Julie Broad walks through five checks before writing a book: confirm your expertise and reading habits in the category, study what makes top books successful, check the length and formats of Amazon bestsellers, compare covers and pricing, and find your unique angle. Research existing books to find where your expertise meets market demand.
Chapters
Here we go. And I have five questions you're going to want to answer before you ever put pen to paper and write your book. Hey there. I'm Julie Broad with havemoreinfluence.com and soon. I'm so excited. Book launchers.com I've been filming videos for three and a half years to help other self published authors navigate the muddy waters of publishing and ultimately selling your book. And so I've been trying to help you guys with this for years. And now I have an even bigger way to help you that I'm launching in 2017. So come check it out. Book launchers.com so excited. So I had a friend contact me saying I want to write a book. And I said, great, what do you want to write about? But he didn't really know. He just said, I'm driven to write a book. So as we started to dive into it, I started to ask him some questions and I thought, you know what, these questions might help you if you're planning a book project anytime in the future. So first of all, I was asking him the areas that he's interested in and he has expertise. Then we started to look at the categories and genres on Amazon where those books might fit in. As we narrowed it down, I said, what are you reading these days? If you're not already reading books that fit into that category, that fit into that genre, you're probably not really that interested in the subject. So are you going to be interested enough to write, research, publish, and then promote your book, baby? Number two, do you already understand what makes a book in that category successful? What is common through most of the books in that category? Or at least what is common through the top 20 that are selling really well in that category. What kind of things do they address? How are they written? You know, do they have pictures? Do they have charts? Do they have other resources available? These are all things you want to consider carefully and plan for before you write your book. Number three is how long are the top 20 books that are currently selling on Amazon? Now here's how you figure out top 20. By the way, let's just go into Amazon, go into a category. Let's pick a category. Okay, let's go into bestsellers. Here's your top 20. Now I check this on a regular basis. This changes by the hour based on sales, but come back and see which ones are here for the next month, for example. And if you haven't already, go read those books and figure out what they have in common. Right? How long are they are they printed in? Is this top 20 version that's selling, Is it a Kindle or is it a print book? Then number four, look at those books and figure out what else is in common. You can even make a chart. So I already said, how long are they? But now I want to look at the COVID design, I want to look at the pricing, I want to look at the formats that are available. I'm even going to look at who the authors are. Number five, what makes you unique? Because you want to have the common elements that are in all the books that are successful, that are selling in your genre, in your category, but you also need something that makes you different. So what is that thing? What is that subject? What is that opinion? What is your experience? What's the angle you're going to take that makes you different? And the angle. Only way you're going to figure that out is by reading a bunch of the books and starting to compare notes. So that's the approach I took with my friend to help him narrow it down. Now, he's read quite a few of the books in this category, which was good news. It means he's in a category he's already interested in. He already had a sense of the style of book that he wanted to write. It's like a book that's been a bestseller for five years in this category. So he's already got that. Plus he knows his unique spin. So. So now it's just a matter of fine tuning and researching a few of the other pieces and reading some of the newer books that are on the market in this category and trying to identify why they're successful. If you do this before you write your book, you're setting yourself up for sales success. These days, I feel like there's so many people who feel like there's a book in me, just like my friend, but they start writing without carefully considering what's actually going to sell. Your success is going to be at the point where you have expertise and interest and that intersects with where the market demand is. And so in order to hit that, you need to understand what's already selling out there and see where you can fit in and where you can stand out. Got a question? Go ahead, post it here in YouTube. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. Makes me happy, tells me to shoot more videos and hopefully I see you here again next time. Go do some reading. Oh, and by the way, if you want to squeeze in a few more books this month and you don't always have time to read, why not choose an audiobook? The new Brand you is on audio. Head over to Audible or itunes. Check it out. The New Brand you by Julie Broad. I'm really excited to have it available on audio and would love to hear from you in you grab it and listen to it. Thanks. Bye.
