When you write a book with us, we divide the process into two fundamental steps:

1. With you, define as precisely as possible the book you want to write.
2. Help you write that.

The following diagram shows how we view the whole process of producing a book, from its inception, right through to getting it to the end-reader:

Viewing the process like this emphasizes that a lot of the real work is done before you start writing the words. You decide on:

• The scope of your book.
• Your ideal reader, and what he or she need to know.
• The pre-requisites -- what you can take for granted.
• The "architecture" of the book -- the order in which you will present the information, to make it easy for the reader to learn with you, and to avoid using concepts or techniques which you haven't yet explained.

In our experience, the more time you spend on this, the easier the second step - actually writing - becomes, and it save you a lot of time and false starts.

When you have defined what you're going to write, and the order in which you're going to do it, "filling in the words" into your framework or structure is relatively straightforward.