In this blog post, we will be considering using illustrations in your nonfiction book. We will look at how these can help your readers to understand your writing, making your points clearer. Illustrations can also benefit your work in other ways, which we will look at in more detail below. Hopefully, this blog will help you to decide whether it is worth having illustrations in your book, as this is different for everyone.
However, before we start, we will ask what is meant by illustrations in a nonfiction book. These are not just the more traditional sort of picture, although they can be this as well. The term “illustrations” also includes images such as charts and graphs, which are excellent for showing statistics to back up a point you have made. You could also use diagrams to help you explain a process or structure, such as a drawing of the solar system.
Easier to Understand
Some things are just better explained in a visual way. If you find yourself spending a few paragraphs describing something or explaining a process, consider whether an illustration would be easier for your readers to understand and remember. Even if an illustration isn’t truly necessary to understand a concept, it can still help, make your book more useful and increase the chance of your readers recalling the concept later.
Charts and tables are also extremely useful to make your book clearer. These offer an excellent visual representation of statistics, rather than having to list them all in the text. This means that your readers can see this information at a glance, rather than finding it in a long list. Graphs are also handy to show data, especially if, for example, you want to show a change in the statistics over time.
Looks Professional
Illustrations also help your book to look professional. They make your book more eye-catching to a potential buyer looking through a copy and boost your chances of making a good impression. They should also help to make your book more memorable if a buyer is researching a few on the same topic to decide which to buy. Even very simple images can improve the overall look and feel of your book.
There is also the fact that illustrations are expected in nonfiction books, especially in certain genres. If a potential buyer picks up your book or looks at a sample, they may be put off if it is just plain text with no images to break it up or explain important concepts. You would not expect to have a textbook explaining geographical processes without any diagrams or a travel guide without any pictures of the places!
Reduce and Break Up Text
A further advantage of having illustrations in your book is that they can reduce the amount of text needed to make a particular point, as well as introducing breaks in long sections of text. By using illustrations, especially diagrams, you are explaining the process or event you are talking about. You can therefore reduce the amount of text that would otherwise be needed to describe it, making your meaning clearer at the same time. This is especially useful if you need to cut down your word count.
Illustrations also serve to break up the text. There are two advantages to this. Firstly, it makes your book look more accessible to buyers. Have you ever opened a nonfiction book and been daunted by the sheer amount of text to process? So have your potential readers! Illustrations help to make your book look more appealing and engaging.
Secondly, breaking the text up in this way will help your readers to process it and remember the information more clearly.
Make Important Points Stand Out
Illustrations can also be used to highlight particular points that you want to make. For example, a diagram stands out more than a paragraph of text, so readers will be more likely to remember important information as an image. This is especially useful in areas where there is a lot of information to absorb that doesn’t easily link together in the same way a process or series of instructions would.
For example, statistics on the demographics of magistrates in the UK would be more easily noticed as a pie chart, rather than a list of figures in the text that is easy to skip over. Political cartoons catch the reader’s eye more than text will.
Illustrations can also help create an emotional response in your reader. This is another place where cartoons are useful, as they add humour to your book. You will also want to get an emotional response from most self-help books to make your readers engage with your book.
Wrapping Up
I hope that this helps you decide whether you want illustrations in your nonfiction book. They bring lots of benefits, so it is well worth including some if you can. In my next blog post, we will be looking at how to find an illustrator for your work, so come back in two weeks for that!
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