In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan speaks with book coaches and developmental editors Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty, co-founders of Book Structure Pros and authors of The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: Plan, Write, and Publish Your Non-Fiction Book. Drawing on 65+ years in publishing and work on over 600 nonfiction books, they explain why subject matter experts are an underused source of powerful prescriptive (advice-based) nonfiction, and why publishers care as much about an author’s platform as the quality of the manuscript. They emphasize that experts don’t need to be “writers” if they follow a clear process, and share how they themselves used the same 25-activity framework they teach to plan and write their own book.
Central to their philosophy is the idea that in nonfiction the reader—not the author—is the main character. Everything from topic choice to structure and anecdotes should serve the reader’s needs and problems. Before writing a single word, they advise experts to: understand their target reader and market, define the specific problem their book solves, develop a solid outline, and start building an author platform—framed as “community” to make it less daunting, especially for introverts. They also reframe the book as a business tool and calling card that drives speaking, consulting, and impact, rather than the primary source of revenue, and leave listeners with one actionable mindset shift: stop writing “about something” and start writing for someone.
SHOW LINKS
Pre-order the book: The Complete Expert to Author Guide
GUEST BIO
Elizabeth Dougherty and Marisa Solis have been in publishing for a combined 65 years and have worked on more than 600 books. As coaches and editors, they're on a mission to help aspiring authors change the world one book at a time. They are the coauthors of The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: Plan, Write, and Publish Your Nonfiction Book. Through their boutique editorial services company, Book Structure Pros, they guide subject-matter experts through authorship — offering book coaching, developmental editing, manuscript assessments, and book proposal development, along with customized workshops, webinars, and speaking events.
CONNECT WITH MARISA & ELIZABETH
Website: bookstructurepros.com
LinkedIn (Marisa): linkedin.com/in/marisasolis
LinkedIn (Elizabeth): linkedin.com/in/eldougherty
Instagram: instagram.com/bookstructurepros
CONNECT WITH SCOTT
entrepreneurtoauthor.com
grammarfactory.com
LinkedIn (@scottmacmillan): linkedin.com/in/scottmacmillan
Instagram (@scottamacmillan) instagram.com/scottamacmillan
Episode Transcript
Please note: The transcript is produced by a third-party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.
Scott MacMillan:
You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast.
Announcer
Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott MacMillan.
Scott:
My guests today are Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty, book coaches, developmental editors, and the co-founders of Book Structure Pros. Between them, they've spent a combined 65 years in publishing and worked on more than 600 non-fiction books, helping subject matter experts turn what they know into books that genuinely land with readers. Now they've channeled all of that into their own new book, The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: Plan, write, and publish your non-fiction book. Marisa, Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
Elizabeth:
Thank you for having us.
Scott:
You both spent a combined 65 years of publishing, like I said in the intro, and worked on something like 600 books between you. Tell us how Book Structure Pro came to be and how the two of you ended up partnering on this venture.
Marisa:
Yeah, I'll start, Scott. So we are longtime book coaches and developmental editors, and I thought your listeners might benefit from understanding what those jobs entail. So a book coach is someone who walks a person through the entire publishing process.
So really looking at the big picture of authorship, not just writing a book, but the complete package. And a developmental editor is someone who is working with either a book idea or the manuscript or parts of the manuscript and really shaping that into something that resembles a book. So it's a very high level of editing.
And we got our starts in publishing pretty early. Elizabeth started in 1988. I started in 1996.
I was still a junior in college. And then we met in 2006. Elizabeth was working in San Francisco in-house at Weldon Owen Publishing.
And I was a new freelancer. I had left my in-house role and was looking for freelance work, and she hired me. We had an introduction, a warm introduction.
And she hired me, and we stayed in touch over the years. And it wasn't until COVID and the kind of quarantine chaos and uncertainty of the world that really brought us together, because I think we were both craving the collegial atmosphere that you had in person. And so we sort of decided on a virtual sort of a water cooler moment where every two weeks we would get together and really talk about what we were working on, which was separate at the time.
We had our own clients and our own mishaps and accomplishments that we would share. And so it was really wonderful. So we bonded over during COVID.
