1
Summary Guide
Table of contents
● Foreword
● Where to start
● Template
● Structure of the summary
● Tone of voice
● Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation
● Uniqueness
● Try this
2
Foreword
The summaries are created by readers for readers to provide every person on Earth
with an easy way to learn!
Where to start
As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction
should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she
didn't have before. Not two thoughts or five — just one. So decide what
single point you want to leave in the reader’s mind. It will not only give
you a better idea of what route you should follow and what destination
you hope to reach, it will affect your decision about tone and attitude.
Some points are best made by earnestness, some by dry
understatement, some by humor.
William Zinnser, On Writing Well
Step 1. Read
First of all, read the book — page by page, with attention and thoughtfulness. The
more you know and comprehend the text, the better your book summary will be.
Step 2. Take notes and determine main ideas
Read the book in small blocks, catch the main points and note them while reading.
Read only when you can take notes and write down your ideas; otherwise, you will
only waste your time. Determine the book’s one key topic and main ideas.
Step 3. Generalize
Provide an informative, generalized story. There is no need to describe every detail;
use only the best examples and impressive facts or numbers. Your goal is to cover
the key points on what the book is about and reveal the most exciting information.
3
The best practice is to imagine how you would explain the books you like to your
friends, which would be the most impressive pieces for you and the most valuable
thoughts for them, wouldn’t it?
Step 4. Analyze
Remember that a summary is a short story without useless information, so analyze
what the author is talking about on the whole page and tell the reader a brief
conclusion of the author's thought.
Your goal is not just to give the reader 12 pages instead of 250 pages of the book, but
to tell your readers what that book is ABOUT, what GEMS it TEACHES.
Don’t add your own opinion and point of view on particular topics. We can not
agree with the author, but we need to share their ideas without our interpretation.
Step 5. Keep it short but not too short
Start your summary with a short overview (up to 3 paragraphs, 150-200 words),
followed by an introduction chapter, at least five main chapters, and a conclusion.
Your summary has to be meaty and concise; the required length of your summary is
2500-3500 words. The preferred size of the chapter is 350-400 words.
Step 6. Combine chapters
Follow the book’s script, but feel free to combine chapters.
• No need to write the summary with the same number of chapters as the book.
• Each chapter must have a headline — but don’t use headlines from the book.
• The headline shouldn’t be too short; instead, write your headlines as valuable and
complete thoughts, not just 1-3 words in a catchy but empty title. The summary is too
short to not provide readers with 100% informative headlines.
Step 7. Proofread & fact check before submitting
Check your summary for grammatical errors, spelling, or punctuation mistakes. Also,
make sure that all names, quotes, dates, and facts are indicated correctly in your
text.
Then submit your summary.
4
Structure of the summary
1. Title of the book
Write down the full title of the book
Example: Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts
2. Author’s name
Indicate the author’s name:
● If there are several authors, be sure to mention all of them. Separate their
names with a comma.
Example: Stephanie Schriock, Christina Reynolds
● If the author has an academic or medical degree, add it.
Example: Kevin Lemar, Ph.D., Sanjay Gupta, M.D.
3. Keywords
Add 5-7 relevant keywords: These must be a set of single words that are not
capitalized, even if it’s a personal name.
Example: einstein, science, communication, honesty, leadership, perfectionism,
courage, innovation
4. Overview
Share 5-7 sentences (approximately 120-150 words + quote) about the book and its
value. It's always a good idea to talk about the book's award and the author's
achievements. You are welcome to use phrases like “tidbits” and call the summary a
“bite-sized book.” It will be the first thing the reader sees! Make it fascinating, so
people become interested and want to read the rest of your work. Check Amazon for
the book, from there you will find information about the book and the author(s).
You could also Google around, but the information from Amazon should be enough
for your overview. Remember: Don't copy.
5
Example: The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule
It by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister
Have you been wondering why you can't seem to forget the bad things your partner
has done over the course of your relationship? Or do you find yourself wishing you
could train your brain to react differently when things don't go your way? Whatever
the reason you've decided to read this tidbit, you are in for a treat.
Roy Baumeister, a Research psychologist at the University of Queensland, and John
Tierney, award-winning writer and contributing editor to City Journal, unravel the
secrets behind making the bad things in life work in your favor. Both co-authors of
the book, Willpower, explain the negativity effect, destroy the myths surrounding it,
and emphasize how a negative event in your life can be the major reason you go
ahead to achieve your goals.
