Step 4: Pick a winning topic for your book

IN THE LAST LESSON YOU LEARNED

In the last lesson on my Big Impact Book Writing System, I taught you how to identify the profile of your book’s ideal reader.

Knowing that profile lets you automatically write a much better book. And if you want your book to also attract new clients or accomplish other business outcomes, knowing that profile is a huge key.

IN TODAY’S LESSON YOU’LL DISCOVER

In today’s lesson you’ll learn how to pick a winning topic for your book. 

Or, if you’ve already chosen your topic, you’ll learn how to “tweak” it to maximize its relevance and attractiveness to your book’s ideal reader.

And now that the biggest fears of the Coronavirus are diminishing as we learn how to cope, many of us are simply dealing with the cabin fever from being sequestered at home for the next month or longer.

People are looking for productive ways to spend this abundance of time. But while our neighbors are turning to mowing lawns and cleaning garages, you can use these lessons to turn your idle time into enjoyable, creative time that can pay-off in a very big way for you.

At the end of this, your neighbors might have a great looking lawn. But you’ll have a great looking book that will leverage your brand from “rank and file” professional to leading authority in your field, and benefit you for the rest of your career.

Moreover, all of this can be done from the comfort and safety of your home now and for as long as you want into the future. 

So please do follow along with these lessons, perform the exercises I send you, and finally write that book!

WHY IT’S SO IMPORTANT

The topic you choose for your book is the single-biggest determinant of whether or not your book will be both helpful and attractive to readers. 

Delivering that level of value to readers should be a top priority for every author.

The topic also is the foundation for the book’s title and subtitle, which testing has found heavily influence how well your book will actually sell.

Historically, if an author wrote a nonfiction book on a particular subject, it would sell because books were the main place to go for information on a subject. 

Nowadays, for information on a subject, most people go to search engines like Google first. And the information there is free.

If you want your book to sell today, a book’s topic needs to be tailored specifically to the needs of your book’s ideal reader, something that Google and other search engines can’t quite accomplish. 

Then the topic needs to be expressed through a great title and subtitle, something I’ll teach you how to do soon in a future lesson in this series of articles.

Keep in mind, if you’re writing your book so it also will attract new clients, or win speaking engagements, or sell your services and programs, then the financial rewards of following the process in these lessons can be enormous.   

Last, but not least, if you follow my system and do the first 3 Steps as well as this one, the alignment of subtle energies that results can create not only a more meaningful book, but a truly transformational book.

STEP #4: PICK A WINNING TOPIC FOR YOUR BOOK

Therefore, Step #4 of this system is to pick a winning topic for your book.

Or, if you’ve already chosen your topic, you’ll learn how to “tweak” it to maximize its relevance and attractiveness to your book’s ideal reader.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS STEP

If you are like most of my clients, students and subscribers have been over the last 35 years of my service as a publishing and marketing mentor, then you want your book to not only create great value for the reader, but also to attract clients, win speaking engagements, sell your high-end programs or some other tangible outcomes. 

If that describes you, then you should assume the book’s ideal reader is someone in your business or practice’s target market, which I taught you how to determine in Step #3. 

Pick a topic for your book that addresses the needs of the people (or the organizations) who are your ideal reader. 

Here’s an easy, effective way to do this is.

Review the demographic and psychographic profile of your ideal reader. You outlined it in the lesson for Step #3. 

Now brainstorm their biggest problems and aspirations. 

Keep in mind that people (and organizations’ decision-makers) usually make their purchasing decisions and other major decisions to solve real or perceived problems. Or to accomplish aspirations. 

And people typically make faster decisions, and are willing to pay more, to solve problems than to achieve aspirations.

Keeping their biggest problems and aspirations in mind, answer this question:

“What knowledge do you have, or have access to, that, if people matching the profile of your ideal reader knew you put it in a book, they’d buy that book instantly and want to hire you?”

Write down your answer to this question. In it are the makings of a hot topic for your book.

