60 You Have a Book in You they’re reading that they lose all sense of time and place. As writers, that’s what we’re after. However, there’s a neg- ative way in which a reader can get lost. It happens when readers lose con昀椀dence that the book knows where it’s going or where it’s been. 吀栀e problem usually begins before the 昀椀rst word is written. When a book’s table of contents isn’t completely thorough, it’s going to cause problems. 吀栀e table of con- tents should be logical, clear, and as simple as possible. Moreover, a few principles about how to create a decent table of contents seem to be wired into our brains. I’m not sure why they work, but they do. 吀栀is pertains mostly to non昀椀ction books. If you’re writing a novel or a book of short stories, you have pretty much complete 昀氀exibility about the number of chapters or even whether there are chapters at all. But for non昀椀c- tion, there are a few rules that are written in stone. 吀栀ink about Word Count When you submit your manuscript to an agent or a pub- lisher, one of the most important pieces of information you’ll need to provide is the number of words in your book. If, like almost everyone, you use Microsoft Word, getting that information is incredibly easy. 吀栀ere’s a bar at the bottom of the page that tells you the exact word count of your document as it is now.