And then in 2023, we had the idea to do a workshop for writers, a three-day in-person intensive, which was focused really on outlining the book, because that's where we felt readers, I'm sorry, aspiring authors really needed the most help with. And ultimately the workshop, due to a variety of reasons, did not happen. But our book came out of sort of our anger and disappointment at the workshop not happening.
We had a lot of material in thinking about how to help authors. With this workshop, we were able to develop an outline for our book.
Scott:
Amazing. Amazing. A lot of changes since 1998 and 1996 in the publishing world.
Am I right? Just a few. That's all right.
One thing that I thought was quite interesting is you say that experts are an undertapped author source. What do you mean by that? And what is it about subject matter experts that perhaps the traditional publishing world has missed?
Elizabeth:
I'm going to take this one. So traditional publishers, we deal with a specific type of nonfiction and the technical term is prescriptive nonfiction. We prefer advice based nonfiction.
But it's a type of transformational writing where the reader has a problem and the author has a solution. So essentially from the beginning of the book to the end of the book, you are promising the reader that in some way their life will be better. And who better positioned to solve problems than experts?
But a few things have to happen for them to actually get the attention of a publisher. And so the first thing is three things. First thing is that they actually need to recognize that they are experts.
And that may sound a bit silly, but we work with tenured college professors who have imposter syndrome and don't realize the richness that they have to share with someone. Then the second, the biggest hurdle is that they then need to be able to see themselves in the role of author. And you'll hear, but I'm not a writer.
I don't have writing experience. And we can actually coach them through that. We can't manufacture expertise and wisdom and knowledge.
And so once they do that, writing prescriptive nonfiction is not the same as creative writing. I would never attempt to write a poem. I would never attempt to write a novel, but I can clearly communicate and we have a system to clearly communicate.
So by giving experts that opportunity to see themselves as authors, that's a huge challenge to overcome. And then the last thing that they need to do is they need to be visible and experts are busy people. They're leading experts in their field.
They're off doing their good work and they're not necessarily thinking about, oh, what happens when somebody goals my name? Does my social media come up? Do I have enough followers on LinkedIn?
That's not necessarily what they're thinking about, but the publishers are thinking about that because a book will not succeed on the quality alone. That's a myth. And people think, well, my book will sell itself.
The book is not the product. The author is the product and the authoritativeness that the author brings to the table. And so book publishers aren't asking, is it a good book?
They're asking, can we sell this book? And so in order to make it the publishing path and get the publisher's attention, all of those things really need to come together.
Scott:
That's really helpful. And you're absolutely right. This is something that I talk to authors all the time about is this idea that particularly with traditional publishers, they're not just acquiring the rights to the book, right?
They're acquiring the author's platform because they need to be certain that they can sell a certain number of books in order to recoup their investment. So I'm really glad that you laid that out. And that was very, very clear.
Let's talk about your book, The Complete Expert to Author Guide. It's a very descriptive title, which I love. It's very clear about what the book's about and really who it's for.
Talk to me a little bit about what someone should walk away with after they've read the book. What should they be able to do after having read the book?
Marisa:
The number one thing that they should be able to do is finish their book. I know it sounds simplistic, but our mission is to make sure that when you sit down to write, you have all the tools and the support you need to finish your manuscript. So I mean, the simple answer is they'll be able to finish their manuscript.
But we offer a step-by-step guide, so they will be empowered with 25 different activities and tools that they can apply while they're writing or revising their manuscript. So they will be able to do this on their own strategically.
Scott:
Beautiful. Very, very.
Elizabeth:
I just wanted to jump in there. I sew, and I would never attempt to sew anything without a pattern and instructions. And so there's this, again, mythology that if you want to write a book, you should just sit down and write.
And that's the worst thing you can do, because there's foundational work that needs to be done before you start. And if you then can follow the instructions, it becomes almost a paint-by-number.
Scott:
Yeah, if you don't have that plan in front of you, you can waste a lot of time writing words that never make it into the final book, can't you?
Elizabeth:
Mm-hmm.
Marisa:
Yeah.
