Being too busy is one of the most common reasons people tell me why they never start writing their book. The truth is, if you’re writing articles, podcasting, and presenting at conferences, you’ve already started writing your book. If you’re answering the same questions from prospective clients repeatedly, you have content for your book.
Time isn’t the problem.
It’s a commitment to working toward your goal of writing a book.
As someone who has faced this challenge, I can share a process to help you complete your book. We start with a conversation about why you want to write a book and who your target reader is. We then review the content you already have that we can use for the book and develop an outline. It’s the push you, if you’re like me, you need to jumpstart your book writing and stop saying you’re too busy to write.
Things don’t slow down. You already know that.
The question is then, what can you actually do right now to make progress on your book? The answer doesn’t require a writing retreat, a six-month sabbatical, or waking up at 5 a.m. It requires a few practical habits and a clear starting point.
Key Takeaways
- You already have more content than you think. Blog posts, presentations, client stories, and podcast interviews are all raw material for your book.
- Writing your book starts before you write a single word. Capturing ideas, knowing your audience, and organizing what you have gets you further than you realize.
- AI can help with organization and brainstorming, but it cannot write your book. Your stories, expertise, and voice are irreplaceable.
- You don’t have to do this alone. A ghostwriter can do the heavy lifting while you stay focused on your business.
Why People Write Nonfiction Business Books
Before getting into the how, it helps to get clear on the why. Understanding your motivation shapes everything from your chapter structure to the stories you choose to share. Here are three reasons thought leaders decide it’s finally time to write their book.
You are not alone in this. According to Top 10 Reasons Entrepreneurs Are Writing Books, roughly 80 percent of people say they have what it takes to write a book, but very few actually do. The reasons people want to write are compelling. The obstacle is almost always finding the time and knowing where to start.
I know this from personal experience. In 2016, just four months after getting married, I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML). That diagnosis prompted a complete life review and ultimately led me to write my first book, We Don’t Get to Ring the Bell: My CML Story. The book answers the most common questions people ask about living with CML, and I’ve sold over 400 copies while giving dozens more to cancer patients and their families.
My WHY was clear: I wanted to answer the questions no one was asking aloud and give others living with CML something tangible to hold onto. Your WHY will be different, but it needs to be just as clear.
1. Share Your Experience, Knowledge, and Lessons
You have spent years in your field accumulating insights that other people would benefit from knowing. The mistakes you made early on, the strategies that worked better than expected, the lessons that only come from doing the work — that knowledge has real value.
A nonfiction business book is one of the most effective ways to package that experience into something lasting. It extends your reach beyond the clients you can serve directly and puts your perspective into the hands of readers who need it.
2. Establish Yourself as an Expert and Build Credibility
A published book changes how people perceive you. It signals that you have thought deeply about your subject, organized your ideas, and committed to sharing them in a serious way. That carries weight in ways that a website or social media presence often cannot.
Whether you are positioning yourself for speaking opportunities, attracting higher-level clients, or building authority in your industry, a book gives you a credential that opens doors. People refer to authors differently than they refer to service providers.
For more on this topic, check out our article How to Write a Book About Your Professional Experience and Grow Your Influence.
3. Educate Others Through Real Stories of Wins, Losses, and What You Learned
The most useful business books aren’t written from a place of having all the answers. They’re written from a place of honesty about the full journey. The wins matter, and so do the losses. Readers connect with writers who are willing to share both.
When you write about what actually happened, including the decisions that didn’t work out and the pivots that changed everything, you give readers something they can learn from at a practical level. That kind of transparency builds trust faster than any highlight reel.
Your story doesn’t have to be perfect to be valuable. It just has to be true.
Start Capturing Ideas Before You Start Writing
Most people think writing a book means sitting down to write a book. That’s the part that feels impossible when your calendar is full.
