What so often makes a book resonate with readers is the expression of a universal thought. Maybe a book is ostensibly about how people can better train dogs, but it meanwhile expresses plenty of wisdom about people training themselves.

I was reminded of this while reading a colleague’s book, Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas. Author John Butman, an advisor and writing guide for many “idea entrepreneurs,” makes this point in citing the thoughts of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Great books are not great, [Emerson] argues, because their authors are geniuses whose ideas are more brilliant than anyone else’s. Quite the opposite, he says: their books are seen as great precisely because they contain ideas that many others share, but have been afraid or unwilling or unable to express for themselves.

’To believe your own thought,’ writes Emerson, ‘to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.’ Most of us will not allow ourselves to think our ideas are worthy of expression. Then we read a book in which ‘we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienate majesty.’ That is a great book, we say to ourselves. I couldn’t have said it better myself. The idea entrepreneur who speaks for us, rather than at us, is the one who achieves popularity, wide exposure, respiration, longevity, and influence.”

If you’re thinking about writing a book, about spreading an idea, about influencing others to better the world, be sure to get a copy of Breaking Out. Butman instructs. He inspires. And no would-be author of nonfiction should move ahead without the benefits of his framework for success.

[Revised January 2020. Originally published June 17, 2013]