#113 - Is My Book Idea Good Enough?

Do you ever wonder if your book idea is good enough? If so, keep listening. My name is Shelli Hitz, and I help writers take a step of faith and finally finish your book so you can impact lives with your message. And in each of my Ask Shelley episodes, I promise to share at least one thing that will help you write, self publish and market your books so that the message of your books can impact lives. So the question I received is, you know, just trying to decide if my idea for the next book is good. And first of all, I want to say you are not alone. I think every author, every writer out there at some point has wondered, is this book idea good enough? Is this going to sell? Is this going to be of interest? Is this going to truly impact anyone's lives? We've all felt that. So know that you're not alone. This is a very, very common thing that we all face. And to be honest, we really don't know exactly what is going to happen with the book. And we take a step of faith. Right? That's what I said in the beginning. I hope you take a step of faith so you can finally finish your book. And if your book is not finished, there's no chance that it will sell or impact lives or do the things that, like God wants to do through your book. Books are door openers, but they can't open doors unless they're finished, right? So the first thing I want you to think about when you're asking yourself, is my book idea good enough? Is just to say, what is the goal for this book? So is this a second book in a series? Is it a book that you really want to sell well and to earn income? Is it a book that you want to use for ministry and you really want it to impact lives? Is this a book that you want to use to bring more leads to your business, like, what is your goal for that book? And then reverse engineer from that goal. So if your goal is for it to be the second book in a series, then you want to look back on the first book. What kind of feedback did you get? What kind of things were people saying? What did they really enjoy? What were they looking forward to? Or what might you change based on some feedback that you got? If this is a book that you really want to sell well, then you probably want to do a little more market research, which I'll talk about in the next step. If this is a book that you want to impact lives, this is something that we recommend for any project. But what we do differently here at Christian Book Academy is we help you to partner with God, not just be a Christian and write a book, but to partner with God as you write the book. So having weekly business meetings with God and really, truly pressing in to partner with him as you write the book so that what you're writing is something that's going to be powerful and will have impact. But it really depends on what your goal for that book is. Since I don't know that I would say dig into that a little bit more first. And then second of all, if you do want this book to have a chance to be a selling best selling book, one of the things we recommend is to do some market research. Now this is not a game guarantee and it's not also, it doesn't mean that if you see other books that are selling well on Amazon and your topic that it's, you know, your book, you know, is not, you know, like it's not a guarantee either way that it's either going to sell really well or it's not going to sell really well, depending on the market research. God is able to do things abundantly above and beyond anything we can ask or imagine. So just don't put all your hopes in this research. But it is important. So what you do is you go to Amazon and you look at other books in that topic, then you look at their bestseller ranking, are they selling well? Typically I'll look. And if it's selling like if it's on from number one to number 25,000 Overall, this is not in the categories, but overall on Amazon it's selling pretty well. So. So if there are some books on your topic that are already selling well, that's a pretty good sign that there's an audience for your book. So what am I saying? So if you are writing something in a completely new area or a completely new topic or some sort of obscure thing and there's really not a huge audience for that book, it could really impact the people who get that book. But it may not really sell volumes over time. So as an example, one of the books that has sold really well for me is my gratitude series, the 21 Prayers of Gratitude. And gratitude is just an overarching theme that can apply to many people's lives. But I had a member in Christian Book Academy and she had written a book specifically for people who were married a second time. And instead of a more general topic, it was a very specific topic. So that made her marketing really targeted. But what she began to realize is that the target audience was actually fairly small or else people just didn't want to identify themselves in that way or there just weren't the groups out there to market to for that specific thing.

