Readers begin reading with a temporary suspension of [dis]belief: a willingness to invest in discovering whether this book will, in fact, deliver.
One of your jobs, as author, is to use that brief window of goodwill to establish a solid foundation of belief.
Three stages of reader belief:
- Belief in the person ("the author can do it")
- Belief in the process ("it works for people like me")
- Belief in the progress ("it's already working for me")
Most books begin by establishing the author's expertise and capability, demonstrated through front-matter and accomplishments. This is a fine starting point (if kept short enough); it's aspirational and inspirational, but insufficient to carry readers till the end. Far stronger is the belief that the book's process or knowledge has worked for lots of other people similar to the reader, demonstrated by stories of struggle and success. The ultimate stage of belief is when a reader starts experiencing actual progress toward their goals, at which point the book's efficacy is beyond reproach.
Most authors spend far too long cementing the first tier, when they ought to be finding ways to advance more quickly into the second or third.11Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something. —Goethe, Maxims and Reflections But ultimately, a reader doesn't really care how well you can do it. They care how well you can teach them to do it.
How it helps
In a perfect world, your book would be so front-loaded with value that your reader would experience the sensation of progress almost immediately, skipping straight to the third tier. In reality though, that isn't always possible, since you often need to lay some sort of foundation to build up toward the higher impact actions.
The second tier—belief in the process—is always possible, and woefully underutilised. As a reader, there's nothing I love more than seeing a line that starts with something like: "When I teach this to others, they always…" Because in that moment, I know I'm not just reading a book by someone who knows how to do it, but by someone who knows how to teach it. This tier of belief is so powerful that it often gets proclaimed on the cover: "The revolutionary X that has transformed Y for thousands of people."
You do eventually need your readers to take successful action and experience a sense of progress. But if that has to happen late in the book, you can get them there by establishing the belief that your advice has already worked for lots of other people who are just like them.
How to make it work
Coaches, consultants, therapists, and trainers tend to show up with a war-chest of relevant stories already on hand.22For this very reason, when learning a new topic, I tend to ignore anything written by the "top expert," and instead seek out something written by a coach or trainer. For other authors, you'll need to collect them as you write, by either becoming the book or gathering stories from beta readers.
Once you've guided at least a handful of people through the successful application of your book's advice, you can:
Most importantly:
- Include stories of struggle and success alongside the inspirational and aspirational case studies33It can't be overstated how much belief is created by demonstrating that the advice doesn't just work for you, the author, but for "regular" people who the reader can relate to.
Also helpful:
- Anticipate common objections and points of confusion with an inlined FAQ or director's commentary
- If a photo, screenshot, or scan of some piece of the process is possible, include piles of visual examples
- For tasks and actions that readers have had difficulty completing, redesign those tasks into progressions of smaller, more doable sub-steps
Photos are the strongest belief-creators, followed by screenshots, and then written stories. But any format is far better than none.