What to Do Before You Start Writing a Book with Alexa Bigwarfe

What in the heck should you write your book about? What should you do before you start writing? And what is a great place or resource to get a lot more support in your author journey? We're getting those questions and more answered in a special Guest Expert Spotlight interview. So if you're wondering about what book to write and you want some great tips, well then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad. I'm an author, a speaker, and the founder of Book Launchers. In my adventures running the company, I get to meet all sorts of wonderful people supporting authors in many different ways. Today I'm really excited to introduce you to Alexa bigwarf, author and creator of the Women in Publishing Summit. She is also a very successful author and so in just a sec I'm going to turn it over to her to introduce herself and tell you a little bit more about what she does. But really my first question to her is how does an author end up creating such a big and successful summit? Which, by the way, it's a week long virtual event that takes place every March. Well, take it away, Alexa.

Hey there. I'm Alexa bigwarf, host and founder of the Women in Publishing Summit. My author journey began a decade ago when I started writing in the nonfiction area on grief and loss. I moved into some parenting publications and events, eventually started helping other authors get their words into the world. As I realized the amount of questions that authors had about writing, publishing and selling their books, and also how much they needed additional support from resources and tools and wanted to learn about what was out there to support them, I decided to start running a summit.

One of the questions that often comes up is how do I figure out what book should I write? The issue of too many content or too many ideas is quite, quite common and Alexa encounters this all the time. So I asked her how she helps people figure out the answer to that question. Here's her answer.

So one of the ways that I help entrepreneurs and business owners is to decide at a very early point what is the one book that's going to help you the most right now. So what I mean by that is what's going to help you start that funnel or increase that funnel or provide information and value to the audience that you already have. You're probably creating content out the West Zoo right now. You've probably got blog posts and maybe podcast interviews, if not your own podcast that you've been on. You've probably got content from webinars. You've got emails that you've been Sending out, you've got social media posts, you have so much content. What is the thing that you do the best or the thing that you're getting asked the most questions about? That's your sweet spot. If you're the expert in a specific topic, having a book on that topic is going to help you exponentially when you're trying to find speaking events or going into programs as an expert on the topic, or really, really becoming a true thought leader in your area of expertise. So I would tell you to think back on the questions that you get asked the most. And one thing that you can do is look through responses to emails or what people are asking you on social media, or just put a question out there to your community to find out what it is that they want to learn about the most. And then you can see what you already have created content for and map out a strategy for pulling all of that information into one book project.

Then I was curious. As someone who has worked with as many authors in the Summit and in her business, I wondered what she wished more authors would do before they started writing their book. Here's her answer.

To think about what you're really trying to achieve. You can also have that book as a weed out for your future courses. As an example, I've worked with a business owner that had a big course, a big expensive course, but she was finding that a lot of people would start the course and they were too overwhelmed. So she was getting refund requests and she needed a way to really narrow down the audience so that when they came into her course, she knew they were going to be a good fit. So her book laid out the basics. She teaches people how to start subscription box programs. So her book lays the process out. It tells you exactly what you need to do to figure out what box, all the tools you need, all the resources that you need, all the things that you need to be doing along the way. And by the end of the book you, you know whether trying to start a subscription box is right for you or not. This is perfect because now she can offer that book to people, they can read that book first, and if they are ready to take the next step, then they're the perfect fit to come into her program. It's really important to think out your long term strategy of what is this book going to do for me, how am I going to leverage my knowledge, what am I putting it out there and what am I hoping to achieve in return for the knowledge that I'm writing about in this book?

Yes, yes, that is exactly why I created our free download the 7 Steps to Write and Publish youh Book, which you can get@book launchers.com 7Steps because understanding your goals, your reader, and what the reader's goals are are three vital things to get clear on well before you start writing. Or you could end up writing a book that is good, but it doesn't do anything for you and your business. Also, I really like the example of laying that foundation for the next step of working with you. Thank you Alexa. If you're loving her tips, be sure to hit that thumbs up button in gratitude. And of course, leave a comment or a question down below. Now, if you're curious about her summit, I can tell you it's extremely well run and fun to be a part of. I had the honor and pleasure of speaking at the 2023 summit. We actually intended to have this video out for you before the summit, but as you may or may not know, I had to take a little bit of a break from work for a bit and I didn't get this video done in time. So sorry Alexa, and to you because you might have missed the 2023 summit, but we'll tell you how to connect with Alexa so that you don't miss the 2024 summit or any of her monthly webinars that she does for her community, if you're interested. So Alexa, what makes your summit so successful and special besides all the effort and hard work you put into it.

Personally, we bring in some of the best experts in the industry to teach the skills that you need to know. We talk about writing craft on the first day and there is an entire section just for nonfiction authors so that you can hone in on what it is that you need to do to improve your craft or to write faster or whatever it is that you need. We talk about editing, production and routes to publication so you might not know whether you want to self publish or find a service like Julie's or some or even pitch it for traditional publishing. So we get into the nuts and bolts of the different routes to publishing when you should go through editing, what that process looks like. We spend a whole day on marketing. Marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing.

All right, if you're one of my YouTube besties like Rachel Robertson, Mike Herd, Efren Delgado, Sean Hayes, or Scully's House of Thrillers, I'm pretty sure you're going, ah, that's why they're connected. They are both all about marketing. Yes indeed. Okay, so now how do you learn.

More to learn more about the women in Publishing Summit, I encourage you to head on over to womeninpublishingsummit.com if you go to womeninpublishingsumMIT.com events, you can get in on all of our upcoming monthly webinars.

All right, Maybe I'll see you at the 2024 summit. Thank you so much for sharing with us, Alexa. I think we got some great new insights from you today while you wait for the next summit. If you're wondering what you can do in the meantime, well, I highly recommend you start thinking about how you'll make money writing nonfiction books. And this video right here will help you out. Or if you're already done your book and you're looking for some great marketing strategy, well, this video is for you. Go ahead, click on one of the videos. I'll see you there.