Sometimes it's trial and error. And don't feel bad if you publish a book and it's not selling right away. Sometimes as a published author, it takes publishing several books to gain momentum, the snowball effect and to see things happen. That's what happened to me. It wasn't until I published multiple, multiple books that that finally had published the Gratitude series which was amazing and sold really well. And that was in 2012 and then it was 2016, four more years later, a bunch of books later because I've written and published 50 books that then hit another really, really best selling book which is the Broken crayonstall Color. And that still tends to be our best selling book today. But there was a lot of books in there in between. But a lot of people have read them. We have a lot of amazing reviews. They have impacted a lot of lives. And so sometimes it's just getting the content out there, seeing what resonates and asking the Lord for wisdom. And so that's also the number three. So number one is what is your goal for the book and just asking God for wisdom on that too. But number two, do some research on Amazon, see if there are already other best selling books on that topic. And sometimes what writers do is if they think it's already been done, it's already, you know, there's already 10 books on this. But actually that's a good sign that there's an audience for your book because how many times do you purchase multiple books on the same topic? I know I do. And so actually if there are other best selling books on that topic, it's actually a good sign that there's an audience for it and it could potentially sell well. So number three, pray and ask God for wisdom. And so we highly recommend this to have your business meetings with God, to be meeting with him, to be asking him for guidance, to be hearing his voice. And we have an entire module in Christian Book Academy all about kingdom writer foundations. And so we have a how to hear God's voice lesson. We have a lesson on having business meetings with God and these are things that we just really recommend that, that you come to God and ask him. But you know, you can also get wisdom from coaches and mentors. And so inside Christian Book Academy, you know, you can ask me some questions as well and then I can give you some advice. But ultimately God is the only One that can tell you, is this the book idea to go forward with? But ultimately, I want you to take a deep breath, right? And I encourage you maybe just to start writing. Unless you really sense from God that you need to wait. Because a lot of times we're just waiting for this lightning bolt from the sky. And the Lord's like, just, you know, get started, and I'm going to lead you and I'm going to guide you and I'm going to show you as you go. My friend Shay Vines says God can't direct a parked car. There are seasons where we need to listen to God and be still. But there are many times, I think for writers, most of the time we're paralyzed because of the inner critic, because of our own doubts, because of the, you know, just the spiritual battle. And so I say, like, just set your timer for 15 minutes. Start writing this in little chunks of time over your lunch hour when you have time, take the pressure off and just give yourself permission to explore this book idea and to have fun in the process. Like, what's the worst thing that could happen? Like the, you know, the worst thing that could happen is you start writing this book and then you pivot and you realize you actually want to write on something else or you never finish it, but that's the worst thing. And you can have fun in the process. And even if you never publish this particular information as a book, you can use it as other content. You can use it as blog posts, as emails, as videos. There's so many other ways you can use the content, but it's really not going to be life or death. So I encourage you, first of all, really just press in and ask the Lord what is the goal for the book? And then that kind of gives you an idea. If that book idea is lining up with your goal, do a little bit of market research on Amazon and see is this a book topic that already has an audience that could sell well, and then pray and ask God for wisdom, but ultimately start writing and just allow God to continue to lead you as you do. There is no magic button. There's no easy button that I can give you, but I want to pray for you, God. Thank you so much. For each person listening right now that has a book idea and they're wondering if it's good enough. I pray right now that you would remove any lies from the enemy, any of that stinking thinking from their inner critic, and lift the cloud of doubt. In Jesus name, I pray that you would give them faith and trust in you and trust in the process that they can just explore and have fun. And there doesn't have to be this pressure that it has to be picked up by a publisher or has to sell so many copies or it needs to do X, Y and Z. We can leave those outcomes and we can leave those results in your hands and we can move forward in the meantime with writing these words and getting those, those words out of our head and onto paper. And so we thank you for this, Lord. We thank you that you're going to give wisdom right now to each person listening on where to move forward and how to move forward. And we thank you for this. In Jesus name, Amen. Amen. So I hope this was helpful for you. These are just a few thoughts that I had about this topic. This is a huge topic. But we would love to have you join us in Christian Book Academy there. I can give you more specific advice on your specific situation in our private group and on our our zoom calls. So join us@christianbookacademy.com and I will see you next time. Bye. Bye.