Write an Effective Nonfiction Book Introduction in 10 Steps + Checklist
A book’s introduction can be the hardest chapter to write. What elements do you have to include in the introduction to your nonfiction book? What should your intro accomplish?
Let’s consider this question from a reader’s perspective. One meta-analysis suggests we read nonfiction books at an average rate of 238 words per minute. This means we spend about five and a half hours reading the typical 80,000-word nonfiction book (and some sources place this number much higher, at 10-12 hours).
Regardless of how we do the math, that’s a significant time investment for your reader. And you only have a few minutes—when your would-be reader picks up your book at the local indie or library, or when they preview your book on Amazon—to convince that would-be reader that your book is worth their time. You need to grab their attention early and make it difficult for them to walk away without your book in their hands.
Sound like a lot of pressure? Yes, those first few pages have a lot of work to do. But the best nonfiction introductions follow a loose formula, one you can follow to make sure your intro sells your audience on the rest of the book.
Below are 10 steps that almost all effective nonfiction introductions include, followed by a checklist you can use to guide your writing. The order of these steps isn’t critical, and you’ll see that, depending on the book, many of the steps actually overlap. What matters most is that all the elements are there and that readers have easy access to the information that will help them decide to keep reading.
We’ll analyze the introductions and forewords of four best-selling books in the health and wellness genre—Glucose Revolution, Wheat Belly (Revised and Expanded Edition), The Plant Paradox, and The Obesity Code*—but most of the elements we’ll discuss are applicable to any trade expository nonfiction, whether you’re writing a business book or a history.
*Note that I’m not endorsing the content of these books. That said, regardless of how you feel about the theories they espouse, these books are good examples of how to effectively grab the reader in a book’s opening pages.
1) Hook the reader.
You’re naturally interested in your subject—so much so that you’ve spent months, maybe years, contemplating and researching it. But to write an effective introduction, you have to assume your reader isn’t interested. Not yet, at least. It’s your job to make them interested.
One way to engage the reader right away is to speak directly to them, as if they’re in the room with you. You might pose a question, share a personal experience they can relate to, or pique their interest with a surprising or counterintuitive statement. Whichever your approach, your primary goal at this point is to get your reader interested enough to move on to the next sentence (and then the next).
Examples:
“What was the last thing you ate? Go on, think about it for a second.” (Glucose Revolution)
“Suppose that in the next few pages I told you that everything you thought you knew about your diet, your health, and your weight is wrong.” (The Plant Paradox)
“The art of medicine is quite peculiar. Once in a while, medical treatments become established that don’t really work.” (The Obesity Code)
“Have you ever come home from the grocery store with a fresh container of milk, opened it and immediately realized that it was bad—sour-smelling, curdled, unfit to drink?” (Wheat Belly, foreword to the revised and expanded edition)
“Flip through your parents’ or grandparents’ family albums and you’re likely to be struck by how thin everyone looks.” (Wheat Belly, introduction to the first edition)
2) Explain the problem your book is trying to solve and why the reader should care about it.
Every expository nonfiction book aims to solve a problem or fill a need—otherwise, there’d be no reason to write the book (and there would be no reason for the reader to pick it up). Tell the reader why the world needs this book—this is a great place to share a personal story about what motivated you to write it if that feels in keeping with the rest of the book’s tone.
If you’re writing a health, self-help, or business book, identify not only what problem the book is trying to solve but also what problem the reader is trying to solve. The reader has picked up your book with the hope that it will make their life better, so reassure them from the get-go that you understand their problem and are up to the task of solving it. This may look like describing the issue, the impact it has on the reader’s life, and all the failed interventions the reader has probably already tried. Essentially, you want to describe the reader so well that they feel seen and know immediately that this book was written for them.
