158: How to Decide on a Book (or Big Idea) Topic—10 Filters

With Venmo Stash. A tag on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back with Venmo Stash. Get up to 5% cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Match $100 cash back per month. See terms of Venmo Me Stashterms.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the FreeTime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Welcome back, Free Timers. In last Week's solo episode 156, I shared one of the most common questions that I get in the Free Time toolkit around strategies for idea generation. I'll put the link to that in the show notes and forgive me, because I'm recording this one on the same day where I'm still getting over the aforementioned cold that helped me turn the corner into 2023. Just laying around the house feeling terrible. It's still in my voice and that does not really come in handy when batching podcast episodes. But I digress. Today, taking a page out of that last episode 156 on my always Be Listening strategy, I'm pulling another topic idea from the Author Toolkit. This time you can access the Author Toolkit, including all the resources I've created, loom walkthroughs for organizing a book, book marketing, even a book proposal template@itsfreetime.com authors in my always Be Listening strategy, there's a question. What is your biggest question or challenge when it comes to the book writing, marketing or publishing process? And so in the next batch of solo episodes, I'll be alternating some of the biggest FAQ from the Free Time Toolkit and the Author Toolkit. Even though I know that not all of you who listen to this show want to be authors, you could swap the word author or even book for any big creative undertaking, specifically one where you are trying to put your best and biggest ideas out into the world to really develop your unique ip. So again, even if the phrase author or book doesn't resonate, I hope that you still find this framework, these 10 filters, helpful for trying to decide on your next big idea. This question comes in many forms. How do I decide on a book topic? How do I narrow down the book topic? How do I make sure that I have the right book topic? If you haven't already, I encourage you to listen to the two episodes I did with David Moldauer. Those are right around episode, I believe 103 and 105. I'll put them in the show notes could be 107. He talks about knowing when it's the right time to find an agent, how to find an agent, and making sure you don't write the wrong book. I do think it's really important before you dive into a big project, something that's going to consume you not just for several years of creating it, but then nearly a lifetime or so much of your career in promoting and marketing it that you be really thoughtful about making sure you're picking the right idea from, let's say, the idea tree. You don't want it to be overly ripe and almost rotten. You don't want it to be so unripe that you pick it too soon. You want to pick the idea fruit that's right for you. Now, of course, we can never really know. That's part of what makes the creative process so exciting. But I want to share with you 10 filters or ways that I think about my next big idea. And specifically to help those of you who are trying to decide on a book topic, these are the questions that I would be asking yourself to see if what you're considering passes muster. And if not, these questions will guide you to how can you refine your idea even further to give it the best possible chance of success?

Number one, I call it BookRx, as in a prescription. Does this solve a problem that people know they have? They always say, right for the medicine, not the vitamin, as in the medicine is actually fixing a problem. It's not a vitamin that's nice to have or a supplement that someone doesn't even know that they need. For example, I could say that I love operational efficiency. I want to write a book about operational efficiency. But who on earth is sitting around in their business going, if only I was more operationally efficient? No. I think of two friends sitting in a coffee shop. What does one friend say to the other? And I've started, well, all three of my books really, with some form of this. So with life after college, the problem that a friend says to another is, I'm so overwhelmed, I don't know which end is up. I don't know this whole adulting thing, how to Be in the real world, there's no manual for this. There's no guidebook with pivot, it was somebody saying to their friend, I think I'm going crazy. I don't know what's wrong with me. I. I have the perfect on paper job, and yet I'm still not happy. It feels like something's missing. And that's what opened the pivot book with free time. The book RX was for the business owner telling their friend, I just want to burn it all down and pivot into real estate or some other totally different fantasy career. And so the freetime book starts with a conversation I indeed was having with a friend where we were both facing different forms of be Adam, burn it all down mode. So the problem does not present as someone saying, oh, if only I could have smarter strategies for solving operational efficiency in my business. The book rx, the prescription that you want to write is, I'm pulling my hair out. I don't have any free time. I'm driving myself crazy. I'm getting burnt out. I never see my family. I feel guilty that I'm not present with my friends or my family. Those are some of the ways that someone might talk about not having enough free time. It's rare that you would even say to someone, how are you? How's business? And they go, oh, well, if only I could get better at freeing my time. No, that's still jargon. Someone would just be saying, ah, it just feels like I'm on a bit of a hamster wheel, or I'm feeling kind of bored and uninspired, or I'm really getting sick of my clients, or I have too many clients, or I'm still living paycheck to paycheck as a business owner, and I got to figure that out. So just things like that, you really want to put yourself in the shoes of your community. Specifically, think about two friends at the coffee shop, and here's how you want it to go. Friend A tells a problem to friend B, and friend B goes, well, then you have to read this book. Fill in the blank. One of the reasons Atomic Habits is so incredibly popular is because one, it's a great book. So is books like Four Hour Workweek, but also because when someone might say they're struggling with something, their friend might go, oh, well, you got to read Atomic Habits. So just think about any book that you have recommended to a friend recently, specifically, if it's nonfiction. And what was the book rx? What was someone telling you they were struggling with? And then what made you respond and say, oh well, then you have to read this book and you want to figure out what that is in your potential reader's language so that you know what prompt is going to get them to say, oh well, then you have to read this book. So number one, BookRx, what is the prescription? Does it solve a problem that people know that they have? And how would they talk about it? In their words, not in your biz. Speak words.