“Our minds and lives are skewed by a fundamental imbalance that is just now
becoming clear to scientists: Bad is stronger than good.” ~ John Tierney and Roy
Baumeister
5. Introduction Chapter
First of all, readers need to know — what is in the book for them? Moreover, admit it:
your readers want to know what is in your summary for them. Is it worth their time? It
has to be, as you have worked on it and did your best to represent the most precious
thoughts from the book. The best way to do it is to announce to readers how this
read will make their lives better — in your first chapter, let’s call it an introduction.
1. The very first sentence of your introduction chapter costs the most. It has to grab
the reader and take them to the second one. And to the third one. If those sentences
don’t do this job, readers will quit reading the text. You can capture your audience
with a surprise, some unusual statement, or paradox, or humor. But please avoid
cliche, apparent facts, and obvious rhetorical questions.
2. So the next step is to explain how the summary will make the reader's life better,
what this book was created for, and what value it brings to readers.
Admit the power of examples. The more it’s understandable (but not primitive) for
most people, the more effective will be reader’s engagement in your summary. Add
some specific details (not known yet), to make your first chapter informative and
persuasive.
6
Example: How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships by Leil
Lowndes, Joyce Bean
No one will know what you want unless you say it
So much depends on communication. Verbal or non-verbal, our mastery of it defines
whether we will be successful among other human beings. Moreover, it is inevitable
because how else would we co-exist and progress as a society?
It seems pretty straightforward: just say what you want or need, thus putting others in
the know. However, many of us fail to do that, feeling shy and insecure about
ourselves. Leil Lowndes’ book is aimed at all people who think that they have not
enough confidence to speak to others. Sometimes, you don’t even need immense
willpower to strike up a meaningful conversation. Instead, you should learn the
appropriate techniques of doing so.
Often, you can’t speak your mind not because you are timid, but because
no one taught you the right way to do this.
“How to Talk to Anyone” comprises 92 techniques, wittily named by Leil Lowndes.
Having read this summary, you will learn how to make people fall in love with you,
appear genuine and credible, break into a tight crowd, and talk like a VIP. What do
you think is hiding behind the “Accidental Adulation” or “Scramble Therapy”
techniques? Every chapter contains 4-5 techniques to help you get better at talking
to people and making them do what you want — sometimes without actually saying
what it is.
6. Insights
Enrich your summary with insights — definitions, explanations, inspiration, facts, or
other valuable thoughts from the main text. These are some short, impactful phrases
that can inspire readers. Insights should be relevant to the core idea of the chapter
and placed in the middle or end of the chapter, never at the beginning.
The insight should not repeat any of the chapter sentences or the title of the chapter.
Also, it should not read linearly as a part of the text and can exist as a separate piece
of content that readers can save and share.
The required number of insights is one per chapter. Also, please add at least one
additional insight per summary.
7
An additional insight is some fact that isn't crucial for understanding the core idea of
the chapter. Yet it could be interesting or funny to know. Write it as the last
paragraph of the chapter and start with “Did you know?” question. The amount of the
additional insights is not required, but they definitely exist in any book. So it should be
about 1-3 per summary.
Example: The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule
It by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister
Children should be allowed to fail. Adults should be ready to help them
through those failures.
7. Quotes
Put the author's quote and/or a quote of someone else the author references in the
text. 2-3 quotes per text (not including overview) are required.
Always pick one quote from the goodreads.com site, the Quotes section. There you
will find the most famous quotes hundreds of readers have already selected.
Example: The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton
Beauty is fugitive, it is frequently found in places to which we may never
return or else it results from a rare conjunction of season, light, and
weather.
Alain De Botton
8. Conclusion
Put the Conclusion at the end of the summary covering all crucial ideas from your
summary. Your conclusion shouldn't just be a bland overview of what you already
said; come to some more in-depth understanding of the key message.
Finish your conclusion with a bit of simple, practical advice, starting this final section
with “Try this”. It should be based on the book — help your readers to implement new
knowledge.
8
Your conclusion may be a bit shorter than a chapter and have approximately 250-
300 words.
Example: Business Adventures: Twelve World Classic Tales from The World of Wall
Street by John Brooks
Conclusion
The survival of any business rests on careful planning and adequate calculations. A
business not built on trust would crumble at any shove; sending everything crashing
down.
Business is integral to the growth of any society, and this is why we must pay
maximum attention to it.
