What makes a business book good?

One of my favorite clients is writing his first e-book and has been sending me drafts, asking for my professional opinion about whether the book is “there” yet. It’s a tough question to answer since “there” means such different things to different people. But it did get me thinking about what makes the difference between a book or e-book I’m excited about and one that makes me think, “I can’t believe somebody is actually charging $19.95 for this.”

What does “there” look like? It’s easy to judge from the bleachers as a reader, but harder to keep perspective in mid-game when you’re the writer. We all know that it’s better to be useful than clever. The basic principles they teach in technical communication class are the basic characteristics successful business books have in common.

The good ones:

• Have a beginning, middle, and end, which appear in that order.
• Make sure the table of contents matches the chapter and section headings exactly.
• Decide what to put in and what to leave out based on what the reader needs to know, not what the author is itching to say.
• Present the material in a logical, linear sequence, even if the topic is not intrinsically linear.
• Write for a specific audience and have a clear purpose, as in “After reading this book, you will be able to do X.”

Sounds so obvious and so straightforward from the outside — but it’s amazing how easy it can be to get lost in the thick of the process and lose track of the bigger picture as my group and I work through the first drafts of our own books. And there’s more! Somehow in addition to the basics above, good non-fiction books also manage to be readable and even entertaining.

Do you read many business books? If you do, what do your favorites have in common that we could add to this list?