Welcome to another one of my bite size bestseller boot camp videos. I’m going to give you three tips here for speakers who want to publish a book. I’m looking at point number two this time which is well organized material.
Following on from some of the other points I’ve made in the other videos, it’s really important that your book is written for your readers. It is not written for you and your ego. It is written for your readers and the problems and challenges and goals that they have in their lives. That’s what your book is all about. It’s there to solve all those things. It’s there to make other people’s lives
- more enjoyable
- easier
- more fun
- more inspiring
- more powerful
whatever it happens to be.
That’s what your book should be. It should not be the equivalent of you being crashing bore at the party talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, droning on while people make excuses and go and refill their drinks or go to the buffet. You don’t want to have a book that’s the equivalent of that. Your book needs to be inspiring, engaging, and lively. That’s when you’ll get really good results and success with it.
Look at the problems that your readers have. Spend some time. If people are learning a foreign language, they’ve got two main problems haven’t they? They’ve got grammar problems….”How do we put this language together….?” They’ve also got vocabulary problems… “what words do I need, how do I say in another language what I can already say in my native tongue?”. Those are two key problems that somebody learning a foreign language might have.
Think about people in that position. What can the author do to help them?
Perhaps they could add CDs to the books so people can actually hear the language and not just see it written down.
How can you help people learn best – most effectively and most efficiently?
Repeat that process for your subject matter.
Books don’t have to be dry and dull and dusty. They can be really exciting and interactive – if you think about it.
Also, for my third tip, make sure your information is pitched at the correct level. If it’s a beginner’s book, make sure it covers beginner’s material. If it’s a more advanced book, then you don’t want to be covering the basics that the beginners have already learned.
Again, to use the language example, when you very first learn a language you’re going to be learning the nuts and bolts of the language. Secondary books after that may teach you about a specific aspect of the language, perhaps legal or medical or technical language, computer language, IT. They’ll teach you more than “I got up in the morning” and “where I work” and “where I live here”. That’s an advanced book so make sure you’re pitching your things at the right level and there’s nothing that’s too advanced or too basic in there when you’re organizing your ideas. Again, it helps you make a really good quality book.
