Do you think you are now ready to write your very first book? Learn about these 3 questions to ask before writing a book. So that you will be guided when it comes to the writing process.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to the absolute most important question you need to answer. Which I did not answer when I got started writing and publishing books.
The topic we're hitting today is 3 Questions To Ask Before Writing A Book. By the end of this Blog, you're going to know exactly what those 3 questions are as well as their importance.
You're going to have the steps to get the correct answers to these exact questions. You're going to feel great that you're not making mistakes that many writers make When they were in your position writing their book.
Check out and grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist. To make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps necessary to not only self-publish your book but also get it to sell.
Check out this related article: Is It Better To Self Publish?
From my own story, when I put out my very first book. The only question I asked myself was, what do I know about? The answer is that I started with a Goal Achievement book.
I thought well, this is my very first book. This seems like a topic I'm very excited about. I could pump out enough words to put together all of the ideas into the world as a book. So I did it.
Now, I didn't ask any more questions than that which is a little bit of a mistake. Then I moved on to my second book which was an eMail Management book. Then the book after that was Habit Formation as the second and third books.
Now you'll notice something in common with all of this which is we are all over the place. Habits, eMail Management, and Goal Achievement, what do these all have in common? The answer is not that much.
I mean at one level, any book you write is going to have something in common with another book. But I wouldn't want to write a book on How To Do Excel. Then I'm going to write a Harry Potter type book, all under the same author name.
This is going to create problems. The thing was that I was all over the place and wasn't even sure if these were even good markets. You can see why that would be a huge problem, are these good markets?
I'm writing into what exactly is the basis and the reasoning for writing like this. The answer is that it's just because these are topics I find interesting. What is my goal here and what is your goal here?
Is it to put books into the market that you find interesting? That you definitely can contribute get positive feedback from people? Or is your goal to sell as many copies as possible and explore what role self-publishing can have long-term financially for you?
As well as building a brand around yourself that has a specific thing that people associate with you. As opposed to well, aren't you the one who just writes books on random topics? I mean that's never something you're going to be remembered for.
Even Harry Potter, I know Rowling has written several other types of books as well. But the fact is that you become linked to a single thing. If you're writing all over the place, you're never going to even have the chance to be connected to anything.
So that was another mistake I made. The problem is that I confused my audience and lost a lot of readers with this strategy. Because they weren't eager for my next book.
Because maybe my next book would be on How To Fix Your Roofing In Your House. I mean what exactly you know, you see it would be all over the place. And so by coming out books within all of these different genres, it was very confusing.
And then building up an email list. Well, who's going to join this email list? You join the email list and then you're going to get emails on all of these topics or a few of these topics.
You see, it's not going to be a good mix in terms of what's happening and how you're going to build up an advanced review team for that email list. There's a whole series of problems you immediately face when doing this.
Learn And Grow From Mistakes
So, 3 questions to ask before writing a book? Eventually, I discovered the key strategies to avoid this mistake which is by asking a couple of key questions when we're moving into a market.
Assuming our goal is not to be the starving artist or starving author but rather somebody who's selling books that are making enough money you can get by on those sales of the books. If not, doing way better than that.
That's one of the things about optimizing our books right from the start. If you've made these mistakes as I've made, you definitely should not redo your books or take your books off the market. The thing is that we learn as we go.
We're going to make mistakes and we need to learn and grow from these mistakes. So that our future books are not violating these rules. Every little endeavor that I do, everything I do even from creating YouTube videos and all of this is continually making mistakes.
Then try to identify those mistakes, correcting them for the next time. The next time would be much better and that's a key issue here. That's something I like to do as opposed to some of the fake gurus within the self-publishing industry.
Check out this related article: Where Can I Find A Good Self Publishing Podcast?
It is that I like to have complete transparency. I'd like you to know exactly the struggles that we're dealing with as an author, as a publisher, and as a YouTube creators. We make mistakes we learn from them, we grow, and we share.
Even just yesterday, somebody commented something. A mistake that I had made regarding my free one-on-one Discovery Session I have. They had one of the links in there that was not properly working.
There was a couple of other issues they informed me of that I was able to fix those issues. Even a little typo that was in there. But it's been fixed and we're able to then move on with that.
But that is the sort of thing we're talking about, we all make mistakes and that is completely acceptable. We do not need to bang ourselves over the heads for that. Rather, we simply have to fix it in our next book.
We make sure we don't make the mistake multiple times. I also recommend making a checklist of the things you're going through. So that you will remember to do it when you're going through it again.
So, 3 questions to ask before writing a book? You may have guessed some of the things that I'm hitting right now. But because of my own stories with regards to my books, there are books in the genre or sub-genre niche already selling.