If you’re writing in another nonfiction genre, such as history or biography, the reader may not naturally care about the problem your book is trying to solve—in that case, your intro has a little extra work to do. If possible, lead the reader to arrive at an understanding of the problem on their own: For example, you might ask a series of questions that prompt readers to think about your subject from a novel angle or plant seeds of doubt about the conventional wisdom on the subject. You also might pose questions that the reader isn’t yet able to answer, with the promise that they’ll be able to answer them by the end of the book. Allowing the reader to develop their own understanding of the issue (rather than immediately telling them what the problem is) makes them more invested in discovering the answers.
Examples:
“For most of us, our body is a black box….If only our bodies could speak to us, it would be a different story….We would make better decisions about what we ate. Our health would improve. Our lives would improve.” (Glucose Revolution)
“Despite the fact that I was hauling around excess weight, had high blood pressure, migraine headaches, arthritis, high cholesterol, and insulin resistance, I continued to believe that I was doing everything right….But a nagging voice inside my head kept asking the same question: ‘If I’m doing everything right, why is this happening to me?’ Does this sound eerily familiar? If you’re reading this book, you, too, probably know that something isn’t right, but you don’t know what.” [The author goes on to list interventions, such as diet and exercise, that the reader has likely tried and that probably haven’t worked.] (The Plant Paradox)
“If you find yourself carrying around a protuberant, uncomfortable wheat belly; unsuccessfully trying to squeeze into last year’s jeans; reassuring your doctor that, no, you haven’t been eating badly, but you’re still overweight and prediabetic with high blood pressure and cholesterol and a fatty liver…” (Wheat Belly, introduction to the first edition)
3) Give an overview of prevailing theories or conventional wisdom.
If you have something new to say about your subject (and you should!), you likely think that what others have said about the subject is wrong, or at least incomplete. Briefly give your reader the backstory: What are the prevailing theories about this subject? What do “most people” think? Why are “most people” wrong, or, why are the current perspectives incomplete?
Examples:
“Our nutritional choices are influenced by billion-dollar marketing campaigns aimed at making money for the food industry….These are usually justified under the guise of ‘what matters is how much you eat—processed foods and sugar aren’t inherently bad.’” (Glucose Revolution)
“While health ‘experts’ have pointed to our laziness, our addiction to fast food, our consumption of beverages full of high-fructose corn syrup, and the host of toxins in the environment as causes for our current ailments (and many others), sadly, they are wrong.” (The Plant Paradox)
“For more than thirty years, doctors have recommended a low-fat, calorie-reduced diet as the treatment of choice for obesity. Yet the obesity epidemic accelerates….By every objective measure, this treatment is completely and utterly ineffective. Yet it remains the treatment of choice, defended vigorously by nutritional authorities.” (The Obesity Code)
“Literally thousands of books are devoted to dieting and weight loss, usually written by doctors, nutritionists, personal trainers and other ‘health experts.’ However, with a few exceptions, rarely is more than a cursory thought spared for the actual causes of obesity….Current theories are ridiculously simplistic…” (The Obesity Code)
“Blessed by food manufacturers, extolled by dieticians, positioned on the most visible eye-level shelves in grocery stores, wheat is elevated to top of the list of foods to include in every meal by most doctors….Should we accept the common judgment that the largest epidemic of chronic health issues in history is due to laziness, sloth, moral weakness, failure to tally calories in and calories out, mysterious and unidentified viral infections, as is often done by the medical community?” (Wheat Belly, foreword to the revised and expanded edition)
4) Contrast what “most people” think with your unique argument and POV.
At this point, you’ve made it clear what the problem is and how most people try to address it. Now it’s time to reveal your “solution,” your book’s unique argument. Another way to think about this element: What’s your point of view, the perspective that makes your book different (and better) than other books on this subject or thinkers in this field?
