Choosing a topic for your first book or eBook is difficult, especially for bloggers who write about a wider variety of topics. Answer these questions to help you narrow down and choose the topic for your book.
WHAT TOPICS HAVE YOU WRITTEN ABOUT THE MOST?
Writing a book that’s more than a handful of pages needs a lot of content. Yes, you can flesh out the blog posts you already have, adding in more examples and going into greater detail. But if you only have two blog posts about a topic, it’s going to be difficult to turn them into a book. To make putting your book together easier, try picking topics that you’ve written a good amount of material on, and ideally focus on topics where you’re seen as an expert.
If you have a topic that you love but don’t have enough material to write a book with those posts right now, consider writing a weekly post that provides a little more information on the topic. That way, you’re slowly writing your book over time, and when you’re ready to put it together, a lot of the work is already done.
CLICK HERE to download your free "How to Choose a Topic" worksheet.
WHICH POSTS GET THE MOST COMMENTS?
Having a lot of comments on a post suggests that your readers are very interested in and are engaged with the topic. If your readers are consistently asking for more information about the topic you’re blogging about, that’s a great topic to explore for a potential book. Questions asked in the comments can help you find parts of the post that you can flesh out further to increase the length of your book.
WHAT DO YOUR FOLLOWERS THANK YOU FOR?
If you’ve already been solving problems for your readers, you may be on to something. Successful products, whether it’s a book, a course, or consulting or coaching, all help solve a pain point for the people who buy them. If you’ve been successfully solving common pain points for your readers, that’s a great place to start for your book, too.
WHAT PRODUCTS, COURSES, OR SERVICES DO YOU SELL?
It can be smart to tie your book topic into a product that you already sell. Do you sell coaching services? Writing a book on the topic will help give you more authority, and can be a great low-price lead in to some of your more expensive products and services.
Consider creating an avatar of a beginner in your field and write a book telling them how to get started. Take time to write down a description of someone who would be your ideal reader, including gender, age, location, and, most importantly, what problems he or she has that your book will solve. Then, use the book to help solve each of those pain points that your reader would experience as he or she gets started in your area of expertise.
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If your goal is to make money selling your book, choose your topic carefully. You may consider choosing more than one topic, then testing them out to see if your readers would actually buy a book about each topic. Put your effort into the topic that more people would buy, even if it’s not the most popular topic.