Idea capturing is different. It’s low-stakes, quick, and fits into the margins of your day. When a client asks a question you’ve answered a hundred times, that’s a book idea. When you’re on a walk and a story comes to you about a failure that taught you everything, that’s a chapter waiting to happen.
Use your phone. Keep a running note in your app of choice. Record a voice memo on your commute. The goal isn’t polished writing. The goal is to get the idea out of your head before it disappears.
I’ll say this louder for you: the best book ideas come when you’re not trying to write. Give yourself permission to capture them informally.
For more on this topic, check out our article Writing Prompts for Book Ideas and Building a Daily Writing Habit.
Set a Schedule for Idea Capture, Not Just Writing
The advice to “write every day” sounds motivating until Tuesday morning when you have three client calls and a deadline. Then it becomes one more thing you failed at.
A more realistic approach is scheduling time for idea capture and writing separately. Idea capture can happen in five minutes. A voice memo on the way to school pickup. A quick note during lunch. Three sentences jotted in a notebook before bed.
Writing sessions can be scheduled weekly rather than daily. Once a week might be good enough. Two hours on a Saturday morning, or thirty minutes on a Wednesday evening, moves a book forward faster than most people expect.
When you work with a book coach, we help you build a schedule around your actual life, not an idealized version of it.
For more on this topic, check out our article The Flexible Writing Schedule.
Think About Your Target Audience First
Before you write a single chapter, clarity about your reader changes everything. The way you explain an idea to a nonprofit executive is different from how you’d explain it to a first-time entrepreneur. The stories you choose, the depth you go into, and the tone you use all shift based on who is holding your book.
Ask yourself three questions. Who is this book for? What is the one problem it solves for them? What do you want them to be able to do, think, or feel after reading it?
Afterall, a book that tries to speak to everyone ends up connecting with no one. The more specific you are about your reader, the more useful your book becomes.
This is often the first conversation I have with a new book coaching client, and it’s one of the most valuable.
For more on this topic, check out our article Work with a Nonfiction Book Coach: The Process from Start to Finished Manuscript.
Organize the Content You Already Have
Here is one of my favorite truths about nonfiction books: your book might already be 60 percent written.
Think about the content you’ve already created. Blog posts on your website. Presentations you’ve delivered at conferences. Podcast interviews where you told your story. Proposals you’ve written that explain your approach. Client testimonials that capture your impact. That content is the raw material of your book.
The work isn’t starting from scratch. The work is organizing what already exists into a structure that serves your reader from chapter one through the conclusion.
A content audit is a practical first step. Pull together links or documents for everything you’ve created in the last three to five years. Look for themes. Notice what topics you return to again and again. Those recurring themes are likely your chapters.
For more on this topic, check out our article How to Write a Book About Your Professional Experience and Grow Your Influence.
Can I Use AI to Write My Book?
This is one of the questions I hear most often, and it deserves a direct answer.
AI can be a useful tool in your book writing process when used for the right tasks. Brainstorming chapter ideas, organizing your existing content into a logical structure, and generating writing prompts when you’re stuck are all areas where AI adds genuine value. Think of it as a research assistant that helps you see patterns and possibilities you might not notice on your own.
Here’s where I draw the line: AI cannot write your book for you. AI doesn’t know that on your first business trip you ate peanut butter sandwiches in your car because the budget was nonexistent. It doesn’t know your client’s name, the moment your nonprofit changed someone’s life, or the hard lesson that shaped your entire approach. Those stories are what make your book worth reading. That’s the part no AI can generate.
There’s also the question of privacy. When you’re developing intellectual property, client stories, and original ideas, the AI tool you choose matters. I use Claude, which operates as a closed system where your conversations aren’t used to train future models. Your book ideas and client content stay confidential.
The ethical approach is using AI to support your thinking while you do the actual writing. AI suggests the question. You provide the answer from your expertise.
For more on this topic, check out our article Ethical Ways Writers Can Use AI: A Practical Guide.
