Once you’ve made a commitment to writing a nonfiction to build your brand and advance your career, whether you’re working for someone else or own your own business, the next step is to choose the right topic, perspective, or approach, for your book.
Your choice of topic is critical. We’ve all graduated from high school or college, where the majority of our reading was in “textbooks” containing a smorgasbord of information we were expected to master and be able to recite.
Today’s readers are in a hurry; they’re looking for the shortest, least-expensive book that will help them quickly solve a problem or achieve a goal.
You, too, are looking for the fastest way to achieve your goal!
Selecting a topic is the first, necessary, step you must take before moving on to choosing a memorable title and organizing the contents of your book. Here’s a simple 3-step process to select the right topic:
- Start by identifying 8 possible approaches. Make a list of 8 different approaches for your book. Each approach should be based around an easily-stated “big idea” that targets a desired type of reader (i.e., market segment), identifies the problem or goal you’re going to address, and positions your book apart from existing books on the topic. Let the ideas flow freely, but be brief. Limit yourself to using just a few sentences to describe each of the 8 possible approaches.
- Select the 3 best approaches. Set your list of 8 approaches aside overnight. The next day, review your 8 possibilities and select the 3 best approaches. (Don’t throw away your rejected alternatives, but save them in a way that will allow you to go back to them later, if needed.)
- Select the best of the top 3 alternatives. Once again, set your choice aside overnight, and review it the next day. If you’re still enthusiastic about your choice, don’t try to come up with more ideas, but advance to the next steps of choosing a tentative title and table of contents (or chapter plan) for your book.
If, however, at any point, you’re not totally satisfied you have made the right choice, simply repeat the 3-step process all over again, by identifying 8 more possible topics, narrowing them down to 3, and, again, selecting the best of the 3.
Benefits of this approach to selecting a topic
Intelligent people are often overwhelmed by good ideas and strong possibilities. Their wealth of options and good ideas can create a “paralysis of choice” that keeps them from ever taking meaningful action. Instead of exploring an approach that might work, they continue to come up with more good ideas. More good ideas, of course, only makes things worse!
An overabundance of unexplored topics can prevent even the most qualified individuals from ever writing a brand-building book.
New book topic ideas are always going to turn up. Successful authors, however, are those that quickly triage their ideas and commit to moving forward by exploring the best possible approach. Change during the writing and editorial possible is inevitable; it’s foolish to wait until you have chosen the “perfect” approach before moving forward. Get started by choosing a topic and moving forward on your path to writing and publishing a book that drives business and builds your brand.
