You’re excited. You’re finally ready to write that book. But before you do, let’s break down if your big idea has any “publishable” insight to make it a real success story.
Most people don’t struggle with ideas.
They struggle with focus.
They want to tell their story but they gush it like a drunk friend, meandering around and not getting to the point for hours.
That’s no way to win a big publishing contract.
If you’re a leader, founder, or survivor of something hard, you probably carry a dozen book-worthy concepts around in your head.
Do any of these sound like you?
I want to write about resilience.
I have a new way of thinking about leadership.
I’ve learned so much from my business journey. It could help people.
Those are important seeds. But they’re not yet what an agent, editor, or reader is looking for.
The gap between a “big idea” and a “publishable insight” is where a lot of manuscripts stall, fizzle, or never quite land.
Let’s close that gap.
Big Idea vs. Publishable Insight
A big idea is expansive. It sounds like:
- “Leadership needs to change.”
- “Stories matter in business.”
- “We don’t talk about grief honestly enough.”
It’s true, meaningful, and probably connected to years of experience but it’s huge. It’s a Great Lake of content. It’s vast and it may be deep, but it’s also too much of those things.
A “publishable insight” is narrower and sharper.
It sounds like:
- “Most leaders try to inspire with strategy decks. The ones people remember inspire with one defining story.”
- “Most leaders communicate in bullet points. The ones who stick in people’s minds communicate in moments and images.”
- “We don’t heal from grief by ‘moving on.’ We heal by finding a story we can live with.”
See the difference?
A big idea is a cloud.
A publishable insight is a beam of light shining through that cloud and hitting one specific thing.
Publishable writing is built around beams, not clouds. You want someone to be able to sum up the general concept of your book and the highlights. You want them to recognize the differentiator so they can connect with it.
If you’ve ever used a magnifying glass to start a fire, you know that the beam of light has to be concentrated to start the blaze and you get there by holding the glass close to the pavement. Holding the magnifying glass far away does nothing to create that sizzle.
So how do you get to that concentrated moment of fire?
This is how I walk my clients through it.
Step 1: Start with the Reader’s Moment, Not Your Concept
When your idea is big, it’s tempting to start at 30,000 feet.
Instead, start here:
“Where is my reader sitting when this idea actually matters?”
Are they:
- Staring at a blank slide the night before a board meeting?
- Holding a resignation letter they’re not sure they should send?
- Sitting in a quiet house after a diagnosis, wondering what happens next?
A big idea becomes publishable the moment it meets a specific moment of need.
Ask yourself:
1. What is my reader trying to do that isn’t working?
2. What belief or assumption is keeping them stuck?
3. What is the one shift in perspective I can offer that would change their next decision?
Your answer to #3 is the seed of a publishable insight.
Step 2: Articulate Your “for who / so that” Sentence
If your idea can’t survive a single, clear sentence, it won’t survive a proposal, let alone a book.
Use this simple test:
“This is a book/article about X for Y so they can Z.”
Examples:
- “This is a book about storytelling as a leadership tool for founders and executives so they can earn trust and move people to act without burning them out.”
- “This is an article about failure for mid-career leaders so they can turn a public setback into a credible story instead of a quiet shame.”
- “This is a memoir about caregiving for adult children of aging parents so they can feel less alone and make decisions without constant guilt.”
I often hear, “My story is for everyone.”
Is it?
Is it for sports fanatics? Grieving parents? Middle-schoolers? People working in a factory in a town where the factory is the biggest employer and they just announced a shutdown?
Could all of those people enjoy your book? Sure, especially if you’re funny and they need a laugh or an escape.
But there are probably a few groups of people out there that once they read the subtitle or book jacket, they immediately look for the way to hand you their money.
We want those people. And once we know who they are, we’re going to write specifically for them.
If you can’t fill in those blanks with specifics yet, your idea is still in “cloud” form.
Stay with the concept until it feels almost too specific. That’s where traction lives.
Step 3: Find the Question Your Book Is Really Answering
Big ideas like to stay declarative:
- “Stories matter.”
- “Mindset matters.”
- “Resilience matters.”
Publishable insights answer a question your reader is already asking, often quietly.
Try reframing your idea as a question:
- “How do I lead people through change when I’m not sure I believe the vision yet myself?”
- “How do I tell my story without oversharing or sounding self-centered?”
- “How do I turn what happened to me into something useful for other people?”
Once you have the core question, your structure becomes much clearer:
Your chapters or sections are the honest attempts at answering it.
Your stories are proof that your answers have been lived, not just theorized.
Your insights are the hooks readers underline, repeat, and share.
No clear question? The writing will wander.
A well-shaped question is a quiet contract with your reader: If you give me your attention, I’ll help you explore this.
Step 4: Choose One Transformation, Not Ten
Here’s another place books lose their publishable shape: trying to change everything. I made this mistake as a newbie non-fiction writer years ago. I had so much I wanted to convey my writing was like a firehose of information. That would’ve been fine for a hermit living alone on a mountain with no other distractions and only my writing to read it. Perfect for someone who could digest everything I wrote and give each concept the time it required. But that’s not how people live these days.