Number two, this is important to me. It may not be for you. I like to ask, is this topic evergreen for the marketplace? With Life After College, I knew for sure that there would be hundreds of thousands of people graduating from college every year. So every year it could make a great graduation gift. With pivot, I knew that it was evergreen for the market in the sense that when times are going really well, people might pivot in order to grow. They hit plateaus. When we're in a recession or a contraction, maybe people are getting pivoted. So I felt that pivot and the topic of change more broadly, navigating change, getting better at navigating change, was evergreen. I knew that I could even hang my hat on that as a area of interest for a long, long time. With free time. Same thing. It's an evergreen topic. Who doesn't want more free time? And it's evergreen for the market. If you're running your own business, it's very likely that you quit in order to have more freedom and abundant time, money and energy. And there's so many years, especially in the early days, where that is just not the case.

Number three, is this evergreen for me? If you are going to dedicate years of your life, and by the way, it's not just years of writing and marketing, but then it stays with you as part of your body of work, you're going to create a big new source of IP for yourself, for your business, for your body of work. You definitely want to sit with this question. Is this evergreen for me? Can I live with this? For example, Life After College, my first book was, I'd say the least evergreen for me in terms of a topic and an audience that would interest me till the end of time. Now I'm the type of person that there's no one topic that would probably interest me for my entire career. The way that some people write one book or have one big idea and they will give their stump speeches and talk about it for the next 30 years. That's never really been me, but it was really important to me that after seeing how I Felt so complete around the life after college body of work that as I worked my way toward pivot and even free time, I wanted to think, could I talk about these topics for the next 5, 10, 15 years? Is this topic evergreen for me? Can I still get excited about this five years from now? Ten years from now?

Number four, is your big idea specific and yet still a big idea? So especially if you want to go to a traditional publisher, it definitely needs to be specific what you're thinking, as in writing a book called like career Change or something. I mean, it's just so broad. So what, what about it? You know, it's such a broad topic and so it needs to be specific. Like Pivot was a method, a four stage process to map what's next. And it also in the subtitle was kind of tying into an old idea that you had to have a career plan. And so the subtitle is the only move that matters is your next one. And that's the big idea aspect of it is that just introducing the word pivot when it comes to career change, which is now ubiquitous. But at the time that I was working on the proposal, people were only really using the word pivot as it related to startups and businesses. And so I was kind of taking something from the business world and mapping it as a big idea for us personally as career change.

Number five, is it missing or has your idea already been done? Sometimes I'll hear people say, let's say they're in the space of whatever nonfiction arena. And again, a lot of this is more for nonfiction. And they'll go, oh yeah, I don't read any books or I don't listen to any podcasts. And I find that interesting because how do you then know what's missing? And then sometimes someone will then mention what their idea is and I'll think to myself, I've already read five books on that exact topic, or I've heard that covered so much that I'm sometimes not a good gauge because I listen to so much content in these arenas that maybe I'm not even the average person who. I think there's a statistic that average American, I don't know what it is, globally, reads five or fewer books per year. So me reading more than that, maybe I'm not the right person to ask, but I can usually see when something's been well covered already or it's genuinely missing. And so even if you're not an avid reader or an avid reader in this category, spend some time sitting on the floor of a bookstore, looking at the section that you're thinking of writing for and really see has this been done? Or is something still missing? And there are often gaps that open up. Even if something was done five or 10 years ago, it might be missing in the context of today, today's economy, today's landscape. I found it really interesting in the book world that there is the before time of pre pandemic and it was almost like every single book that was written in the before time did not know to address the world that we live in now on the other side or in the midst of the pandemic. And so any book on, let's say, remote working, I'm sure it can be evergreen in its own way. But it'd be so wild now to go back and read books like that without taking into consideration the dramatic changes that the entire world underwent in that topic area over the last few years. So even if something has already been done, I would say you have a new permission slip now to recover that ground because so much change has happened globally in the last few years.

