Say that you and your significant other decided to build a new home on the cheap. You hire the least expensive and—not coincidentally—the least experienced architectural firm in town. Yelp reviews be damned.

You explain to your new partners that your new dwelling needs to contain:

• Four bedrooms.
• Three bathrooms.
• A kitchen.
• A dedicated office.
• Some windows.
• A garage.
• A front door.

You don’t want to be bothered with deets. “Just figure it out,” you tell the firm. You then go off the grid.

In a year, the architects and builders have completed your home. Are you two going to be happy?

Glaring Omissions

Possible, but unlikely. There are myriad ways to design homes. Think about what you both didn’t specify:

• The number of floors.
• The home’s style.
• The size of each room.
• The height of your ceilings.
• If you wanted centralized air conditioning or vaulted ceilings.

A reputable builder wouldn’t have started your ill-conceived project without these key pieces of information—and your explicit sign-off on these decisions.

Ultimately, your new home may pass inspection and keep the rain out, but will you and your better half like it? Odds are that you resigned to massive, costly, and even impossible changes after construction ends.

OK. Enough with the analogy.

Building a Better Research Ingestion Engine

A Strange Parallel

I’ve just described an intentionally insane process. No rational person would even think about dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new abode without detailed blueprints, a contract, a budget, a timeline, and the like. Strangely, though, this method often apes what first-time authors do: After vaguely knowing that they want to write a business, self-help, or other non-fiction book, they sit down and start writing.

Either they finish the first draft—or they don’t. In the case of the latter, they realize that they are way out of their depth. Proceeding as is makes little sense.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

Let’s say that they cross the finish line, though. They solicit feedback from friends or take a step back and honestly assess the finished product. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that they have created an unpublishable mess of a manuscript, both with content and more fixable formatting. Even if the manuscript isn’t altogether terrible, it may be repetitive, clunky, or far too long—as in tens of thousands of words. At this point, some attempt to salvage their manuscripts by ponying up beaucoup bucks for a developmental edit. (Hell, even Racket offers them.)

It doesn’t need to be this way.

Make no mistake: careful planning and working with experienced publishing professionals almost obviate the need for this formidable expense. (If a developmental editor’s rate seems too good to be true, trust your instincts.)

Let’s return to the house-building analogy. Say that you inexplicably wanted to put the master bedroom next to the front door and the kitchen inside the garage. An expert writing coach would have stopped you from doing the literary equivalent of either. That individual would have stressed the need to follow a prescribed process.

What You Need to Know

Skimp on experts if you like—I can’t stop you. Don’t be surprised, though, if the results of your home or book disappoint you.