How to Write the Introduction to a Business Book (With a Template and Example)

Most business authors write their introduction twice. The first, written in week one, runs to fourteen pages: how they got into the work, a mentor, a definition of leadership, thanks to their spouse. The second is written after a candid friend admits skipping to chapter one. It is usually a third of the length and far better.

One shift gets you there without the detour. Your introduction is not a warm-up. It is the sales page inside your book, and for many buyers it is the only part they read before they decide.

Why the introduction is the page that sells the book

Someone hears your name on a podcast, finds the book on Amazon, reads the description and clicks Read Sample. What they see is a fixed slice of your manuscript. As of November 2026, KDP’s help page says the sample is 10% of an ebook and 20% of a paperback or hardcover, and that “reading samples percentages cannot be adjusted” (KDP). It does not say how front matter is counted, so assume it all is.

Take a 45,000-word business book. The ebook sample is about 4,500 words. Spend 600 on title pages and contents and 4,000 on an introduction, and the reader never sees chapter one. Your introduction is the whole pitch.

Josh Bernoff, who coaches business authors, calls this a “pyramid of attention”: title, subtitle, marketing copy, opening, chapter one, rest of book. Each layer’s only job is to get the reader to the next, so “everything has to be front-loaded” (Bernoff, October 2025). The book description sells on the product page. The introduction does the same job one click later.

The six jobs, and the question each one answers

Readers arrive with silent questions. A good introduction answers them in roughly this order.

Job	The reader’s silent question	How much space
1. Name the problem	“Is this about my situation?”	A scene or a number, then two or three paragraphs
2. Show the cost	“Why should I deal with this now?”	One or two paragraphs
3. Make the promise	“What will be different if I read this?”	A paragraph, ideally one sentence you could quote
4. Why trust you	“Why you and not the other ten books?”	Half a page, built on evidence
5. Preview the path	“What am I signing up for?”	A short paragraph or a list of parts
6. How to use the book	“Do I read it front to back?”	A few sentences

Jobs 1 and 2: the problem and what it costs

Lead with the reader, not the topic. “Succession is a major issue for family businesses” is about the topic. “Your biggest customer still calls you, not your daughter, and she has been managing director for three years” is about the reader. It tells the right person the book is for them, and everyone else that it is not.

The cost turns recognition into urgency. Bernoff’s blunt version is that chapter one should “scare the crap out of you”. We would put it more gently: show the price of leaving the problem alone, in money, time or something the reader cares about more. A cost you can describe precisely beats a statistic you cannot trace, and an unsourced number in the first five pages does the most damage of all; see stopping AI inventing facts.

Job 3: the promise

This is the sentence the whole book has to keep, so write one a reader could hold you to: “By the end, you will have a handover plan your best customers have agreed to” is a promise. “This book will help you think differently about succession” is not.

Promise only what the chapters deliver. A reader who feels misled by page six reads every later chapter looking for the gap.

Job 4: why trust you, in half a page

Leah Brown, managing editor at IT Revolution, says this “isn’t a place to give readers your CV or resume” and suggests writing it “more like a cover letter” (IT Revolution, March 2023). We would go further: evidence, not biography. “I have run this process with 40 family firms since 2014, and here is what the three that failed had in common” beats your degrees. A mistake you made and fixed beats both.

Jobs 5 and 6: the path and how to use it

Preview the route, not the contents: three or four sentences naming the parts and what each does for the reader. Then say what can be skipped. If chapters four to seven are a toolkit to dip into, say so.

Write it last, but scope it first

Scribe Media recommends that authors outline the introduction last, because “you can’t effectively tease something if you don’t fully understand how it’s going to play out in practice” (Scribe Media). IT Revolution’s editor takes the opposite view: the introduction “can also be the best place to start”, because drafting it helps you decide the book’s scope.

Both are right, about different drafts. In week one, write a one-page scoping note covering jobs 1 to 3 only and keep it beside you while you draft. Do not polish it. Write the real introduction after the last chapter, when you know which promises the book actually keeps. Chapters drift; the introduction should describe the book you wrote, not the one you planned.

If you plan with guided software such as WritebookAI, the book strategy and chapter plan you approve there already state the reader, the promise and the chapter order, which makes them a ready scoping note, and its whole-book manuscript review is a good moment to check the promise is delivered. It will not choose your opening scene, and we would write that first page yourself anyway. A book coach or an afternoon with your outline does the same scoping by hand.

