How Popular Books Can Help You Write Popular Articles
Common attributes I noticed in world-class books and articles.
This is the 20th edition of The Essence.
There are good books. And there are really good books. Then, there are books that can only be described as world-class.
I’m always fascinated by the latter.
Many good books have become quite popular. But usually, the most popular books are the world-class type. The same thing goes for articles. And world-class articles have many attributes in common with world-class books. I often see six, to be exact.
1. Popular books and articles center around desirable topics
Popular books usually center around desirable topics. There are many bestselling marketing books because marketing is a desirable topic: It interests a large number of people.
A quick skim of Amazon Charts will give you an idea.
The top bestselling books center around desirable topics such as politics and self-help. If you look at the most trendy articles on Medium, you’ll notice the same pattern.
They are in desirable topics such as finance, politics, and self-improvement. I haven’t seen any of them written about pets. It seems that pets aren’t a very desirable topic. If you’re aiming to produce popular articles, avoid writing about pets.
You must be knowledgeable or interested in at least one or two desirable topics. You can’t just be interested in pets. Don’t be boring.
If you want to produce popular articles, write in the desirable topics that you love to read. You can also steal minor topic ideas from popular books and articles. They are a great source of inspiration.
2. Popular books are usually packed with evidence
I have never read any popular non-fiction book which lacks social proof. I’m not talking about the author’s social proof, but the social proof of the author’s claims.
They are always packed with evidence. From my study of 100+ popular articles, I’ve found that most of them also have enough evidence to back them up.
No matter who you are, you should present enough evidence to back up your claims. Start it up’s editors claimed that if Elon Musk wrote for them, they would probably still ask him for links to sources.
As a reader, I won’t be convinced without evidence. No matter how many followers you have or how many companies you’ve built. It’s your job to convince me. Show me studies, experts’ quotes, statistics, anything to back up your claims. Google Scholar is a great resource to use for that.
3. Popular books are well designed and formatted
They say don’t judge a book by its cover. I agree. If you ask most readers, they will probably nod in agreement too. But truth be told, book covers have a strong influence on our reading choices.
That’s why many authors or publishers drop thousands of dollars on book cover designs alone. It is considered a good investment. It would also be a good investment to spend time to find a captivating cover image for your articles.
Don’t pick another overused stock photo. Find one which is relevant, compelling, and unique. I use Unsplash, Flickr, and Creative Common search tool to find good images. And often, I also design visuals with Canva.
Try to add visuals when it fits too. Optinmonster revealed that articles with images get 94% more views as opposed to those without visuals. Most of the popular articles I have analyzed have visuals.
How you format your articles is also crucial. Break down the text to make it easier to read. Whenever needed, add sections to make the article more digestible. Use visuals and formatting options available to make it a more convenient read.
4. Popular books’ authors prepare well before writing them
Popular books and articles are usually packed with evidence because their writers did their research.
Hasty writers don’t have time to research, outline, or think much about what they’re going to write. They approach writing articles like lifting dumbbells, trying to get the most reps. That’s why their articles and books aren’t usually well received.
The most popular fiction books series such as Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings took years for their authors to finish.
Online writers need to prepare before writing and publishing their written words too. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should spend weeks researching and outlining one article. But at least a couple of days or hours.
Spend enough time to familiarize yourself with the topic. Gather your resources, evidence, and briefly outline the article.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” — Abraham Lincoln
5. Popular books and articles have compelling headlines
David Ogilvy is known as “the Father of Advertising”. He is also known for this famous quote:
“On average, 5x as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
Bestselling books have strong titles. Popular articles have compelling headlines. Look at the headlines of some of the most popular articles The Writing Cooperative published:
The authors and publishers behind bestsellers spend time and effort to pick a good title. Many of them spend money on testing to see which title works best. Tim Ferriss did that. He ran tests with Google AdWords before deciding on the title of his New York Times bestseller. He chose, The 4-Hour Work Week after he saw that it got the highest click-through rates.
“Ads can be used to test not just headlines but guarantees, product names, and domain names… How do you think I determined the best title for this book?” — Tim Ferris
Test your articles’ headlines with tools like the free headline analyzers from CoSchedule and Advanced Marketing Institute.
Statistic Brain revealed that since 2002, our average attention span has dropped from 12 to eight seconds. This indicates that your headline only has eight seconds to hook readers. And compel them enough to read your article.
Write your headline. Rewrite it. Read it out loud. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and see if it does compel you enough to read the article. Rewrite it until you’re satisfied. Just don’t obsess over it and waste countless hours to come up with one headline.
6. Popular books are rigorously edited
Books go through rigorous editing and polishing before being revealed to the world. Popular articles are usually well edited too.
My editing process for my articles is as follows:
Structural editing: Context edits. I often delete paragraphs and sections or add new ones. I also double-check the facts and link to resources.
Line editing: Here is where I delete unnecessary words and try to make sentences flow together.
Proofreading: I use Grammarly and the Hemingway App for this.
I often go through more rounds of edits. It all depends. But I take editing quite seriously. Readers often get turned off when reading poorly edited books and articles. Popular books are professionally edited. Try to edit your articles like a professional. Readers will appreciate it.
Books are a great resource for us writers in terms of inspiration for ideas, topics, headlines, and so much more.
When readers buy a bestseller, they have a lot of expectations for it. World-class books meet those expectations and often even beyond. If you can provide a similar experience to your articles’ readers, your pieces would be a lot more likely to be popular among them.
I wrote this piece around July 2021. You can find the original here.
Thanks for reading and until next time,
Mohammed