Familiarize yourself with the book’s other components. Get a draft of all the art, photos and other items that are going to be part of the book and learn it well. If it’s a book about tattoos, bone up on the art’s history. If it’s a book about World War II, start researching bombs and Hitler.
Write captions then expand them. Even though captions may already be written for the visuals, you will do yourself a service if you write your own caption then expand on it. If the photo is a tattoo of a dragon, for instance, you can expand on it by stating how the dragon theme is hugely popular in the orient.
Put all the paragraphs together and create transitions. Once you’ve identified all the visuals, you can stream them together with transition paragraphs. Say the dragon tattoo, which allowed you to delve into the history of its symbolism in China, is followed by a pinup girl tattoo. “As the East is enamored by their dragons, the West has always been in love with its pinup girl.”
Stay short and sweet. While you may be tempted to start listing every feature of the fierce, fire-breathing beast, don’t turn your prose into Moby Dick. Readers are going to have the visuals right in front of them, so you need not go on and on. Coffee table books are also supposed to be short and sweet, not filled with long paragraphs that will never get read.
Write an introduction. Once you have the body of the book wrapped up, write a catchy and poetic introduction to summarize what the reader is about the see. Again, keep it short. “They’ve been stigmatized, laughed at and hidden from mom, but tattoos are not going away anytime soon. Due to their very nature, they actually can’t go away unless you undergo expensive skin surgery. But, based on the array of tattoos we’ve amassed in this collection, you’ll agree you’d want them to stick around.”
Proof it. Always proofread your work and, if you have a literate friend or neighbor, run it by them, too.