We'll be right back just after this. Hi, this is Deechen Laichman and I am here to tell you Toyotathon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible, incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the Ready for anything RAV4, or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota let's go places.

When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry and put your twist on tradition. A bold cranberry and winter spice flavor Fusion Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season and only for a limited time. Sprite Obey your thirst.

Number 6 is there a trend that you can tie into specifically some kind of hook or even a twist? So I mentioned the pivot tagline, the only move that matters is your next one. That is a twist on the idea that you should care about your career resume, or that you should have all your next moves mapped out, or that you even could have your next moves mapped out. What's the twist on your topic? Once again, if I said, oh yes, I just want to write a book on how to navigate career change, that there's no trend I'm pulling in, there's no real hook or twist with free time. The twist is that, yes, we all want more free time as a noun, but I'm also defining it as a verb. Free time is a practice. It is a skill. It's a muscle we can build. We can get better at it. How do you grow the muscle of freeing your time? How do you take small steps now that will free your time far into the future? And we could even say that free time, the book, I was very deliberate about writing and publishing it quickly so that it would come out in early 2022. While we're riding this trend wave of the pandemic, of so much career and business shakeups, so many people getting pivoted, pivoting, reflecting on their lives. What do they want? What's most important? Is money, everything? No, it's not. How do we spend more time and how do we spend meaningful time? How do we free up our time to do more of our best work and less of the busy work? So in the case of free time, yes, there was a trend, it was this major shakeup and major questioning that we were all doing a reflection as a society around the pandemic and then also giving a twist to what we think of when we use this phrase.

Number 7. Does this topic serve an audience that I'm excited to attract? This is so important and it sounds obvious, but sometimes I'll hear people who have a book idea or something that they want to create a course or IP around and the who it's for is, you know, let's say with Life after college, I could create some sort of flagship course on the post grad adulting. Set your life up. I don't know what I would call it, but I'm not necessarily excited to attract recent college grads. I outgrew it. Maybe I did it for so long, you know, I don't know, but I kind of outgrew it. I didn't necessarily want to be on the college speaking circuit and focusing on that age group. I don't know how else to say it, I outgrew it. So even though there were different opportunities at different moments to create some sort of flagship course for Life After College, or even Pivot with Pivot, if you listen to that podcast. I partnered with Adrienne Clapack, my very first career coach. He has a flagship course called Career Pathfinder because I realized that I didn't necessarily need to roll up my sleeves and help people with the day to day of job transition. That's what I had done when I worked at Google and again, I kind of felt that I had outgrown that. So rather than creating a course, I created a few courses for LinkedIn, learning their platform. So I was definitely excited to serve in that way, but. But I didn't feel that I needed to do too much extra outside of that.

That ties into number eight. Does it serve my broader business and career goals? This is another one that sounds obvious, but I've had many an author friend be stopped in their tracks a little bit when somebody would ask, well, how does this book serve your business? Or how does this book serve your career? I remember I had a friend who wanted to write a book about the 24 7, always on nature of communication. And when a friend asked, well, what would the book then do for you? How would the book work for you in your career? And this is somebody who was working in corporate and still is. So it's not like they were trying to leverage the book as a way to launch a business. But then they realized, oh, that's actually not the topic that I want to be known for, that I'm passionate about doing the speaking circuit about. It's something bigger than that. It's about workplace trends or rethinking the workplace. And so you really want to sit with this question. Does your topic serve your broader business or career goals? Where does it fit in in terms of. A lot of people say a book is a business card, but as an entry point into your own body of work. Not what you've done in the past, but how you want to build your business in the future or build your career. What do you want to become known for? How will the book be an entry point or a doorway into the things that you are excited to do? The activities, the speaking topics, anything. On the other side, you want to make sure that the book or big idea, the IP that you're creating directly plugs in to where you're trying to go. Because if it's more of a side thing or it doesn't directly plug in to career and business activities revenue streams, then it is a lot of frigging work and you will not see the payoff that you deserve if you're going to work so hard on a project.

