Book editor David Moldawer has some great advice for authors: Think about the reader experience.
“Reader experience design (or ReadX) is about building a book beginning with the experience you want the reader to have and working backward from there,” he writes in a piece penned for BoingBoing. In the piece, Moldawer explains that by thinking about the reader (instead of say, trying to impress peers), you will write a better book. Here is an excerpt from the essay:
You must constantly remind yourself that your reader is both smarter and less knowledgeable than you assume. (The smarter bit is important. You don’t talk down to your reader. You just explain your topic like you would to an intelligent friend in a totally different line of work.)