Hire a Ghostwriter
Here’s what ghostwriting actually looks like.
You don’t sit down to write. You sit down to talk. We start with a series of structured interviews where I ask you the questions that draw out your stories, your expertise, and the lessons you want readers to walk away with. Those conversations become the foundation of your book.
From there, I organize your existing content, fill the gaps with what we capture in our interviews, and draft your manuscript in your voice. You read every chapter, mark what feels right, and tell me what needs to change. We keep going until the book sounds exactly like you.
When the manuscript is ready, I prepare it for Amazon publishing, so your book reaches the audience it’s meant for.
What the ghostwriting process includes:
- Structured interviews to capture your stories, expertise, and message.
- A content audit of your existing blog posts, presentations, and materials
- Complete manuscript development from concept to finished draft.
- Chapter-by-chapter reviews so you guide the direction throughout
- Writing in your voice so the book sounds authentically like you.
- Preparation for Amazon publishing once the manuscript is complete.
The investment varies based on book length, timeline, and how much existing content we’re starting with. We’ll figure out a plan that fits your budget during our consultation.
If you’ve been thinking about writing your book but the writing part is the obstacle, ghostwriting is worth exploring. Your story deserves more than sitting in a Google Doc.
For more on this topic, check out our article How Smart Leaders Hire a Ghostwriter for Their Next Book.
Schedule a free consultation at agencycontentwriter.com to talk about your book idea and which path makes the most sense for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start capturing book ideas when I’m not a writer?
Start with your phone. Record voice memos, use a notes app, or send yourself emails when an idea comes up. The goal isn’t polished writing. It’s getting the idea out of your head before it disappears. Voice memos are especially useful because you’re capturing the way you naturally talk, which is often closer to your real voice than anything you’d type.
How much time does it take to write a book?
That depends on your approach. If you’re writing it yourself with a book coach, most authors work one to three hours per week and finish a draft in six to twelve months. If you work with a ghostwriter, your time commitment is primarily interviews and chapter reviews, which is much lighter. The timeline for ghostwriting is typically six to eight months from start to finished manuscript.
What if I don’t have existing content?
Even authors without a blog or speaking background have more material than they realize. Your professional experience, client stories, lessons learned, and opinions about your industry are all content. A ghostwriter’s job is to draw that out through conversation, not wait for you to hand over a finished outline. I schedule interviews, provide questions ahead of time, so that we can capture the content that’s in your head and get it into your book.
Can I use AI to write my book?
AI can support your process, but it should not write your book for you. There are genuinely useful applications: brainstorming chapter ideas, organizing your existing content, generating writing prompts when you’re stuck. Those tasks are a good fit for AI tools.
The writing itself is a different matter. AI doesn’t have access to your stories, your clients, your failures, or the experiences that make your expertise worth reading about. Generic AI-generated content is recognizable, and it won’t reflect the voice your audience already knows and trusts.
Use AI as an assistant. Keep yourself as the author.
For more on this topic, check out our article Ethical Ways Writers Can Use AI: A Practical Guide.
Is ghostwriting ethical?
Ghostwriting has been a common practice for decades across business books, memoirs, speeches, and articles. The ideas, stories, and expertise are yours. The ghostwriter’s job is to give your voice the structure and polish it needs to reach readers.
For more on this topic, check out our article How Smart Leaders Hire a Ghostwriter for Their Next Book.
What is the difference between a book coach and a ghostwriter?
A book coach guides you while you write your own book. A ghostwriter writes a book for you based on interviews and your existing content. If you want the experience of authoring your own manuscript, book coaching is the right fit. If you want the book finished without doing the writing yourself, ghostwriting is the better path.
For more on this topic, check out our article Book Coach vs. Ghostwriter.
Anne McAuley Lopez is a content writer, nonfiction book coach, and ghostwriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She specializes in book coaching and ghostwriting services for entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and nonprofit leaders ready to write their stories.