Examples:
“What the science shows is that in the black box that is our body, there is one metric that affects all systems. If we understand this one metric and make choices to optimize it, we can greatly improve our physical and mental well-being. This metric is the amount of blood sugar, or glucose, in our blood.” (Glucose Revolution)
“I’ve discovered a significant part of the answer to the mystery of why our collective health has declined and our collective weight has risen so drastically in just a few decades—and it starts with plant proteins called lectins.” (The Plant Paradox)
“The Obesity Code will set forth a framework for understanding the condition of human obesity….What actually causes weight gain and what can we do about it? This question is the overall theme of this book.” (The Obesity Code)
“I am going to argue that the problem with the diet and health of most Americans…is not fat, not sugar, not the rise of the Internet and the demise of the agrarian lifestyle. It’s wheat—or what we are being sold that is called ‘wheat.’” (Wheat Belly, introduction to the first edition)
5) Acknowledge potential objections.
Remember, one of the purposes of the introduction is to give readers enough information to decide to keep reading the book. Don’t wait until later chapters to address the reader’s objections. If the reader has doubts about your argument at this stage, they won’t keep reading.
As you lay out your basic argument, anticipate the reader’s skepticism. How would a non-sympathetic reader respond to your points? Raising potential objections shows that you’re aware of and open to other perspectives, increases the reader’s trust in you, and gives the reader a voice in the book’s necessarily one-sided conversation. This is yet another chance to make the reader feel seen and to convince them that the book was written with them in mind.
Examples:
“What you have just read might seem so unbelievable that you may be wondering about the experience I’ve had that could have led to such claims, or if I’m even really a doctor.” (The Plant Paradox)
“It may not seem like much that we don’t feel amazing every morning, but if you could…wouldn’t you?” (Glucose Revolution)
“Extraordinary as these results may sound…” (Wheat Belly, introduction to the first edition)
“I recognize that declaring wheat a malicious food is like declaring that Ronald Reagan was a Communist. It may seem absurd, even unpatriotic, to demote an iconic dietary staple to the status of public health hazard.” (Wheat Belly, introduction to the first edition)
6) Convince the reader that you’re an expert and your information is trustworthy.
Now that you’ve given voice to the reader’s skepticism, you need to give them good reason to move past that skepticism and trust you. Why are you particularly qualified to write on the book’s subject? Why should the reader trust that the information you present is accurate and unbiased?
Examples:
“Throughout this book, I draw on cutting-edge science to explain why these hacks work and tell real-life stories that show them in action. You will see data taken from my own experiments and experiments from the Glucose Goddess community, an online community I have built and grown that has (at printing time) over 200,000 members. And you’ll read testimonials…” (Glucose Revolution)
“...after graduating from Yale University with honors, I got my MD from the Medical College of Georgia and then entered the cardiothoracic surgery program at the University of Michigan. I later won a prestigious fellowship in research at the National Institutes of Health.…Unlike so many authors and so-called health experts, this isn’t my first rodeo.” (The Plant Paradox)
“[My theory] is based on ample research, including my own papers, published in peer-reviewed medical journals…” (The Plant Paradox)
“I will reference only studies done on humans, and mostly only those that have been published in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals….As much as possible, I try to focus on causal factors rather than association studies.” (The Obesity Code)
“Many of the arguments I make in the chapters that follow have been proven in scientific studies that are available for one and all to review.” (Wheat Belly, introduction to the first edition)
7) Own up to your own previous misconceptions.
You likely arrived at your thesis because something you strongly believed turned out to be wrong, or you realized that you were contributing to a problem you thought you were solving. Share this experience with your readers. Rather than undermining your authority, this actually increases the reader’s trust in you: It indicates that you’re an honest, reasonable, relatable human being, and it endears you to your reader.
