Andrew Lownie Literary Agency | Writing your first non-fiction book?

The reason I pose this question is that I was recently approached by someone who had read one of my books, Squandered (published in 2008) and this had inspired them to produce their own book. They had sent their book to the usual agents and publishers and got the usual, mostly automatic standard rejections. So, they approached me and asked if I could help.

I read the book and felt that hidden inside was a really powerful story. Unfortunately, the book was 137,000 words long and had a title that was far too subtle for me to understand. Though, perhaps I was lucky. At least the author didn't send me the original 200,000-word version - about the same length as Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

I suspect that the basic problem with the book was that it contained everything the writer wanted to say in the way they wanted to say it rather than them thinking through what the reader really wanted to hear and how to best communicate that.