Marisa:
And I will say, you know, fiction is a different beast. And so there is the creative process and the creative challenge of sitting down, typing chapter one and going for it and letting your character sort of, you know, speak for themselves and develop. It is different for prescriptive nonfiction.
Our book isn't designed for as a resource on the craft of writing. It's really the craft of authorship. We're giving instructions on how to become an author.
As long as you are willing, you don't need writing experience, but as long as you're willing to follow a process that delivers results, our book will be helpful.
Scott:
You talked about the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and, you know, one important concept with fiction writing is the idea of characters. And there's this idea at the heart of your work that I really love. It's the idea that the main character of a nonfiction book, it isn't the author, right?
It's the reader. Could you unpack that a little bit for us? Because, you know, I suspect a lot of would-be authors who are writing their first book get that backwards.
Elizabeth:
They absolutely do. They write the book that they would want to have had, and that places themselves at the center. So one of the first things that happens when you say, I'm going to write a book is people say, well, what is it about?
And that's perfectly logical. There's a topic, but it's not the right question. The question is, who is the book for?
So when you're doing advice-based nonfiction, your reader has a problem and you have a solution and you need to understand who exactly that reader is. You need to know what keeps them up at night. You need to address their pain points.
And so we are a broken record about this. I know that you said it's the heart of the book, but almost everything, when you have a question, you just have to go back to what would the reader want? Does this serve the reader?
Okay. I have an anecdote. Well, does it move it forward for the reader or is it more self-serving because it's a good story about my life?
And so it has to do with always putting the reader at the heart of what happens and at the heart of what you're doing. Because if you write a book for yourself, your target audience is one, one person. Whereas if you write a book for a, you know, a target market of people where you are benefiting them with what you're doing, then the world opens up.
Scott:
Yeah. That's so interesting. And I tell people all the time that the same book or rather the same topic written for two different audiences is going to be a very different book, right?
The language is going to be different. The stories, the examples are going to be different. The takeaways are going to be different.
And so that really is such an important piece. And, you know, I'd love to talk about the writing process for your book. You know, you coach people through writing books for a living, but what was it like to turn the lens on yourselves and actually write your own book?
Did anything surprise you in the process?
Elizabeth:
Okay. I am the poster child for this, so I'm going to take this one. So one of the chapters is about getting stuck.
And the three big culprits are procrastination, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome. And I suffered from all of them. So when Marisa said we should write a book, and this podcast is for entrepreneurs, she is the entrepreneur in this pair.
I'm like from the Midwest, do the work, it's in service to others, you know, that's your reward. And she says, she thinks boldly, much more boldly than I do, she's the entrepreneur here. And so when she said to me, let's write a book, I, with 38 years as a developmental editor and my master's degree from Northwestern, you know, Medill School of Journalism, I said, well, who am I?
I'm not an expert. So it actually took my best friend, who's been my friend since my first job, and Marisa saying, Elizabeth, give us a break. You are an expert, you have something to say.
One of the things I want to really say is never write in isolation, because this is what the writing was like. I had Marisa as a collaborator. We wrote half the chapters, and then we edited each other's chapters.
And in terms of being on the receiving end of developmental edit comments, I'm like, oh my, I have to do some hard work here. But through collaboration, by the end, I almost had forgotten who had done the first draft of a chapter and, you know, who hadn't. But one thing I really want to emphasize is we followed our own process.
We wrote out our problem. We did the solution. We did the takeaways.
We did the promise. We did the outline on the wall. Everything that we tell people to do, we did.
And so we had that plan. And so when she said, you know, you take the chapter on getting stuck, because, well, I know how to overcome these things. I knew exactly what was going to be in the chapter, because we already had an outline.
And I already knew the material, because we'd already done an inventory of our content. All I had to do is put it together.
Scott:
Brilliant. Brilliant. You talk about five things, too, that every aspiring author should do before they write a single word.
And you've talked about some of those already. But in terms of that list, what's on that list, and which one would you say that people most often skip?
Marisa:
I'll take that one. So the five things that we see experts, including entrepreneurs, most often skipping are, I'll understanding the target reader, really defining the problem that their book is solving, developing an outline, which we just talked about, and building their author platform, or at least postponing the building of the author platform. So quickly, in terms of market analysis, your listeners will likely be familiar with doing product development and really knowing the competition, what else is out there like the product that they're bringing to market?
