HOW DO THEY WRITE THE FOREWORD? Writing a foreword seems pretty obvious: ask someone to write a foreword, and they do it, right? Some people do exactly that. And in a perfect world, they would all do that, but they don’t, for two reasons: 1. People don’t have time to sit down and write. 2. They’re not a good writer, so they get intimidated. For these reasons, we recommend that authors give their foreword writers two options if they do not have the time or desire to sit down and write it the conventional way. LETTER TO READER OPTION This is a really simple framework that helps someone get started. You can send these exact instructions to your foreword author: “Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. Here is all I need: • A very short piece, 500 words or so. • It can be framed as a “letter to the reader” where you tell them why they should read the book. • If you want to say nice things about me, I won’t be upset :)” For this option, make sure that, if you need to make any edits to the foreword (aside from obvious misspellings), you get the approval of the author. RECORDING OPTION You can also “record” their foreword and then have that written (we do this for our authors if they ask). The process works like this: 218 · ThE SCriBE METhOD