These days, more and more people are self-publishing books. That means more competition for readers and more noise for you to break through. How do you get your self-published to stand out? By finding what makes your book unique and special.
In many ways, your book is like your business. To stand out and find people willing to buy your book (or invest in your business), you need to tell them how your book is different. How is your book THE book to solve their problem or help them make a transformation they’ve been working toward? Why should your book be the go-to book in your niche?
As an added bonus, finding what makes your book special can also help you focus your writing and editing to make your book really good. When you know why and how your book is unique, you can double down on that uniqueness and make your book truly special. Yes, your book can still do a lot of good and help people even if you don’t know what makes your book unique. BUT, if you can find out what makes your book truly special…it’s going to make your book even better.
In today’s episode, I’ll walk you through five questions you should ask your self to find what makes your book special. You can use those answers to help you write a better book, and to help you find more readers (and sell more books), too.
TRANSCRIPT: FIND WHAT MAKES YOUR BOOK SPECIAL
(This is a direct transcript of the episode. Please excuse any typos.)
Hello and welcome to episode 83 of the blogger to author podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Beth Brombosz. These days more and more people are self publishing books. That means more competition for readers and more noise for you to break through. How do you get yourself published book to stand out by finding what makes your book unique and special. In many ways, your book is like Your Business. To stand out and find people willing to buy your book or invest in Your Business, you need to tell them how your book is different. How is your book the book to solve their problem or help them make a transformation that they’ve been working toward? Why should your book be the Go-to Book in your niche? As an added bonus, finding out what makes your book special can also help you focus on writing and editing your book so that it’s really good and it will help you make your book really good.
When you know why and how your book is unique, you can double down on that uniqueness and make your book truly special. Yes, your book, it’s still do a lot of good and help people, even if you don’t have the answers to the questions I’ll pose to you in this episode, but if you can find out what makes your book a truly special, it’s going to make your book even better. So in today’s episode I’ll walk you through five questions you should ask yourself to find out what makes your book so special. You can use those answers to help you write a better book and to help you find more readers and sell more books too. So let’s dive into those questions. The first question I think you should ask yourself is when you think about your business or what you do or how you help people, do you have a special method or framework that you follow?
For example, this is something that I’m starting to dive into. So for years now I’ve been helping bloggers turn their content into books and then I’ve also been helping a lot of other authors who even aren’t necessarily bloggers take their contents, our even outlined books and find new ways to express what they’re doing. And so really all of that I’m putting into what I’m calling the fast author framework, so that is the framework that I used to teach other people how to do what I’m doing essentially, or it’s also the same framework that I use with my clients. It’s the framework that I follow when I am helping them plan their books and while I’m helping them write their books, if they need help, ghost writing, and it’s the framework that I follow to help them edit their books. And so what I’m doing is again, looking at everything I do in my business and figuring out a way to systematize it so that I can teach it to somebody else.
Not only is that incredibly valuable to me as a business owner because I can show that yes, I actually do have a system that I follow and that in itself just elevates me above other people because I’m able to say that I have a system that I follow. But in addition, I can make a name for myself by teaching this method, by showing people how I can help lead them through these steps. Essentially. Whether that is on my podcast or through video or through a book that I’ve got brewing in my head, and this is also really what I put into my book blogger to author, turn your content into a book. What I did was took everything that I did to create my first book and everything that I was teaching other bloggers to do at the time and I put it into a book form.
So again, the question to you is, do you have a special method or framework you follow? So for example, if you are in the health and wellness niche and you teach people how to, let’s say, start following a certain exercise program or start to do a particular set of exercises while is there a certain way that you teach them how to do that, that you could turn into a method or a framework. If you’re taking them from beginner to advanced, is there a certain set of steps you take them through or do you start them off on certain exercises or moves or whatever it is and then work them up to a next level. That sort of thing. Is there a particular set of steps that you’re constantly following as you help people get started? If that’s true, then that’s that method or framework that you’re following that you can focus on with your book.
So, and this is just a really great place to start too, if you are trying to figure out what to write your book about. Well, you know, if you’re trying to make a name for yourself as somebody who teaches somebody to do x, y, Z, well then if you write a book about how to do that, that’s absolutely going to help cement your status as an expert in that niche. So again, question one to ask yourself, do you have a special framework or method that you follow when you’re helping your clients or customers or followers? If you do, how can you put that into words? How can you put that into a certain series of steps, for example, that you can then pass along? The second question that I think you should ask are really somewhat set of questions, but we’ll narrow it down to one is do you have a unique personal background?
