Write A Bestselling Book: 5 Tips
Post by Blog Manager Robbi Hess
Raise your paw, er hand, if you want to write a book. I see an awful lot of virtual hands up. Okay, next question. How many of you want to write a bestselling book? I see even more hands. Truly, if you’re going to write a book you want it to be a bestseller, right? We should all aspire to those authors whose names and books appear on the NY Times Bestseller list on a weekly basis. Even if we don’t achieve their rock star status we at least want to be a rock star within our own niche.
Believe me, there are ways to write a book that will appeal to your niche audience and then there are ways in which to market that book and achieve bestseller status (even if it’s on Amazon for one day). This post will offer tips on how to write that book and a future post will offer tips on how to market your book once it’s been written.
Here are my five best practice tips for writing a potential bestseller:
- Choose a niche for your book that is within the area of expertise that your audience knows you for. What does that mean? If you’re known as a dog blogger, then writing a book about cats will likely turn off the audience that follows you for your dog knowledge. If you have already built a brand and an audience on a particular niche platform, go with that strength.
- Target your book’s content. The more laser focused your content (and your title) the more searchable it will be. For example, if you write a book entitled, “Dog Grooming 101” or “Social Media For The Blogger” you are not laser focused and your title will likely get lost in a Google search. Try this instead, “Dog Grooming 101 for Working Dog Groups” (or) “How To Groom The Miniature Breeds: Dog Grooming 101” (or) “Dog Grooming For The Busy Single Working Professional.” Your audience will have to add a few more key words, but your book title will likely be top of the search. As for the other title, try this, “Social Media Hints & Tricks For The Midwest Pet Blogger,” (or) “Make Your Social Media Pet & Pet Blogging Efforts Pay.” All of these titles would need to be fine tuned based on your area of expertise and even your locale.
- Keywords count in books as much as they do on websites and blog posts. What keywords is your website utilizing? How are your current readers finding your blog? What analytics and tracking are you doing for your own keyword searches? If people find your blog because you write about Pitbulls or Poodles or if they find you because your target audience is Baby Boomers or New Parents, work those key words into your book content and perhaps even in your book title or subtitle. Do a search in Amazon using your potential book title. See how many pop up with that search term. Don’t forget to check in the: People who bought this, might be interested in this section.
- Write a short book. There are many book publishers in the market that focus their efforts on printing the short book. What is a short book? It could be fewer than 75 pages. Do you have enough content to fill a 75 page book? Do you have enough content to fill two books of that size? If so, consider penning a series. If you’re a prolific blogger, chances are you have more than enough material for a book series. Look at the categories listed on your blog and see whether you have enough blog posts under those categories about which you could write a book. Remember, a short book with a laser focused topic will give your readers what they want and provide them the information they seek.
- Jumping onto a trend. If you’re more concerned with writing about trending topics and if your blog focuses on that and if you’re a fast writer, consider writing about a trending topics. A word or two of caution though, there will likely be others that will be writing about the trending topic and if it is too narrow a trend, it could become outdated rather quickly. You can find trending topics on Google or even in your Twitter feed. I don’t suggest wasting too many hours of time and effort on a trending topic that doesn’t have enough material to fill even a short book, or if it’s about a topic that you simply aren’t passionate about.
Many bloggers have the passion and the desire to write a book, but they just don’t know how or where to get started. At BlogPaws we understand this and that’s why we have several tracks this year at the BlogPaws 2014 conference that will lead you through the stages of writing a book from: How To Get Published, to How To Monetize Your Blog (which could technically mean writing and selling a book) to how to be an Amazon Best Seller to Copyright Issues and understanding SEO (which will come in handy when you’re researching your keywords). Check out our speaker list and let us know which sessions you’ll be attending and if you are a budding author!
If you’re still on the fence, but know you want to write a book this year — then you should invest in yourself and your road to bestseller-dom! There is still time to register, but we have sold out every year, so don’t delay!
(Photo Shutterstock: Border Collie raising paw)
