There are so many great ways to choose great book topics if you’re stuck. And once you’ve chosen a topic, there are easy ways to generate ideas for what you should put in your book to make sure your audience will love it!
Finding Problems to Fix
One of the best ways to come up with great topics for books is to focus on problems that need fixing. People will pay good money for you to fix their problem or ease their pain in any way. People often look for books on Amazon for their problems and pain.
In fact, people are often desperate to have their problem solved. If you can write a book with a solution that will really help people, then you can make great money by selling solutions.
One of the great things about writing books that help people solve problems is that they generally fall into the Evergreen category. They will probably sell well now and always as long as your book is very high-quality and people really respond to it. Of course, you will have to keep your book updated as new possible solutions present themselves.
Note that it doesn’t matter at all if there are already books out there that solve the problem. You have unique insight. Only you can write a book like you can. People will respond to your voice and the way you present the solution, even if there are dozens upon dozens of other books on the same topic.
Remember, though, that you should always be striving to find ways to stand apart from the crowd. You want to build up a readership that returns to you time and time again every time you release a new book. Make the book your own, take an angle on the problem that will set your book apart, and focus on providing true value to your readers.
I often teach writers to start out by writing “one problem, one solution” books. These books are easy to write because they tend to be shorter than the typical, more general nonfiction book.
People don’t need to know absolutely everything there is to know about a topic. They often seek out singular solutions and they want them in an easy, quick to read package.
Find one problem and offer one solution in your book, and you’ll be targeting a very specific group of people that are ready and willing to pay money for a book that will help them solve their problem.
Desperate problems and excellent, well-researched solutions equal sales.
Following in the Footsteps of Those You Admire
One great way to make sure you choose a great book topic that will sell is to follow in the footsteps of those you admire. Success leaves clues. If you can research and analyze some of the top authors out there who are writing books related to the topic you want to write about, then you’ll be a lot more likely to be successful.
By studying the successful authors, you can figure out what you need to do to also become successful. You can learn from their mistakes and their major wins.
It can help to trace them all the way back to when they started. What was their first book? What is their background in general? Research these authors and you’ll probably find that their path was similar to your own.
It can be really inspirational to know that they weren’t any better off when they started and yet they are successful today. It can give you hope and motivation to push through and become a best-selling author yourself.
Study what’s in their catalog. If you’ve found a successful, prolific author then you’ll probably note that they take a slightly different angle on every book they release. They write books that are related to their best-selling books. They might target a slightly different audience on the same topic. Or, they might target the same exact audience with slightly different topics.
Out of all their books, you’ll probably find that the 80/20 principle applies. Some of their books far outsell the others. Consider why that is. What is it about their lowest selling book that probably led to it selling the least? What is it about their best-selling book that probably led to its selling the best?
Obviously, you don’t want to follow exactly what successful authors do, but you absolutely can find clues to help shape your own success. You have a unique voice and something amazing to share with this audience. Don’t view these successful writers as competition – view them as inspiration. Stand out, do your own thing, and you can become successful as well.
You can find your own success much more quickly by researching and learning what worked and didn’t work for other authors. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
They probably made a lot of mistakes along the way and you can learn from their mistakes and find your own success more quickly. Just keep writing, keep finding profitable topics, and keep your focus on making your readers happy.
Creating the Table of Contents before You Write
You’ve done a lot of work to make sure that you have the right focus and that you’ve chosen the right topic. Now, it’s time to focus on the inside of your book. It’s one thing to choose a great topic, but it’s another thing altogether to execute it well.
Even if you choose the best topic in the world, you won’t sell many copies if the inside of your book isn’t high quality. People need to be blown away when they open the book and see all the topics and subtopics included. They want to feel like they are getting much more than their money’s worth.
Again, you can use other successful books as a point of research before you create your own table of contents. And by the way, I do recommend you create your table of contents before you get started writing because it will make it much easier for you to write. You can consider your table of contents to be an outline of sorts—they can be interchangeable, depending on how you write.
Go to Amazon.com and take a look at the best-selling books that are the most closely related to the book you’re going to write. You can use Amazon’s “look inside” feature to look at the table of contents of these books.
Take notes on the common themes and topics the most popular books cover. Consider how they are presenting the information and also the unique angle they seem to have taken.
Don’t just analyze one book in this way – analyze many books in your niche in this way. You have to know what sells and how each of these books has angled themselves differently.
Pay particularly close attention to any out-of-the-box ideas that seem to have really worked for the authors. Use this as a starting point for brainstorming your own unique ideas. Once again, never copy anyone’s table of contents and never steal their unique ideas. You need to put a unique spin on everything you do.
Analyzing the table of contents of a variety of books can also show you what some books are missing and what other books do a good job of including. By researching many different books, you can ensure that you get enough ideas and inspiration to make your book really stand out and be the best it can be.
Brainstorm as you do this. Write down everything that comes to mind. Don’t self- edit as you brainstorm topics and ideas for your book. You never know when inspiration will strike. Doing this kind of research will definitely generate an incredible flow of amazing ideas for you.
Focus on setting your book apart, yet still hitting on all the hot points readers will expect to find in your book. You want to please them and there are certain things they expect to find. Include these things as well as your unique insights if you really want to wow the audience. Always give the readers what they want and need.
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