The health category covers more than just diet, exercise, and fitness, though these topics are perennial mainstays. Heightened awareness of such issues as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, and a broad assortment of other diseases has created a need for easy-to-understand manuals on monitoring and improving your health. Usually, readers of these books require more than just advice on how to protect their health; they also want information on how the body works and the science behind the methods that are advocated. This can provide quite a challenge to the aspiring writer, especially since research is continually challenging long-held ideas and perceptions of such things as hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women and the ideal combination of food groups for maximum health.

Lifestyle Topics

Lifestyle health books examine such areas as diet, fitness, and mental and emotional well-being. They are usually meant for a general readership with an interest in all-around health, and topics often are dictated by current trends. The low-carbohydrate diet trend has given rise to numerous protein-rich cookbooks. The demands of modern life have fueled interest in books on stress management and reduction, and related topics like meditation also have seen a surge in interest. Exercise books that are strictly instructional have been sidelined by more holistic fitness books that look not just at exercise but also at the physical and psychological benefits of regular activity. As life expectancy has increased, books that deal with maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle into old age also have found a strong readership.

The health category is exceptionally crowded these days, and it can be very difficult for a new author to break in. Agents and editors typically look for exceptional credentials, coupled with sound science and a slant or angle that readily differentiates your book from the rest. Even with these attributes, though, few of the myriad proposals on health issues ever get published.

Issue-Specific Topics

As awareness of various chronic and acute diseases has increased, so has demand for reader-friendly books on such topics as heart disease, diabetes, breathing disorders, and the like. Relatively newly diagnosed syndromes or those that are bubbling up into the national consciousness, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, and seasonal affective disorder, lead to new niche markets for books on these topics.

The readers of these types of books are usually directly affected by the issue covered. Either they have the disease or health problem themselves, or a close relative or friend suffers from it. That fact naturally limits your potential market, but it also can provide specific entrees to reach your readers through associations, support groups, and Web sites.

In general, the more specific your health topic, the heftier your credentials have to be. Most of these books are written by doctors or researchers. There may be opportunities for you to collaborate with an expert, especially if the expert has trouble relating technical information in everyday language, but rarely — if ever — will an agent or editor take on a project like this from someone without the precise technical background.