So do you have a certain story that you can tell or do you have experience that you can put into your book that helps you stand out from other people who have not experienced this? So for example, have you gone from living a very unhealthy, let’s say, sedentary lifestyle till one that’s healthier and active. And if you go back and listen to previous episode, I interviewed Lynn Lindbergh. She’s a friend of mine and I helped her, um, the first stages of her book that she just published a couch to active and that entire book is all about how to go from a sedentary lifestyle to becoming active. And I think it’s beautiful the way that she explains being active. You know, you don’t have to go run a bunch of miles. Essentially she walks people through finding an activity that they love to do, that they find true joy in and then making that a habit.
Um, but this was something that Lynn had gone through herself. And so being able to speak from that background was incredibly powerful. Um, likewise is if your book is teaching people how to eat well when they’re very busy, if you came from a background where you were struggling to eat well because of your really busy schedule, but you figured it out, being able to speak from that personal experience is absolutely helpful and it’s going to help you connect with your readers and it’ll help you sell the book too because you could talk about how you’ve been through it and you can talk about how because you’ve been through it, you are the person to solve their problems. So again, is there that unique background that you come from, your experiences that you can use to position your book with and that you can use to really show that you are the go to person about the topic that your book is about essentially the Go-to person in your niche.
So that’s question two. Question three that you should ask yourself is, do you have unique qualifications? If the answer to that is no, that’s totally fine, but that can be a really great way to distinguish yourself and your book and really help it stand out. So my example here is from my first book, Yoga for runners, really one of the ways that I’ve been able to make a big name for myself in that niche and show that I’m an expert is because I am both a registered yoga teacher and also I am a certified running coach and even a lot of books that I had looked at at the time when I published my book that we’re about Yoga for runners. They were written by Yoga teachers, Yoga teachers. We’re not running coaches. And so as someone who was a runner who did yoga, who also had these qualifications, it put me in a unique position to say, okay, I can speak very clearly to my target audience.
And in addition from the training I can pull on both experience, but then as well just the knowledge that I gained during that training to help teach the content to readers more effectively. So in that instance, my background as a running coach, I could pull from that and really dive deep into, okay, how should you be incorporating your yoga practice into your running training plan? And that’s something that not a lot of other people were talking about because they didn’t have that combination of qualifications. So for you, think about again, whether you have unique qualifications, whether that is certifications or maybe it’s something that’s a little more informal, but maybe informal training that you’ve had or courses that you’ve taken, even if you don’t have a certificate, what you can you pull from and what gives you a unique perspective that you can bring to your book.
Those are great ways to help really make your book special and to give it something else that other people in your niche aren’t going to be able to give your book. So question three is, do you have unique qualifications? Question four is, do you have unique client results that you can share even if they are anonymous? And as a good example of this, I’ll go back to my client and friend Lynn Lynn, Lynn Burg, who wrote couch to active. She was able to pull in stories from both just friends, but more importantly from clients who had gone through that transformation from living a completely sedentary lifestyle to making being active a habit and so in some cases they may not have been totally comfortable giving their name. Although I think in most they were, but even if she had to come up with a pseudonym for them, having those specific experiences and being able to tell their stories and talk about how to apply what she was teaching from their perspective that is so, so valuable to people.
And likewise, this is especially true for those of you who are in health and wellness, but it carries throughout many, many niches that those success stories are. Number one gun. Just help show or sell you and what you’re doing and show people that you are an expert because you get results, but also it just adds a depth to what you’re able to write about because you can tell those stories of your current clients or former clients and how you were able to help them. So again, it just adds that extra layer of richness that can really help set your book apart. And in addition, having multiple stories from people from multiple backgrounds can actually really help people because one person might draw more from one story than the other. So if you have a collection of backgrounds or stories from clients in your book, there’s more chances that somebody’s going to say, oh yeah, that’s just like me.
