Ronnie;
I have no experience, But my brother-in-Law is a Doctor of Theology and has written 5 books on Theology and Church history published worldwide. Pretty high minded stuff I'll tell you. I can tell you that I don't have a clue either and from what I've seen of his efforts it downright frightens me. I might have done all the research, the digging, the building, but that is just the first step of gathering your material. To me that is the easy part, it is like a big scavenger hunt, or a dectitives criminal investigation. And that is a long way from writing a book.
It does make me wonder sometimes just how much researched information is floating around out there in the wilderness, which is not in any book or refernce materials.
By the way what is your area of study?