Almost everyone you meet has a secret (or not so secret) dream to write and publish their own book.
Now for some, they dream about writing a novel, but for many others their idea is to write their own book about a non-fiction topic such as a “How To” guide, sef-help manual, course, training, or workshop guidebook.
In fact, writing non-fiction books based on providing information to your audience is both very lucrative and quite simple to start – even on a part-time basis.
Here are 3 common objections that keep ebook and book writers from achieving their goals:
1. Writing A Book – Hobby or Business? For many dreamers, they fantasize about the lifestyle of sitting at home in your underwear writing your own book – not having to fight traffic, deal with stupid bosses, or company politics. For many, the ultimate attraction to writing a book is to control their own creativity and income. The reality is, if you want to realize dreams of quitting your job and making a full-time living off writing books, you certainly CAN – but you’ve got to look at it as a business, not a hobby. You need to work on a 1 and 3-year plan on how you will achieve the income you desire. I’m not talking about a complex, detailed business plan here, only a basic understanding of where your revenue and costs will come in – and how much profit you get to take home each month.
What you will often find is that your non-fiction book or e-book is only the start of your income earning potential. In fact, having your own book allows you to branch in to other products, speaking engagements, coaching, teaching, consulting, collaborative ventures, until you have 3-4 major sources of income – when you plan your writing and publishing business this way – the sky’s the limit.
Especially important is that you work your plan backwards, understanding how you ramp up your profits and products to achieve your end goal in a 1-3 year timeframe.
2. Where Do I Find Ideas That Will Lead To Top Selling Books? First, you must realize there are actually 3 processes here. First, pick a market in which you would like to operate. Example – you may want to target small business owners, consultants, musicians, stay-at-hom mom’s, parents, etc… It’s ok to have a few ideas and markets in mind, but you need to start by picking a group of people you are interested in doing business with and who you feel you may have some level of understanding or connection to already. Second, you then need to research potential topics and ideas. You’ll find 40 different techniques for finding hot ideas in the Ultimate Information Entrepreneur’s Success Package, but the key point is that you are trying to discover patterns of questions, concerns and challenges your market are having AND understand WHY they want to know the answer – what ultimately are they trying to achieve? Third, test your list of topics/ideas for signs of demand. We discuss this constantly over at the InfoMarketer’s Exclusive Zone – where we want to see signs of existing willingness to pay for information – could be proven sales rank on Amazon or Barnes and Nobel, signs of Pay-per-click advertising on Google Adwords or Yahoo, evidence of higher end information products selling, or a many other market research techniques for discovering online demand.
When you break down the process of picking an idea into these 3 steps backed by proven , measurable steps, finding your topics becomes much faster and much less riskier.
3. What Do I Write About? When you are writing a book in the non-fiction area – especially when it is a “How To” book, report or information product, the simplest and most effective way to write is to create an outline. First, your entire book should be solving a BIG problem or challenge for your audience. Next, each chapter should take them one step closer to answering this BIG question. Finally, each chapter should be made up of a dozen questions which answer the specific question answered by that chapter.
Where do you find the questions that people are asking? Fortunately, with the thousands upon thousands of discussion forums, book reviews, chat groups, blogs, magazines, etc… in your area of interest, the entire outline of your book is sitting right in front of you – all you have to do is pull out the questions and organize them in a way that gives you an “angle” – a unique way of solving your market’s problems.
Not only is writing your own book, ebook, reports and other information products well within your reach, it can be much simpler and less anxiety ridden than most people think.
No more excuses ok, get started today!