I can totally relate to that story and so I’m going to really follow along what you’re teaching in that story so that I can have those same changes in my life. So again, it could be, for example, if you’re in the health and wellness niche, it could be the difference between having a story behind somebody you humped who’s a busy mom and then maybe having a career woman who doesn’t have a family as an example, and then maybe having somebody who decided to get fit and healthy later in life and whose body has those unique challenges that come up as we age? Those three backgrounds, they’re very distinct, but you’re going to be able to communicate with a wider swath of people and help a wider swath of people if you’re able to give examples from different backgrounds. So hopefully that makes sense. And again, the main question you’re answering here is do you have unique client results that you can share?
Even if you’re sharing anonymously, even if you don’t get the permission to include that person’s name or if they say, okay, but I want a pseudonym, that’s still okay. It’s the story that’s most important. So that’s question four. Question five is, do you write with a unique voice that your readers love? So do you have a special way of explaining things or are people just drawn to the way you speak and how you package and message things? If that is true, than that is absolutely a unique selling point for your book and it’s a great way to attract readers as well. So before I get too far into this, I do want to make a very important caveat is that you should not try to be someone you’re not. You should not try to write in a voice that is not your own. You shouldn’t fake it just because you think people want to hear things a certain way, and I will give an example that I know my writing voice tends to be more academic just because of my background, so I’m not going to sit there and try to write in the same voice as like a generation z influencer who’s 18 years old.
I’m not going to go out of my way to use slang. That isn’t something that I would normally say just because that’s not who I am and it’s just not authentic to who I am. So yes, having a unique voice can be really great, but if you don’t have a unique voice, don’t try to create one just for the sake of creating one because it’s just not going to come off well. It’s not going to come off authentically and then you’re going to be building relationships with the wrong people. So don’t do that. But if you are somebody with a unique voice with a unique message that people love, or maybe you’re really great at writing with humor and people just eat that up, then dive into that because you have that unique voice that people will actually love to read through. And one example that comes to mind for me right now is Shonda rhimes book, year of Yes.
And we know that she is a brilliant storyteller and she’s phenomenal with words. And so that I think just made that book even better to read or I’ll be honest, I listened to it on audio book, but still her writing and her style just told the story that she was trying to tell on this transformation that she was trying to convey to other people have when she stopped seeing yes or excuse me, stop saying no for a year and started saying yes. Um, it just made that story so much more entertaining and it helped it hit home because she had this amazing voice with which to tell it. So you know, it, it’s still is a very important lesson and other people have told similar stories. But because it’s her unique writing voice and because of the way she tells it, it just made that message so much more powerful.
So again, if you have a unique way of explaining things or if you just have a way with words or just you’re able to tell things in a certain way that really resonates with people than dive into that and use your unique voice as a unique selling point for your book and really emphasize that as a way that your book stands out from the crowd and that it’s really a way that makes your book special and unique. So those are the main five questions you should ask yourself. But before signing off, I just want to ask one final question, which is, is there another way that you are unique? And there are a lot of different ways that we stand out from the crowd that were different from other people in our niche. And so again, it’s really important to figure this out, not only for you as a business owner, but also for your book because it’s going to really help you find that special way that you can connect with people and that might just be as simple as knowing your niche and knowing that your niche that you’re targeting is unique and the fact that you’re serving this very tight knit community can be unique.
And if that’s the case, that’s perfect to your messaging is going to be more geared towards that niche in that smaller group and automatically that’s going to help you stand out. If I needed a book that was going to teach me how to let’s cook quick meals, but if I found one that was okay, these are quick meals that work at home moms can create and they’re ones that you can juggle while taking care of a toddler who wants to get on your stove and into your oven. Well then that’s actually really going to speak to me personally and where I’m at in my life and I’m going to want that book because it’s solving my unique problems. And they know what it’s gone are, they know what I’m going through when I try to cook. So just as an example, even just having that specific niche can be a way that your book can be unique and really that uniqueness again is going to help you sell more books and serve your audience in a better and deeper capacity.
Uh, right. So I hope that this episode and those questions will help you find what makes your book special and that those answers in turn will help you improve on your book, make it better, help you edit your book better, and maybe help you add in some different examples that you wouldn’t have otherwise or different stories. But in addition, I hope that it helps you out a little bit with your book marketing too. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you need individualized help with your book and figuring out what makes your book special and how you can use that to improve the quality of your book, whether that’s just through strategy or through editing, definitely get in touch. You can learn more about my one on one individualized services by going to blogger to author.com/services. I would love to hear from you and how I can help you improve your book. So thanks for listening. Take care. And until next time, happy writing.
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