Merely conceptualizing a business plan or idea is not enough. There is an equal need
for rapt attention to market dynamics and trends. The business arena is continuously
morphing, and it takes the religious observer to come close to predicting its next turn.
Information is a vital fulcrum of business. In fact, information in itself constitutes a
business. Hence, in every organization, there is a need to spell out the rules of
engagement with corporate information. A lot of legal hassle will be avoided if the
guidelines for handling internal information are clarified for the onset of mutuality.
If you’re not able to communicate successfully between yourself and
yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?
John Brooks
Try this:
Make a plan for your business; take your time to make calculations by creating a
target audience. Your target audience determines how you approach your business
plan. By studying your target audience, you are making empirical research and
collecting information from them. Then, secure a good partnership if need be, and
get enough capital to start up.
9
Tone of voice
1. Use a neutral writing style
Use neither formal nor informal writing style for our summaries. Summaries are
written in the neutral style, which “restricts slang but allows standard casual
expressions.”
2. Avoid heavy and complicated vocabulary
The audience consists of different people. We do not aim to label our audience as
intellectuals and CEOs only. We should strive to make our messages and content
relevant to everyone, from a petrol station worker to a university professor. That’s
why we should always keep in mind to stick to the middle ground.
10
3. Add some fun
It is also a good idea to add something fun to our texts, but smartly, e.g., the game of
words (for example, one of the headings on the Headspace website is ‘Get some
Headspace.’ Super cool game of words with their naming.)
4. Speak to the readers' world
Understand what you are re-telling them and why. Use a story with an example from
the book, create your case based on real-life, typical for almost everybody's
circumstances. Or make the reader a hero of your story.
Example: The text says “There are a lot of dishes for a plant-based diet, so you will not
be bored.” What does it give to the reader? A lot or 100k dishes — it creates no
connection with the reader's mind. Instead, we can continue, "There are a lot of
dishes for a plant-based diet, so you will not be bored. Imagine having guacamole
tots for breakfast, fresh almonds for a snack, then vegan burgers for lunch, and spicy
tacos for dinner time with colleagues. Yummy? And that will cost you less than one
over-cooked T-bone steak.”
So now it's not just a statement about the advantages of a plant-based diet. It's a
case where your reader is hungry for those dishes and motivated by the low price.
Note: some books use several examples or stories to underpin one idea. There is no
need to mention all of them in your summary; pick the most appealing one.
5. Make your writing dynamic
Alternate long and short sentences to make the text more dynamic. Make
paragraphs and lists to improve readability.
6. Make every paragraph amplify the one that preceded it
Be attentive with the first sentence and the last sentence of each, as they must
create some story, consistent and fulfilling.
7. Write from the third-person point of view
Always write your summary from the third-person point of view. Don’t call the author
by their first name; it could be first name+second name or Dr. Wlliams, for example, if
the author holds a doctoral degree. Let's try to avoid saying the “author says”,
11
”authors think” very often. It's better to call them by their full name. Why? First, it
wouldn’t make sense since it's actually the summary, not the book itself. Second, it
will make the source more credible — who the hell is that author? But "Tim Ferris" or
"Dr. Sheperd" is a person, so the words seem more realistic and valuable.
8. Facts don’t write themselves
You must explain why it’s a crucial fact for the reader and how it could be helpful for
them. However, don’t overburden your summaries with too much factual info,
numbers, and data.
Example:
“A 40-minute walk is equal to a 15 min workout in a gym.” Okay, what does that mean
for me?
“Studies revealed that a 40-minute walk is equal to a 15 min workout in the gym and
can reduce the risk of heart disease by 25%. Why don’t you try to take a walk to your
workplace and back home for those 40 minutes? This habit will save you money for
bus tickets and make you feel much healthier in a week. A nice cup of cappuccino in
your office cafe can be your reward.”
9. When explaining advice, be on the reader’s team
When we say, “Regularly talk with your reports to be a good manager,” we treat
readers like fools because we tell them obvious things and don't actually explain the
value. There are two ways to solve this.
Examples:
a) “Good managers stay in touch with their reports, no matter how great the
outcome already is. Regular meetings help to build trust and stay aware of the
report’s mindset.” — Here, we advise on examples of some “good managers.” The
reader would accept this advice and try this action as he wants to become / already
admit himself as a “good manager”
b) “Staying in touch with your team helps you to keep the trust between you. If
something goes wrong, it will be comfortable for your report to come up to you with a
problem, so you will not suddenly face your report’s quit.”