And it's the same for a book. You want to be able to know what the competition is. And so one of the exercises in our book is we challenge authors to go to the library or a bookstore, find the place on the shelf that their book would live, and then study the books to the left and right of those and really read them.
Look at who the author is, look at their credentials, look at how the book is organized, just to understand the competition. And in terms of target reader, really understanding who you're writing the book for is so important. And one of the things that's overlooked is that you can ask your reader any question that you would ask of an editor and find an answer that improves your book, just like Elizabeth had talked about earlier.
So that is really important. And then problem, being able to really fine-tune and pinpoint the problem so that a reader will be able to get out of the book the solution that they have been promised. And then outline, we've talked about that is the most often skipped and not because they're doing it intentionally.
I think that a lot of aspiring authors may have nightmares from high school language arts classes, and they're like, I don't want to do an outline. Plus, this is already in my head, what do I need an outline for? But the outline that we propose is a lot different from high school outlines that folks may have done.
So it's such a supportive tool. And then in terms of building out author platform, really the moment that you decide to write a book is the moment that you should start increasing how you are public in the world. Most aspiring authors put it off too late.
Then when it's time to leverage their connections, they aren't made.
Scott:
That's really interesting. The author platform piece in particular, I think a lot of entrepreneurs and experts, I think subject matter experts in particular, a lot of times they're probably writing a book because they feel like maybe they're a little bit introverted and they feel like getting their expertise out on the page as a book is a way to stay out of the limelight. And in my experience, there's often a bit of resistance to that idea of getting out there and putting themselves front and center in an effort to promote their book.
And of course, their book is to promote their business and to promote them. Do you have advice for those introverted experts who maybe are hesitant to put themselves out there?
Elizabeth:
I'm going to take this one. My second favorite chapter is about building an author platform, but I reframe it into building your community. And I think it makes the world of difference.
And so when you build your community, you seek out your competitors, other experts. You reach out to where you go, where your readers would be. So if you're a health care professional and there are Facebook groups, you join the Facebook groups.
You take someone out to coffee who would be your reader virtually or in person. And what you do is it's kind of funny because I'm old enough to remember the happy hours where you're just trying to collect a lot of business cards, which is very, very transactional. And what I think about with community is that you give even more than you receive.
And so, for example, when it comes to I'm thinking about writing a book, one of the first things you should do is reach out to the top expert and say, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. You know, I really admire what you do. And you would be very surprised at how generous a lot of experts are.
They care deeply about people understanding what they do. And they're often very generous. One of the funniest examples that we have in the book is that I write a lot, actually, about health care mainly.
And I was writing a book about how prayer affects the brain. It just was what it was. And it turns out there is a world expert who's written over a dozen books on this.
He's actually an MD. He's a neuroscientist. So I just found his email and said, hey, can you talk to me?
He's like, sure, would love to. You know, if you don't ask, you're never going to get an answer. But to be part of that community.
And that's really, I have to say, before I got in the podcast here, I was writing personal letters to people I haven't seen in decades, to my editorial assistant, who's now a senior editor at Chronicle Books, and reaching out to all these people. And it was just so heartwarming because I know that I've supported them over the years. And I know that they're going to support me right now.
And so I find a lot of joy in building the author platform. And I'm an extreme introvert because I've had mentorships over the years where I've mentored people who are coming into the profession and doing that sort of stuff. And it's immensely satisfying for me.
And so I encourage my authors to think big and think wide. And I actually read this great tip the other day on LinkedIn. And Marisa, you're going to have to help me because I want to attribute it.
It's Hussein. We talked yesterday. Essentially, what Hussein said is a great place to start is by just creating a spreadsheet.
Then one thing says inner circle and one says outer circle. And what you do is you just start filling in the blanks. And that's how you build community as a first step for an introvert.
But Marisa, can you repeat his name for us?
Marisa:
Hussein Al-Baiaty (founder of Rising Authors)
Scott:
Very good. Good. So for your clients, you know, and ours too, at Grammar Factory, a book usually isn't the end goal, right?