We need to know that actual sales are going on for the books you're going to write on. So writing on a book on Goal Achievement, I can check and see some books are selling on that. People are interested in reading books on that subject.
One of the problems though is that there can be books in which people are not interested at all. One of the categories, where this falls under, would be things for which magazines already cover.
People are more interested in getting magazines on a particular topic and then getting a book on that topic. One way that we can verify is by using a tool called KDSpy. It is my number one go-to tool for this.
You can check that out. This is the tool I use personally where you type in the keyword of the niche that you're thinking of going into. Then it will pull up a list of all of the top sellers in that book for that keyword of the searches.
Then we want to see how many of those books are in the top hundred thousand. We're wanting to see a lot of them. If we don't see any books showing in the top hundred thousand, then this is probably a terrible niche to be in.
One of my coaching clients for the last couple of months was dealing with this exact subject where we're dealing with a particular theme. We did the search using KDSpy and found there are not so many books.
That means the books in this market are not selling. Now you could try to create a market which I would never suggest. It would mean that there's no market,
Then we're just hoping and praying that if we put books on to that topic, maybe somebody will start to buy. That is a terrible strategy. Rather, I suggest if you can take whatever theme.
Like for example an Old Dog Training but we discovered that Puppy Training is a lot better. There are a lot of books selling in that market. Then maybe we should move into that more profitable market while staying with our same niche or genre.
The Market Is Flooded
You should check out KDSpy to figure out what's going on. If you've chosen a poor niche, don't worry about it just finish up your first book. But for your next book, make sure it's over in that primary niche.
Or just book a Discovery Session. We'll take a look at an issue and we can fix it from there. Number two on the 3 questions to ask before writing a book.
Are there too many books in the genre? In other words, even if they're not selling, how do we know if there are way too many books? And one of the ways of doing this is simply going into the Amazon Kindle store.
When you're there on Amazon, search for it again for the keyword that we're looking at. So let's just say it's a Roofing for Beginners. I ideally like it to be under a thousand or even less than that if possible for the niche that I'm targeting.
Check out this related article: Optimize Your Amazon Book Page
But let's just say there are 10,000 books on that topic, this is a flooded market. It's not to say it's not a profitable market. You're probably going to see the answer to question number one of the 3 questions; Are there tons of books making lots of money?
But in terms of question number two of the 3 questions, the market is flooded. We do not want to compete in this market. Because there are tons of new books coming out including our book.
And when we put our book on the market, you know there's going to be a problem with this. Because our book's going to hit the market. Then it's going to have all these other books on top of it that suddenly push it out of its page 1 results.
This is a big strategy when it comes to keywords. We want to keep it on page 1 or page 2 results. So that people will find it years to come from now. And now we move on to our secret point of the day.
The number three of the 3 questions to ask before writing a book. What is a genre where you're going to be able to keep publishing on it for the next 5 to 10 years? Now you may be wondering why does that matter?
Well, we talked about the consequence of being all over the place. Confusing our audience, making them wonder what exactly are we doing. Where are we going with these books?
Your books are all over the place. Why should they follow you? Because they're just going to keep coming out with books.
I remember even watching a YouTube channel. I love the guy's entrepreneurial stuff. But then he was doing like a karate thing in between.
The videos were alternating between karate and then like taekwondo. Then doing some entrepreneurial type of videos. I was just confused with this.
I understand that karate, dedication, and discipline have a lot in common with entrepreneurship. You can use those stories in your entrepreneurship videos. But in terms of telling me which type of kick I should do as opposed to which punch I should do.
Can you see how that would be less useful to your primary audience? You start to lose the audience because we're not using a laser-like focus. But at the same time, we need to be excited and interested in the very topics that we're writing on.
If we want other people to equally be excited to buy and subscribe to our email list. To help us with reviews on our future books. To buy those books and to tell their friends about those books.
To get our name associated with those books which are also dealing with content marketing on the side. Like my Content Marketing Course that deals with the exact subject.
How exactly to spread it around so that people find you? And then find your books are all on one single niche, genre, or subgenre. But the point being is if you've got the first two points in place, there's not that much competition you do have.
They're selling a lot and so you're in a perfect position to come into that market. Releasing books, building your brand around it, and coming out with book after book. You just need to make sure that this is something that you are interested in.
We don't want to be putting books on a market that we're not going to be able to stick around with. The final thing is even though self-publishing doesn't have to be hard, you do need to stick in it for a long time.
It depends upon what we mean by long. Because, in reality, it's usually 3 to 5 years. Start building a name for yourself in 5 to 10 years before we start killing it on this subject.
So this is something that you need to consider when you're figuring it out. These are the three key points that you're going to look at when you're doing your book.
But I have a question for you today. It's that which among the above-mentioned 3 questions to ask before writing a book do you think is most important to answer?
Let me know below in the comments. And check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.