Morgan Gist MacDonald · 2015 · B00YOFLDCG
Start Writing Your Book Today by Morgan Gist MacDonald: What 183 Reader Reviews Actually Say (Chart Teardown)
A 2015 nonfiction writing primer still holding a top-50 slot in Kindle Writing Skills in 2026. We aggregated 183 real reader reviews (2015–2026): why it gets people writing, who regrets buying it, and what the chart data says. Review aggregation, not a read-through.
Method: This page is an aggregation teardown: stats and clusters come from 183 real reader reviews (exported 2026-10-15) plus our weekly chart scans. We haven't read the book — we measure it. Sample average 4.23 (the store's overall rating is 4.5); clusters are editorial paraphrases, never verbatim quotes, with no reviewer names.
Verdict
If you want to write your first nonfiction book and are stuck at "always meaning to start": buy it. The densest positive cluster in the sample is exactly "I started writing after reading it" — a coach's voice that makes a book feel doable, plus the organizing layer (topic, habits, a daily start). If what you want is craft technique, research methodology, or novel-writing: that is where the negatives concentrate — skip it. At $4.99, roughly 100 pages, one or two afternoons of reading, the cost of being wrong is a coffee.
Not for you if: Fiction writers (the subtitle says nonfiction; the sample still contains novelists who missed it); veterans looking for craft and research methodology (the largest negative cluster: this is a mindset coach, not an operations manual — one reader counted 50 pages before any "how to write" appeared); anyone who needs unbroken positivity (the book's candid "very few people make it to the end" passage demoralized at least one beginner who wanted encouragement).
What readers say (clustered paraphrase)
"I started writing while still reading it"
The densest positive cluster: multiple readers report starting the first book of their lives mid-read — some began drafting halfway through, some the day they finished, others simply say writing a book felt doable for the first time. The recurring vocabulary is motivate, inspire, confidence, doable. What it unblocks is "want to write but never started" — not craft technique.
≈20 sample reviews
A writing coach at a fraction of the cost
The author's coach/editor credentials get named again and again: readers describe it as the one-on-one advice clients pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for, condensed into a $4.99 book; the voice is said to understand first-timers' struggles and to dismantle the "I'm not a writer" myths. Even a reviewer who has already published eight books recommends it.
≈8 sample reviews
Short, direct, non-intimidating
Second most common positive: finished in one or two sittings, no fluff, never overwhelming; one reader uses it as a five-minutes-before-writing morning companion. That shape is also what keeps a $4.99 book selling year after year.
≈11 sample reviews
Turning a tangle of ideas into structure
The concrete takeaways readers name: organizing the ideas in your head, settling the topic, building a daily writing habit, setting a timer and starting, breaking "finish a book" into a manageable manuscript process. When positive readers say "step-by-step," this process layer is what they mean — not craft.
≈8 sample reviews
Fiction writers bought the wrong book — again
The mirror mismatch of the negatives: the subtitle says nonfiction plainly, yet novelists who skipped it still landed here; others came for nonfiction research technique and found a mindset coach. One 2★ puts it precisely: nonfiction appears only in the small print under the giant title.
≈4 sample reviews
"Where's the step-by-step plan?"
The largest negative cluster (~40% of the negative sample): the title promises a step-by-step plan; what readers find is "believe you are a writer" mindset mobilization. The most-upvoted negative in the sample (55 votes) paraphrases the "steps" one by one, sarcastically; another reader counted pages — in a ~100-page book, writing itself doesn't start until page 50 — and suspected the book was assembled rather than written. Anyone expecting an operations manual walks away disappointed.
≈11 sample reviews
Repetitive, thin, free elsewhere
The second negative cluster: the book is described as saying the same thing over and over, scattered and rambling; "you can find this free on any search engine," "this should have been a blog post," and "you don't need this book — just write" are three flavors of the same complaint: information density below expectation.
≈7 sample reviews
Small product and support defects
Few but specific: print copies arriving with loose pages or stains; the text referencing an appendix the book doesn't have; the author contact email printed in the book bouncing (flagged in passing by a 4★ reviewer). Small numbers, but real.
≈4 sample reviews
Chart data (weekly scan)
| Snapshot date | Category | In-category position | Reviews (chart measure) | Rating | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-14 | Writing Skills | #46 | 2192 | 4.5 | $4.99 |
Chart tracking starts at its first data point and accumulates weekly — this section updates automatically with each Monday scan.
Review sample measures
- Sample size
- 183 (2026-10-15)
- Sample range
- 2015-06-03 ~ 2026-08-14
- Sample average
- 4.23 (not the store's overall rating) · 1★ 14 / 2★ 7 / 3★ 7 / 4★ 50 / 5★ 105
- Verified-purchase rate
- 74%
From a writer's perspective
First, the coordinate system: the median book in the Writing Skills top 50 carries 266 reviews at a median price of $6.99 (2026-10-14 scan snapshot). Start Writing Your Book Today sits at #46 on that same chart with 2,192 reviews at $4.99 and a 4.5-star store rating — one of the 13 books on the chart with more than 2,000 reviews. First listed in 2015, it has collected sample reviews in every single year from 2015 through 2026 (two already in 2026). This is the standard shape of a durable beginner book: never spiking, never stopping.
From a writer's perspective, look at the title work: the main title is an imperative search phrase — "how to start writing a book" is literally what people type, so the title equals the query and the search box feeds the algorithm. The subtitle then nails three things: nonfiction (audience), step-by-step plan (format promise), and from first draft to finished manuscript (scope promise — manuscript only, no publishing or marketing). It's the mirror image of 2k to 10k's number-promise hook: that book's hook earned word-of-mouth while the subtitle earned search; this one simply makes the search query itself the title. The audience-nailing gets validated here too: mismatch complaints don't disappear, but they are no longer the #1 source of negatives.
The review section runs on a single axis: motivation versus steps. The same book reads as "a coach in your corner, writing feels doable" to stalled beginners and as "a cheerleader with no substance" to readers who wanted mechanics — and both clusters share one fact (the book opens with mindset mobilization, and in roughly 100 pages the "how" arrives late); only the vantage point differs. For anyone writing a similar book, that axis is worth more than any single one-star: state the motivation-to-method ratio in the subtitle — or split them into two books — and you cut your largest negative cluster in half.
Reading discipline: chart data is a weekly research snapshot (in-category position, not overall BSR; chart-page review counts are a lower bound). Review clusters are editorial paraphrases of the sample (183 reviews, approximate counts). Sample average 4.23 and the store's 4.5 overall rating (2,192 reviews) are two different measures — both are labeled separately on this page.
Disclosure: some links on this page are Amazon Associates links; purchases made through them may earn us a commission at no cost to you. All chart data and review aggregation on this site is independent of any publisher or author.