Joseph's book is quite good. Just one exception.

he makes a big point of how you can't "force" yourself to sleep, and mentions meditation as another failed way to get to sleep.

The basis of this point is the almost universal assumption among sleep researchers that it's impossible to intentionally change the "sleep drive" - which is a physiological process, involving a lowering of body temperature towards the end of the day and releasing certain hormones (like adenosine and melatonin) that make you sleepy.

This is probably true in general, but there's a huge exception.

You actually can learn, without necessarily "feeling" sleepy, to shift your brain state intentionally and at any point in the day or night, slide gracefully into sleep.

Charlie Morley, writing in line with all of the scientific evidence available, teaches how to observe hypnagogic imagery, and in the midst of this, fall asleep quite quickly

To learn more about this, I would look at his books 'Wake Up to Sleep" and "Lucid Dreaming Made Easy."

You can try it. It may take a few weeks.

1. DEEP RELAXATION

Learn (memorize) the body scan. Give yourself about 10-20 minutes. it should only take a few days to learn this.

2. OBSERVE HYPNAGOGIC IMAGERY

This is the one that will probably take time to learn. The KEY is not so much "trying" as staying alert to the spontaneous emergence of imagery. When the images start to become vivid and dream like, stop the body scan, even if you haven't completed it as you intended.

Just gently, calmly, in the most relaxed way possible, attend to the images - you may find it helpful to gaze at them as if looking through the center of your forehead, gazing off about 10-20 inches in the distance.

Two possibilities:

1. You'll fall asleep in a few minutes

2. You'll find yourself fully aware, in a dream.

#2 is MUCH more interesting, but if you only want to fall asleep regularly, #1 works without fail once you master the process.