If you want them to remember your message, you need to distill it in the simplest ways.
Ask yourself:
“If my reader finishes this piece and only one thing changes, what is it?”
Maybe:
- They stop hiding behind data and share one honest story.
- They reframe their “failure” as a turning point instead of a dead end.
- They see their lived experience as expertise, not a side note.
That’s your transformation.
Now reality-check it by asking yourself:
- Can I illustrate this shift with 3–7 strong stories or examples?
- Can I explain it in a way that doesn’t require my reader to reinvent their whole life?
- Does this transformation tie directly back to my “for who / so that” sentence?
When you focus on one core transformation, your big idea stops being a lecture and becomes a journey your reader can actually complete.
Step 5: Build a Spine Before You Build Chapters
Whether you’re writing a 1,500-word article or a 60,000-word manuscript, you need a spine: a simple structural throughline that everything else hangs on.
A spine might look like:
- A 3-part journey: Before → Turning Point → After.
- A 5-step framework.
- A set of themed sections (e.g., Identity, Voice, Influence, Legacy).
Here’s a simple exercise:
1. Write your “for who / so that” sentence at the top of a page.
2. Underneath, list 5–7 sentences that could finish this phrase: “To get my reader from where they are to where they want to be, they need to understand that…”
3. Each of those sentences is a potential chapter, section, or key point.
You’ve just moved from big, amorphous idea to a publishable structure. Editors, agents, and sophisticated readers can work with that.
Step 6: Turn Lived Moments into Proof, Not Decoration
In publishable work, stories don’t exist just because they happened. They exist because they prove something. While this concept is important in real life, it’s tremendously important when you only have 60,000-70,000 words.
How often have you been to a cocktail party and someone is going on and on about something that happened to them and you’re wondering why are they telling us this? If you’re lucky, you get to the tie-in at the end. If you’re not, you may walk away still unsure of why they regaled you with their inconsequential experience.
To keep this from happening to you, take one core insight, for example, “Your defining story as a leader isn’t the moment you succeeded. It’s the moment you almost walked away.”
Now ask:
- When did I live that?
- When have my clients or colleagues lived it?
- What did that moment reveal that nothing else could?
Choose 2–4 pivotal moments and map them like this:
- What was at stake?
- What choice was made?
- What changed because of that choice?
- What does this story demonstrate about my big idea?
- When you connect each story to a specific insight, your book or article stops feeling like “a bunch of things that happened” and starts reading like a coherent argument with a memorable purpose.
Step 7: Test Your Insights in the Wild
Before you invest fully in a book-length project or pitch, test your insight where it’s cheap to be wrong:
- Share a short LinkedIn post about your core idea.
- Offer a 20-minute talk or lunch-and-learn centered on your key question.
- Have three conversations with people who match your target reader and watch: Where do their eyes light up? Where do they push back? Where do they say, “No one ever talks about that part”?
You’re looking for signs of resonance and relief:
“I’ve never heard it put that way.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling.”
“Can you say more about that?”
That feedback helps you refine your language, deepen your examples, and often discover the real insight hiding underneath your original idea.
## Step 8: Decide the Right Container: Article, Series, or Book?
Not every big idea needs to go straight to a book. Sometimes the most strategic move is to:
- Start with a signature article that captures your core insight.
- Expand into a 3–5 piece series exploring different angles of the same question.
- Then decide whether the response justifies a full proposal or manuscript.
Good questions to ask:
Can this idea be fully explored in 1,500–3,000 words or do my reader and I genuinely need 40,000+ words to walk through this transformation?
Is this concept stronger as a tight, definitive piece of thought leadership, or as a longer journey with stories, frameworks, and reflection?
Publishable insight isn’t always about scale.
It’s about fit — the right idea in the right container for the right reader.
Is Your Story Ready Checklist
Your idea is moving toward “publishable” when you can:
- Name a specific reader and a specific moment of need.
- Say, in one sentence: “This is a book/article about X for Y so they can Z.”
- Frame your idea around a clear question the reader already feels.
- Point to one core transformation you’re offering.
- Outline a simple spine of 3–7 key points or stages.
- Pair each point with real stories or examples that prove it.
- See real-world resonance when you share snippets of the idea.
From there, the writing becomes less “mystical” and more like what it really is: a structured, compassionate act of communication.
If your big idea won’t leave you alone…
If you’re sitting with a big, persistent idea that won’t quiet down, it’s usually a sign there’s something there.
You don’t have to decide today whether it’s an article, a keynote, or a book.
You just have to take the next step toward clarity:
- Write your “for who / so that” sentence.
- Name the question your reader is really asking.
- Sketch the 3–7 things they’d need to understand or experience to change.
From there, shaping it into a publishable form is craft.
And craft can be learned, supported, and shared.
If you’d like a strategic partner in that process, that’s the work I do every day: helping leaders and survivors turn big, messy, important ideas into clear stories and manuscripts that can actually make it into the world.
But whether we work together or not, your idea deserves that chance.
After all, your story could become someone else’s lifeline.