By John Bond

If you’ve ever stared at a blank screen and wondered how wide or narrow you should write, you’re in good company. The tension between writing narrow versus broad lives at the heart of scholarly publishing. It’s a classic dilemma: go deep and speak to a specialized very knowledgeable audience that truly gets it or go broad and frame your knowledge for readers across multiple disciplines. Let’s look at both approaches, because each has its own virtues, risks, and rewards.

The Case for Writing Narrow

Writing narrow means focusing on a specific question, concept, or group within your field. Your audience is usually tight knit, that is fellow researchers, practitioners, academics, or students immersed in your domain. Think of it as writing for the people who already share your language and assumptions.

For many academics, this is the natural starting point. You’ve spent years honing expertise in your part of the world, and your work lives inside a specific discourse. Writing for that audience
lets you speak with precision and authority. You can use the shorthand of your discipline, dive into technical detail, and contribute something concrete to your field’s ongoing conversation.

Narrow writing also tends to generate strong academic credibility. A focused monograph can further establish you as the expert. Departments and tenure committees love clear contributions to well-defined areas of research. A book or peer review journal article on the ethics of data collection in qualitative health research, for example, will find its home in a distinct scholarly niche and that’s often the point.

But there’s another advantage: narrow books tend to have more durable value over time. While broad trend-based works may or may not age well, a specialized text often becomes a reference point that scholars keep citing long after publication. If your goal is academic longevity, a focused piece can quietly outlast flashier, big-picture volumes.

The trade-off is reach. A highly specialized book might only appeal to a few hundred or thousand readers worldwide. Sales numbers will likely be modest. You’ll get great reviews in academic journals but may not see your ideas go far beyond them. That’s why some scholars, after establishing themselves with a narrow focus, begin to look beyond it.

The Case for Writing Broad

So, what about broad writing? This is where things get expansive; where you take the insights from your discipline and translate them for multiple audiences. You’re still rooted in scholarship, but you lift your head above your field’s particular vocabulary and show how your ideas connect to bigger questions across disciplines or professions.

Broad writing can be powerful because it extends your impact. A book that starts from your area of expertise but speaks to broader issues attracts readers from other fields entirely. It opens doors: podcast interviews, media coverage, cross-disciplinary speaking invitations.

It’s also good intellectual practice. Writing broadly forces you to clarify your thinking, define your terms, and see how your ideas fit into a bigger ecosystem of knowledge. You have to translate, contextualize, and occasionally reframe your arguments so that non-specialists can see their relevance. That kind of writing builds bridges between disciplines — and that’s where some of the most interesting innovations in academia happen.

Still, breadth brings its own risks. If you write too broadly too soon, you can lose credibility with your core audience. Specialists may see the work as popularization rather than contribution. Reviewers might decide you’ve skimmed the surface rather than offering something rigorous. And broad writing almost always takes more editorial crafting — you’re translating specialized knowledge without dumbing it down, and that’s a tough balancing act.

Finding the Sweet Spot

The best answer isn’t always either/or; it’s often both/and. Many successful authors start narrowly so they can establish authority and then expand outwardly. You might publish an academic monograph that hits your field hard — and later adapt the key ideas into a general- interest book, video lecture, or more that connects to broader audiences.

You can also design breadth into your writing structure. Write for your core audience but frame each chapter around problems or themes that are intuitively relatable beyond your discipline. In practice, that means avoiding the temptation to bury your insights in field-specific jargon and instead grounding them in examples or case studies that travel well.

Decisions

Ultimately, the decision comes down to your goals. Ask yourself a few questions:

• Do I want to strengthen my scholarly reputation within a field, or expand my reach across fields?
• Who do I most want to influence — other academics, practitioners, or a general educated public?
• Am I building depth, breadth, or a balance of both over the next five years?

Narrow work gives you credibility and depth; broad work gives you visibility and cross- disciplinary influence. Both can be deeply rewarding, and both can fit into a smart publishing trajectory — especially if you think long-term.

So, should you write narrow or broad? The best answer might be to start where your expertise is deepest, but don’t stay there forever. Once your ideas are solid enough to stand on their own, don’t be afraid to open the doors and let more people in.

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John Bond is a publishing consultant at Riverwinds Consulting. His most recent book is: The Little Guide to Getting Your Book Published: Simple Steps to Success. He is also the host of the
YouTube channel “Publishing Defined.” Contact him at jbond@riverwindsconsulting.com.