It's a tool for their business often. How do you see experts using their books out in the world once it's on their desk, in the market? You know, what are the ways that you see experts using their book at the end of the day?
Elizabeth:
I work with a lot of people in leadership. Women's leadership has been one of my topical expertise areas for about 20 plus years. And it's a calling card.
They don't expect to make money on the book. You hope to not lose money on the book. Where you make your money is you're able to increase your speaking fees.
You're able to get more speaking engagements. You're able to get more consulting engagements. You're marketing in your reach, especially if you're published by a prestigious publishing house.
You know, if somebody writes a book for Harvard Business Review, people are going to sit up and take notice. And so it's something that is a great business tool. But I actually want to say one more thing that's important for finishing your book.
And we ask in chapter one, why are you writing this book? What would you see as success? And it can be very straightforward to say, I want to raise my speaking fee.
I want more speaking gigs. I want to develop a workshop out of this. There are lots of things.
But what will sustain you when writing gets hard is something that's more values driven. So it may be that you're in a healthcare profession and what drives you anyway is helping people. And if you're doing something hourly, like doing therapy, the fact that you can reach out and have that amplified voice to help thousands of other people outside your office walls, that's a motivating factor.
So when it gets tough, that's what you reach for. It's not that you're reaching for, I want to speak more.
Scott:
Yeah, that's a really good distinction, right? They're the business goals that you have, but then, you know, what is it within you that is motivating you to get your message out? Let me turn that on the two of you specifically.
So, you know, this book is also a business asset for Book Structure Pros. You know, how are you thinking about what it does for your own business and what really drove you to get the book done?
Elizabeth:
Well, what really drove us is that we did our market analysis and we filled the market gap. There are thousands of books, millions of books on the craft of writing, but actually addressing in today's market, how do you go from an idea to publish a book? And a lot has changed over the years.
So I'm talking about right now today where you have things like, am I self-publishing, which wasn't a real option a decade ago? And why does it take two years with a traditional publisher and really understanding from start to finish what is involved in that publishing journey? So it makes our job easier because we have distilled the process into 25 activities and we have a system where with our own clients, we work through these activities.
They are time tested. They are real world tested. They are the way we help people finish books.
But on the other hand, not everyone can afford a developmental editor or a book coach. And we are very values driven in why we wrote this book. We believe strongly that there are experts out there who can transform lives and they can do it for more people if they could write a book.
And we give them that tool to write the book. So we feel like almost by proxy that we can help transform more lives for the better.
Scott:
Oh, wonderful. So writing the book is obviously a bit of a Herculean effort, but with the right process, with the right approach, it's much more accessible. But I know that there are experts listening to this podcast right now who are sitting on a book that they keep meaning to write and they just haven't put pen to paper.
What's one thing that you would tell them to do this week?
Marisa:
I'll take that one. So the one thing that they can do is shift their mindset from writing about something to writing for someone.
Scott:
I love that. I love that. Always back to the reader, right?
Marisa:
Yeah, always back to the reader.
Scott:
Marisa and Elizabeth, for anyone who wants to get their hands on a copy of the Complete Expert to Author Guide or work with you both, where's the best place to find you?
Elizabeth:
Well, the business name of our partnership is Book Structure Pros. And there's a reason we put structure in the word, because we feel like we give people the structure in order to succeed in writing a book. So it's bookstructurepros.com.
Marisa:
We are also on LinkedIn @bookstructurepros and on Instagram.
Scott:
Excellent. We'll put all of those links in the show notes so that it's very easy for people to find you. Marisa, Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today.
You know what stays with me from this conversation is that reframe, right? That the reader, not the author, is the real main character of the book. And look, that's the kind of shift that changes an entire manuscript.
And it's clearly earned from the 600 books worth of work that you've done. And I really appreciate you sharing it so generously with us.
Marisa:
You're welcome.
Elizabeth:
Thank you so much for having us. It was a joy.
Scott:
As we wrap up this episode of Entrepreneur to Author, remember this. Now is the time. Time to write, time to publish, and time to grow.
I'm Scott MacMillan. Until next time.