Examples:
“In short—do you know what the last thing you ate did to your body and mind? Many of us don’t. I certainly didn’t before I started learning about a molecule called glucose.” (Glucose Revolution)
“For a long time, I didn’t have a good answer for [patients]. That nagging unease grew. Like many doctors, I believed that weight gain was a caloric imbalance….But if that were so, why did the medication I prescribed—insulin—cause such relentless weight gain?...it seemed that the health profession was not even the least bit interested in treating [obesity]. I was guilty as charged. Despite having worked for more than twenty years in medicine, I found that my own nutritional knowledge was rudimentary, at best.” (The Obesity Code)
“For decades, I believed those lies as well. I was eating a ‘healthy’ diet (after all, I’m a heart surgeon).” (The Plant Paradox)
8) Explain how the reader will benefit from reading your book.
This step is pretty self-explanatory. If you haven’t made it clear already, make sure the reader understands what’s in it for them: how the book will help them, what they’ll take away from the reading, or what new perspective they’ll gain by the end of the book.
This isn’t a self-contained step. Rather, the reader should encounter an implicit or explicit enticement to read the book on nearly every page of the introduction. In this way, the introduction functions like the book’s sales pitch.
Examples:
“By the end of this book, you’ll be able to listen to the messages coming from your body—and understand what to do next. You’ll make empowered food decisions, no longer prey to marketing messages. Your health will improve, and so will your life.” (Glucose Revolution)
“You may feel that somehow you’re at fault for your poor health or your excess pounds, adding guilt to your heavy load….All that is about to change for you. Welcome to The Plant Paradox.” (The Plant Paradox)
9) Give a high-level roadmap to your book.
Most people like to know what they’re getting into, especially when they’re deciding how to spend their valuable time and money. Explicitly telling the reader what they can expect from your book is particularly important if the content or organization of your book isn’t intuitive.
Examples:
“This book is organized into three parts: (1) what glucose is and what we mean when we talk about glucose spikes, (2) why glucose spikes are harmful, and (3) what we can do to avoid spikes while still eating the food we love. In part 1, I explain….In part 2, I describe….In part 3, I’ll show you how….” (Glucose Revolution)
“...I’ll spend Part I explaining the often shocking and frequently amazing story of those root causes and how they have affected most of us over the last several decades. When you get to Part II, you’ll learn how to start the program with a three-day cleanse….In Part III, I’ll provide meal plans and simple but delectable recipes for all three phases of the Plant Paradox Program.” (The Plant Paradox)
“Part 1 of this book, ‘The Epidemic,’ explores the timeline of the obesity epidemic and the contribution of the patient’s family history, and shows how both shed light on the underlying causes. Part 2, ‘The Calorie Deception,’ reviews the current caloric theory…” (The Obesity Code)
10) End with a brief reiteration of what the reader will get out of the book.
Again, every few pages should include a promise—implicit or explicit—to the reader: This is how you’ll benefit from reading this book. Make your final pitch as the reader gets to a natural stopping point in the book. Even if they close the book to go to work or catch the bus or put in a load of laundry, they should be intrigued enough to pick the book back up again later (or intrigued enough to click the purchase button or check the book out from the library).
Examples:
“Follow the complete program and I promise you will banish most, if not all, of your health problems, achieve a healthy weight, reboot your energy level, and elevate your mood.” (The Plant Paradox)
Introduction Checklist
Use the questions below to make sure your introduction covers all the essentials.
Does the first sentence appeal directly to the reader with a question, an experience they can relate to, or a statement that’s surprising or counterintuitive?
Within the first few paragraphs, is it clear what problem the book is trying to solve or need it’s trying to fill? Is the reader convinced it’s a real problem or need?
Does the introduction explain why the reader should care about the problem?
Is the thesis or argument clear? Does the book have a unique, compelling POV?
Is it clear what the reader will get out of the book?
Is it clear what makes this book/approach unique or better than other books/approaches?
Does the introduction acknowledge the reader’s skepticism and/or anticipate reader objections?
Does the introduction explain why the author is a trusted authority?
Is it clear why the information is trustworthy?
Is there a high-level roadmap to the book?
At the end of the introduction, is there a brief summary of what the book is/will do and what the reader will get out of it?