Number nine, am I uniquely qualified or positioned for this topic? Do I have the expertise and the background to tackle it? This is one where probably of all the ones so far, the most gremlins could come out. This question of am I qualified? Am I good enough? You know, we all have the gremlins that say, no, you're not. Who the hell do you think you are? I remember with life after college, I just had so many gremlins, and they were even on opposite sides. Like, you're too young. No, you're too old. You haven't done fancy things. You haven't served in the Peace Corps, you haven't traveled the world. You don't know what you're talking about. You're not an expert. On the other hand, I was just close to it, of having gone through my own search, feeling lost and searching for answers. So in some ways, are you ever going to be perfectly, totally qualified or well positioned to write or think or talk on a certain topic? No. But there's also a side of not stay in your lane, but like, what is your lane? What is the thing that you have developed genuine life experience and expertise around because you do want to be credible in some way. We all know those people. I mean, whether it's Ponzi schemes or MLMs or things where it's like it's all kind of a pyramid scheme of people teaching what they don't really know, but then recruiting more people through that and it gets really wiggly and kind of out of integrity a lot of times. So I do think that you want to think about for this topic, are you uniquely qualified or positioned in some way? Do you have a unique take? Do you have unique solutions that you found? Do you have unique experiences that you've accumulated throughout your career that put you in a good and interesting position, even if not perfect, to speak on this topic?

That brings us to number 10, final one for today. I'm sure there's many more. The question that my agent helped me shaped my very first book proposal around. She said, you've got to answer the questions, why me? Why now? Why this book? And so I recommend for anybody working on a book proposal or even a marketing strategy, try to answer these three questions. Why me? Why now? Why this book? So that goes to the previous one. Why are you uniquely qualified? Why is now the time? And why is this book or idea needed? Why doesn't it exist yet? In a book proposal there is a section on comps, the competitive analysis. What's out there? What's missing? What do you bring that's fresh and we could say a bonus one, or on this one, number 10 is what is your platform? What are your reach and your connections? Make the business case. So part of trying to make the case, especially if you're going to go traditional, published of why me? Why now? Why this book? The number one thing that a traditional publisher is going to ask and care about Is your platform? Do you have your own community, your own momentum? Do you have good reach? Do you have good reach of one to many, let's say lots of newsletter subscribers? Do you have good reach with corporate connections? And maybe you do work with all these companies and you can just immediately show how you'd sell all these copies of the book? Do you have connections with other authors or even authors who could introduce you to their literary agent? There is an important piece of this of making the business case of if you've narrowed down and decided on your book topic and you've decided that yes, you are well positioned to write, speak and think on it. Also, can you make the business case of how it serves your business and how you will align your business and your activities to be able to get traction for this big idea?

That wraps up my 10 filters for how to decide on a book topic. Let's zoom through them one more time. One book RX does it solve a problem people know that they have? 2. Is it evergreen for the market? 3. Is it evergreen for me? 4. Is it specific and yet still a big idea? 5. Is it missing or has it already been done? 6. Is there a trend you could tie into a hook? A twist? 7. Does it serve an audience I'm excited to attract? 8. Does it serve my broader business and career goals? 9. Am I uniquely qualified or positioned? Do I have the expertise in the background, the chops to be credible in this area? And 10 why me? Why now? Why this book? Make the business case. What is your platform like, your reach and your connections? I hope you found this helpful. If you want a whole lot more author resources, I have open sourced everything that I can for each of the three book projects that I've done. Visit itsfreetime.com authors that's itsfreetime.com authors and if you know someone who is aspiring to write a book, some stats have said one in three people say they want to write a book someday. I hope you'll share this episode with them as well as the author toolkit. I'll close with a permission slip as I always do. You hereby have permission to ditch dull ideas. Ideas that are shoulds that seem like they would be a good idea but that don't make your heart sing. Stay committed, surrender the process and trust that you will land on an idea that is totally resonant, that energizes you, that you would be excited to dedicate so much mental, physical, spiritual, emotional energy to over the next many years I believe in you. I'll send good thoughts for those exact ideas to come your way, for them to refine in your mind over time, and for them to find the perfect expression as you start to work on them. Thank you so much for being here. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star. Thank you. Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show, and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful and for for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time even me. Visit itsfreetime.com join remember, remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.

This episode is brought to you by Marketa. When it comes to your payments provider, you can't afford to compromise. Marketa's modern payment solutions flex with your business without the tradeoffs. Stable and agile. Secure and innovative. Scalable and configurable. If they say you can't have it all, don't believe them. Your business demands more. Choose a payments provider that delivers more. Choose Marketa. Visit marketa. Com Spotify to learn more.