When you decide to write a book it seems to be a choice between simply fiction or nonfiction an either-or choice, but it’s actually more varied than that.
The great thing about writing a book is that you can write about what you know, or what you don’t know but can learn.
Fiction of course is you make it up out of your head while nonfiction is a true story…..but like today’s cars there are hybrids also. We’ll keep it simple for now and go into the mechanics of fiction versus nonfiction later.
Generally speaking, more fiction books are written and sold than nonfiction but nonfiction overall takes in more money (the books tend to be priced higher).
Nonfiction can be more labor-intensive. In addition to including photos and illustrations (for which permission to publish them if they aren’t your photos must be obtained), you also have a table of contents as well as a preface (why you decided to write this book). Also if possible a foreword (someone else praises your book with a statement on the book’s cover).
You’ll need a “bibliography,” a list of outside sources documenting the facts you present usually obtained from other books, off the internet, from old documents, diaries, interviews or other.
If the facts didn’t happen to you directly these are called “secondary sources.”
Remember, nonfiction books are usually easier to market and sell than fiction because there is more of a guaranteed audience for a nonfiction book depending on its subject. Fiction is more difficult. There you need to develop an audience of fans.
Fiction is often easier to write because you make it up. You are in sole possession of the story. You don’t have to gather and cite factual sources.
But let’s also face it.
Fiction is more glamorous if you can pull it off well. In other words, we know who Stephen King is, but we’ve never heard of a, let’s say, Harvey Smedlap, who let’s say wrote an excellent yet limited -audience history of the development of the library Dewey Decimal System.
It all depends on what kind of writer you want to be. Do not make a choice based on imagined quick effort and hoped-for get-rich-quick money (sales). If you do that you’re called a “hack,” a low-quality writer who cranks out pulp-puke just to get a paycheck.
Do you want to be a wildly creative writer where everything in your book comes out of your imagination (fiction), or a writer who portrays reality with the known facts to back it up (nonfiction)?
You will choose. Perhaps you’ll do both.
In my case I have combined elements of fiction and nonfiction in one book (with mixed results).
More on this next week…..
John Sammon is a freelance writer and the author of 41 books.
