Books about Medicine and Health
While blurbs from experts are important if your book is about medicine and health, you still need to be an authority to write this type of book. This is particularly true if the focus of the book is to provide information on medical issues. On the other hand, you have more flexibility regarding your expertise if the topic is not critical to major health questions such as beauty or diet, which are subgenres unto themselves.
Medical Books
Books about medicine are almost always written by doctors. Very often, they are written for people in the health profession. Indeed, there are several publishers that publish medical books exclusively. Nonetheless, many of these books are purchased by laypeople who have interest in a specific area of medicine.
Do medical professionals need to learn to write for the public?
Most medical professionals, especially doctors, do not write in a style geared to a general readership. While they can learn to do this, it is common for a coauthor or a ghostwriter to be assigned to the project so the book will be easily understood by a lay audience.
A few recent titles that have sold well should give you an idea of medical books that target both a specific and general audience. The PDR Nurse's Drug Handbook details 1,500 commonly prescribed drugs and provides a good source of information to someone wanting to know about a particular prescription. The American Medical Association Family Medical Guide is designed to provide basic information on diseases, their diagnosis, and treatments, while Healthgrades Guide to America's Hospitals and Doctors informs the public about physicians and hospitals.
Diet and Nutrition Books
With almost 31,000 titles, diet and nutrition books are one of the biggest categories in the genre. This should come as no surprise given the concern people have about what they eat and how it affects their health along with the fact the majority of people would like to shed some pounds.
Because so much of this information can be obtained through research, you don't have to be an expert, although it certainly does help. Diet books in particular, which are frequently written more like self-help books with strands of humor woven through the pages, are often authored by lay writers.
Sometimes you can attain a degree of expertise in the subject just by researching and writing extensively in the field. Such is the case of David Zinczenko, editor in chief of Men's Health magazine, who coauthored Eat This Not That! Thousands of Simple Food Swaps that Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds — or More! and The Abs Diet.
One of the bestselling diet books, Skinny Bitch, is written by Kim Barnouin, a former model with a degree in holistic nutrition, and Rory Freedman, a former modeling agent who is self-taught in the field. But their book took off because of the brazen tone and attitude in which it was written in order to get women to become thin.
Beauty Books
You might imagine that beauty books only provide instructions about what type of makeup to wear, the sexiest clothes to buy, how to cover up male pattern baldness, and similar subjects, but you would be wrong. While there are books like these, typically such topics are the focus of articles in glossy magazines. Books about beauty go deeper and it might be a subject you want to write about.
For example, a recent edition in the “You” series of books is You: Being Beautiful: The Owner's Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty by Michael F. Roizen, MD, and Mehmet C. Oz, MD. Another bestseller is The Mind-Beauty Connection: 9 Days to Reverse Stress Aging and Reveal More Youthful, Beautiful Skin by Amy Wechsler, MD, a book that shows how to “de-stress” your skin.
