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Many Nonfiction books exist to sell an idea to the reader. If you’re self-publishing something in the coaching world, or are a motivational speaker or consultant—as many of our clients at Victory Vision Publishing, Inc. are—then the conclusion should sell your professional services, such as a group coaching package or one-to-one coaching. It should make someone . . .
by Adam G. Fleming
Many Nonfiction books exist to sell an idea to the reader. If you’re self-publishing something in the coaching world, or are a motivational speaker or consultant—as many of our clients at Victory Vision Publishing, Inc. are—then the conclusion should sell your professional services, such as a group coaching package or one-to-one coaching. It should make someone want to hire you to come speak to their company, to their board of directors, employees, shareholders, or something like that. It should inspire action, which means it should include a call to action. If there is a call to action, there must be some outstanding question, some sense that the reader cannot simply consume the information in the book and figure things out for themselves. They still need you, the expert, to come along and help them. This means that your call to action is riding on the back of a question that remains unanswered.
If the book is a memoir, you may be selling a conclusion. Many of our clients at VVP have written memoirs that detail very difficult circumstances in their lives and share stories of how they found healing and hope. In this case, their conclusion may be to convince someone of a path toward spiritual healing and encourage the reader to follow the same path. This, too, is a call to action. Again, if you leave a question unanswered, the conclusion will be stronger. Perhaps the question is this: do you have the grit and resilience to follow through on the same path that I’ve outlined for you? Who can help you get there?
I suppose that when writing a biography, a real-life story about an important person, it might be the author’s intent to write something as unbiased as possible. In this case, you leave the reader with an open question like, “Was Abe Lincoln really a good guy? What about his failings in this area or that?” Other biographers might be more biased and offer more of a conclusion, like, “Hitler was definitely bad, and here’s how we can avoid our country falling into the clutches of the next evil Hitler-type of leader.”
All nonfiction books should be informative and deliver value, which means they need to have a definite point that gets recapped toward the end of the book.
At the same time, don’t forget that all books should pose the reader some sort of question.
Do I believe what the author believes?
Do I want what the author is selling?
Do I want to do what the author is suggesting I should do?
What is my next step?
Note: You do not need to ask these questions specifically, but the question could be there in what is NOT said, or what is NOT given in the conclusion. If you have a next step that the reader needs to take to work with you at a deeper level, make sure they can find it easily enough in the book.
Check out the links here to Part 1: How to end a Book, and Part 2 How to end a Novel.
Interested in talking? Contact adam@victoryvision.org for a conversation and there’s a good chance he’ll send you a book after you’ve chatted!
Adam G. Fleming, PCC, has been working in leadership/executive coaching since 2007. He published his first novel in 2012 and his first book on coaching (The Art of Motivational Listening, Entrust Source Publishing) in 2015. He now has 16 titles available on Amazon. He is the CEO and lead ghostwriter for Victory Vision Publishing, Inc.
