Today’s technology allows authoring a book to be as without hassle as creating a Web site or blog. EBooks have brought this task down from the clouds of confusion where experts reign supreme and beginners drown in process and financial demands. It’s almost too easy, some would say, because of how golden the opportunity and how plentiful the author’s ideas! So – you want to write an eBook, but you’re overwhelmed with the world and all of its ideas, waiting at your fingertips ready to be typed out? It’s definitely time to narrow your focus in order to pick the perfect topic for your eBook that is interesting to you, and will be met with much success in regards to the number of readers you reach. Let us show you how to choose an eBook topic.
First – Think About YOU
It may be the easiest part of the process that seems unnecessary, but it’s one you definitely shouldn’t skip. Writing an eBook requires that you be 100% behind the book, in every way. Anything less will cause it to fall short in terms of success, and will inevitably bore you or cause you to burn out in the process of writing it.
So, consider a few things: what topics are you passionate about? What drives you? What are your gifts? What exactly do you want to say, and how do you want to say it? In your most natural state, are you funny? Are you casual? Are you formal and driven by order? Allow your eBook to go with your grain, not against it. Write all of this down so that you have a page full of “you” on paper. You should have adjectives, verbs, nouns, ideas… all surrounding your name. This should be a relatively effortless task, no need to think too hard.
Second – Put Ideas on Paper
Some of those ideas that came so naturally to you when you were putting yourself on paper… elaborate on those. This can be a free flow of thought, and no idea is too underdeveloped or “dumb” to write down. Once you’re maxed out on eBook ideas, take a step back for a day or two. Come back to your ideas after that time away, and rank them in order of passion. When you re-read your scribblings, which idea jumps off the page? Which one seems dull? Begin to narrow down your subject matter based on these ideas, until you have a handful that get you excited to write.
Third – Think About Your Reader
Salesmen don’t sell to broad audiences; they sell to a target audience if they want to be successful in the process. What does this mean? It means they consider their audience in their sales pitch, in their tone of voice, in their method of delivery. Maybe you have more of an audience in mind than you do a firm idea, or maybe you have both and you’re unsure of how to meld them. For example, you have a passion for nurturing a thirst for knowledge among high schoolers (making them your target audience), but you’re unsure of a concrete idea to convey. Here’s where your research begins: interview and educate yourself on the struggles, the trials, the everyday successes that high schoolers face. Go beyond your own knowledge of the subject matter and really dig deep to narrow the focus down from a general eBook idea, to an eBook containing chapters on overcoming peer pressure, or finding your passion early in life.
Fourth – Think About Where it all Intersects
By now in the process, hopefully you have more than a bunch of words on paper scattered on the desk in front of you. Hopefully you have the ingredients for a specific idea, though it may take a bit of work to find where it all intersects. You know very well your voice and how you want or need to convey yourself; you know the audience you want to address and what they need to hear; you know what idea you’re passionate about. Put it all together – what do you have?
Narrowing your focus to come up with an eBook topic is actually one of the hardest parts of writing an eBook, so don’t be discouraged or frustrated if you can’t quite work it out. Put pen to paper, determine who you are, what you’re passionate about, who you want to reach and how you can combine those things to create a successful eBook that really matters.
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