your tone at least somewhat matches the way you speak. If your book has a more muted tone, but when you give a talk on the same subject, you naturally speak excitedly and with passion, your readers are going to feel suspicious.

5. Reader engagement

As an editor, a big part of my job is to ensure we get your book to a place where we know it will sell and be popular. People do go and read the reviews, and if it’s not piquing people’s interests and they’re putting in the reviews that they didn’t finish the book, eventually people will stop buying it. Yes, your content is important, but focusing on how you can best engage your reader in the experience will ensure your good book becomes a fan favourite.

Do you have engaging examples, stories or case studies to explain your concepts? Using these instead of adding repetition to reinforce your concepts will keep people interested. Plus, as a bonus, they’ll be more emotionally invested and connected to your concepts. Humans learn more when they can feel something. We need to ensure they feel something right away. Get there buy-in right from the introduction, even the first paragraph. Your introduction isn’t a warm-up; it’s a test. Your readers are testing your book to see if it passes the vibe check and is actually worth their hard-earned dollars.

I also want to see whether or not your reader can implement something. Does your book engage them in a deeper way than just having them sit there and read it (which is incredibly important given that you’re selling them a book)? But will it get up and taking action toward something? If they came to your book to learn something or to help them reach their goals, are they able to take steps along the way to do that, or do they have to read all 500 pages in order to truly accomplish anything?

As you write, ask yourself, “Will the reader feel smarter or empowered by the end of the chapter?” This will be one of my first comments once I reach the end of each chapter, and if it’s not there, we’ll work together to add something in.

6. Depth vs Fluff

Here’s another thing that authors often don’t consider: are you going deep enough? This is a common mistake, especially from business owners. Many business owners are currently writing books in order to use them as marketing for their services. While I won’t get into that here, this often leaves the book feeling like it’s just circling around surface-level ideas.

Let me say this for the people in the back…

DO NOT write a book that promises something and then have the ending not deliver what your promise is because they have to purchase your services in order to get that result.

That is not what a book is for.

Books should not be just full of fluff. We don’t want chapters that are just adding pages instead of adding value. Something I look for as a non-fiction editor is a focused transformation over an oversized book.

Your book needs to focus on giving real value. People are paying to learn from you. Go deep on your concepts, give the juicy details, and deliver the transformation that you promise them. I read a book (actually, I DNF’d it) that was all fluff and no real information to get actual results. It felt like I was just reading a sales pitch. It was just a bunch of words trying to convince me of the importance of doing this one thing, instead of how to do that thing (which was the title of the book). It was a co-written book, and two of the chapters (that I actually read, as I only read about 30% of it) were almost identical. They actually used the exact same example. It felt like a copy and paste because the examples even had the same typos. This leads me to believe they did not use an editor. You might be a great business owner or incredibly knowledgeable on your topic and a good writer, but even editors hire editors if they’re writing a book.

7. Line-level precision

To tie everything up, when I do a final review, I’m looking for line-by-line precision. As an author, my suggestion would be not to focus on this (yes, I know, what a backwards suggestion). But your job is to ensure you get all of your thoughts onto the page and you write something engaging and meaningful.

My job as an editor is to ensure you have sentence clarity, awkward phrasing is removed, wordiness is decreased, your grammar, punctuation, and consistency are clean, etc. An editor’s job is to ensure everything is polished and ready for the shelf. No matter how good a writer you are, or how many rounds of self-editing you did, your editor will always have comments. That’s not because you’re a bad writer; it’s because they want to ensure your book has the best chance of success. They want to ensure there is no friction left stopping your readers from getting to the end of your book and writing a 5-star review.

Small refinements in editing can give you a huge credibility boost. If a reader is going through and finding a ton of mistakes, issues or boringness, they’ll instantly question your credibility. So many times, I have read a self-published book by a business owner that was full of typos and immediately wondered if they were qualified to do what they do for a living. It actually stopped me from even wanting to buy their services.

Editing isn’t about tearing your manuscript apart…

The point is to elevate your message. Editors review your manuscript with an objective and logical lens. You are personally and emotionally invested… You wrote it. But an editor is not only a professional at what they do, but they’re an impartial second set of eyes that won’t hesitate to tell you what shifts need to be made in order for your book to be a hit.

As an editor, I’m not fixing the author. It’s not a personal critique. My job is to strengthen your impact.

Do you have a manuscript you’re working on (or have finished) that needs an editor? Apply here to explore if we’re a good fit, and get started turning your manuscript into a best-selling masterpiece.