If you ALREADY have a topic for your book, then answer a variation of this same question. Keeping your ideal reader’s biggest problems and aspirations in mind, tell me:

“What knowledge do you have about the topic you’ve chosen that, if people matching the profile of your ideal reader knew you put it into a book, they’d buy that book instantly and want to hire you?”  

That will focus your topic on the specific knowledge people want most, and usually leads to many more sales of your book than your book would get from that topic without this “tweak.”

At first glance these might seem like obvious questions. But they’re not.

You see, as experienced and knowledgeable professionals, it’s natural to assume that the topic people will be interested in is what we know most intimately and passionately.

But, trust me when I say there have been countless authors who wrote wonderful books on the topic, they were knowledgeable and passionate about. And today they have thousands of copies of their books sitting in their garage, because the book wasn’t of interest to their readers.

So, the real value in the two questions above is to unearth the real fears, frustrations, needs and desires of our readers and future clients. THOSE are the topics we should be addressing with our book. Because those are the topics our readers care about, think about, and obsess about.

When we lead that way and adapt our experience and knowledge into a book that meets the reader’s needs, then we have a winning combination.

As the legendary business trainer Zig Ziglar taught, “You can get anything you want in life by helping enough other people to get what they want.”

THE BENEFITS

Follow the guidance above and you, too, can enjoy the benefits that many other book writers have experienced.  

Here are five of the biggest benefits authors report:

• You’ll almost certainly have the makings of a hot topic for your book, one that will create excellent value for the reader.

One of the most common fears authors have is their worry that their book idea won’t be that useful to readers. If you follow what I’m teaching you above and in the other lessons, you won’t need to worry about that any longer.

• If you’ve been implementing the last 3 Steps’ lessons, your topic will be transformational in its impact.
• If you also apply what I’ll be teaching in coming lessons, it will naturally bring you more of the specific business outcomes you want from your book. That includes bringing you more of that business you want from your ideal readers -- who are the people you want most to reach.
• And if you use the above process to determine or tweak your book’s topic, it’ll be a topic that’s easy for you write about. 
• Focusing on the knowledge you have allows you to naturally identify and express your strengths, your wisdom, and the advantages you provide that other good people in your field do not provide to your reader. 

PROOF IT WORKS 

As a truth-seeker since the age of 17, I have studied more than 5,000 years of history and many of the world’s great spiritual teachings from eastern, western and some indigenous cultures.

And years ago, I realized that my life purpose has to do with wisdom.

So when I went to create my own book, my instinct was to focus it on imparting wisdom.

However, I realized that my target market’s biggest concern was not wisdom, but attracting new clients and getting business.

So I focused my book on that—on wise approaches to attracting new clients and getting business. 

As a result, when the book was published, it brought in $281,215 before it was even published. And a total of $1,031,000 during the first 27 months in publication. And millions more in the years thereafter.

This is the kind of experience I want for you, too.

ABOUT YOUR NEXT LESSON

To help you implement this particular lesson successfully, next week, I’ll post an article that will help you use it successfully.

Your next lesson in this series about the Big Impact Book Writing System will be published on Tuesday, April 28. 

In it, you’ll learn how to choose a monetization strategy for your book. In other words, how to make money from your book.

There are three different strategies you can choose from to make money with your book. The single biggest mistake most book authors make is not learning about all three of them, and not consciously choosing upfront which one of the three strategies is best for you and your book. 

It has absolutely huge implications for what your book will end up being able to do and NOT do for you.

WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU

As you read this series of lessons, you may find yourself desiring to have some support in implementing what we’re teaching, so you can get your book written and out into the world -- up to 10x faster than you would otherwise.

If so, I’ve set some time aside to personally talk with you and help you with your book. You can read more about how this works here.

 And, of course, if you have any questions or comments about any of these lessons – simply message me on LinkedIn.

Kindly,

John

John Eggen

Transformational Publishing and Marketing Mentor

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