A fill-in template for the introduction

Copy this into a blank document once the chapters are drafted. Word counts are guides, not rules.

Where the introduction sits among front matter and chapters is covered in how to structure a business book, and the business book outline template plans the chapters it will preview.

A hypothetical example opening

This example is invented to show the template working. Imagine an operations consultant who has spent twelve years helping owner-run manufacturers hand the business to the next generation. Her book leads to a paid succession review.

Hypothetical example. On a Tuesday in March, a factory owner stood in his own reception while his biggest customer walked straight past his daughter to shake his hand. She had been managing director for two years. The customer had not noticed. Both of them had.

If you built your business yourself, you will know the feeling from one side or the other. You have handed over the title. You have not handed over the relationships, and your customers have noticed before your successor has.

This book is about the part of succession the legal documents leave out: moving trust from one person to another before the first person leaves. By the end you will have a handover plan your ten most important customers have seen and agreed to, and a successor they call first.

Notice what is missing: her career, a definition of succession, any statistic. If your opening comes from client work, client stories and case studies covers permission and disguise, and organising real stories for your book helps you choose which story earns page one.

Before and after: the first paragraph

Here is a weak first paragraph of a very common kind:

Before: “I have always been passionate about helping people. After twenty years in corporate finance, I started my consultancy in 2011, and since then I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of amazing business owners. This book is the culmination of everything I have learned, and I want to thank my clients, my team and my family for making it possible.”

Every sentence is about the author, and nothing tells a reader whether the book is for them.

After: “Most owners find out their business is unsellable from a buyer’s accountant, about six weeks into due diligence. By then the fixes take two years. This book is the two-year plan, started before the buyer arrives.”

The second names the problem, implies the cost and makes a promise in 36 words. The original used 62 and did none of those things.

Five mistakes that send readers straight to chapter one

1. The life story. Scribe’s list of things an introduction should not do includes “Start at the beginning of the author’s life”. Keep the one episode that explains your method; move the rest to About the Author.
2. Thanking people. Bernoff puts thanks in the acknowledgements at the end, and so would we: front pages are sample pages.
3. Defining terms for pages. A sentence on what you mean by “scale” is sometimes needed. Three pages of definitions is a chapter nobody asked for. Define a term where it is first used.
4. Overselling. “This book will change your life” is a promise the reader knows you cannot keep. A smaller promise you clearly deliver earns more trust.
5. Summarising every chapter. A paragraph per chapter turns the introduction into a second contents page and tells readers they can skip the book.

The case against an introduction at all

The strongest opposing view comes from Bernoff, who writes simply: “Don’t do an introduction” (Bernoff). In a longer post he argues that introductions “are typically about the author, or about the book, or the process of creating the book”, while chapter one “is about an actual idea” (Bernoff). Some readers skip introductions and some do not, so chapter one cannot know what the reader already has, and the book repeats itself.

His alternative: the main idea goes in chapter one after a strong opening, your background goes in About the Author, and the overview goes at the end of chapter one. “Why I wrote this book” is, in his word, “irrelevant”. He allows a short introduction for a second edition, and a foreword from a well-known name.

We think he is right about most introductions and wrong as a rule. One that does the six jobs above is about the reader, not the author, which is what he asks of chapter one. Our decision rule:

If your introduction is mainly…	Do this
About you, your career or why you wrote the book	Cut it. Move the useful parts to chapter one and About the Author
A strong scene and the core argument	Rename it Chapter 1 and give it a title that makes a claim
The six jobs, under 3,000 words, before the first idea	Keep it as an introduction
A preview of a book with several distinct parts	Keep it, or put the preview at the end of chapter one

Skipping the label is fine. Skipping the problem and the promise is not.

Before you send it to an editor

Read the introduction aloud after the rest of the manuscript, then check it against this list.

We would watch the last item most closely. Written last and under the most pressure, the introduction is often the stiffest part of the book. If yours reads more formally than your chapters, keeping a consistent voice across chapters has tests that work on a single section.

If your chapters are not drafted yet, write the one-page scoping note today and read how to write a business book chapter next. If the draft is finished, block a morning, work through the template in order, then give the result to one person from your target readership with a single question: would you keep reading?