12
10. Avoid repetitions, redundancies, and monotonous
passages
Repetitions add emphasis and convey certain pathos. But how much of that do we
really need? Consider this example:
“Understand that the workplace is a game, and you must master how to play this
game. In each game, there are winners and losers. The workplace is not just a game,
but a place where the rules also change from department to department,
organization to organization.”
Words “workplace,” “game” frequently repeat in contradictory contexts. Is it a game?
Is it not a game? What point does this sentence make? Needless to mention that the
end of it is more characteristic of yellow press journalism. Let’s rewrite it:
“A workplace may seem like a game with its winners and losers. When we believe in
having mastered the rules of interacting with one another, something doesn’t add
up. The reason is that these rules are constantly changing because our personalities
evolve.”
Now we know that a workplace is not a game because there is always a human
factor involved.
Redundancy is a “much of muchness.” In other words, it occurs when we duplicate
certain information. See the examples below:
“They unconsciously resist change until it is clearly evident that their comfort zone no
longer exists.”
Evident means “clearly seen or understood, obvious.” It is either clear or evident, not
both.
“According to quantum law, every potential possibility exists simultaneously.”
Possibility means “a thing that may happen or be the case,” while potential refers to
“something that shows a capacity of developing in the future.” Both noun and
adjective are very close in meaning, so just “possibility” would suffice.
Monotonous passages are good for lyrical songs, political speeches, and romantic
fiction, but they make our summaries stuffy.
“If the enemy is easing up, he can frustrate him; if well stocked with food, he can cut
out his food supply. If quietly camped out, he can compel him to change positions.
13
Emerge at situations that compel the enemy to move quickly to defense; move
quickly positions you are not anticipated.”
Three conditionals in a row — and what point do they make? Try not to start and/or
end sentences and paragraphs in the same way because it strikes the reader’s eye,
making them experience a verbal deja vu.
Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation
Main things to note here:
● Use American English
Inclusive language
● Put people first:
○ “a woman who is blind” instead of “a blind woman”
○ “person with a disability” instead of “disabled person”
● Demographic and race language:
○ Black people instead of blacks
○ white people instead of whites or White people
● Use gender-neutral language:
○ Police officer instead of policeman
○ They instead of him, her, she, he
● You can find more examples here
Punctuation
● Use em-dash “—” for pause, not en-dash “-” or double en-dash “--”
● Put spaces before and after em-dash.
● Don’t use “ ” when mentioning the book title.
● For a quote, use “ ”. For the quote inside the quote use ‘ ’.
● Use • as a bullet symbol in lists. Or numbers if it's an ordinal list.
● Use period for the time: 4 a.m. and 10 p.m.
● Use period when writing U.S.A., the U.S., Ph.D., M.D., etc.
14
Capitalization
● Don’t capitalize each word in headlines. Don’t put the period in the end.
Other things to remember
● Not Monday to Friday, but Monday through Friday
● Team IS winning; government IS doing
● Percentages — always expressed as numerals — followed by the “%” sign, not
by the word “percent”.
● Spell out numbers below 10.
Uniqueness
● The summary must be a completely unique piece of content, including the
overview part.
● Note that after the submission, summaries are also manually checked against
the original text.
● The plagiarism (not unique content) score should be under 10%. This
percentage can include quotes, exceptional terminology words, and
frequently repeating words according to the summary topic.
● Never copy an overview or any other part of the text from Amazon, Goodreads,
or any other sources.
● What counts as plagiarism:
○ Phrases or paragraphs from the author's books. Use the part of the
books in the quote sections only. Be sure that you re-write the content
from books in your way using your own words and structure.
○ Word-for-word texts from any kind of Internet source, same-field-
business content including Blinkist and Instaread, and other materials
created by any third party.
○ Copying previously published materials written by you.
○ Copying others’ texts and changing a few words into synonyms.
15
Try this
Save this checklist:
✔️Title
✔️Author
✔️Overview
✔️Keywords
✔️Introduction chapter
✔️The Next 5 (at least) chapters
✔️Conclusion with “Try this” advice
✔️Title and author(s) are indicated correctly
✔️At least 1 insight per chapter
✔️At least 1 additional insight per summary
✔️At least 2 quotes per summary (not including the overview)
✔️List of at least 5 related books in Trello card comment
✔️2,500—3,500 words per summary
