How To Write A Book Even If You Are A Complete Idiot

How To Write A Book. Me, write a book? Trust me, It’s easier than you think.

Believe it or not, most books on Amazon SUCK!. I know, it’s hard to believe, but many books on Amazon are not that well written or researched, many come with a lot of spelling mistakes and some just don’t make a lot of sense.

It’s almost as if the writers thought to themselves “I know, writing a book looks easy, let’s give it a go”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve written several books and none of them are literal masterpieces. However, I want you to know, the bar is not that high.

How To Write A Book – Where To Start

When writing a book, first of all, know your audience. At this stage, most newbie writers will say “my audience is everyone” This simply isn’t true.

Aiming a book at everyone is like aiming your book at no one, your audience is too broad, therefore your competition will be immense. This will probably result in very little or no sales.

Be more specific. Whatever your niche is (Martial Arts, Dogs, Fishing, Self Help, etc), find your target audience and niche down within that niche to target the right audience for your book.

For example. Kung Fu for beginners. This is fairly broad. Wing Chun Kung Fu for beginners is better, Wing Chun Kung Fu for beginners over 60 is even more targeted. Find a profitable niche within a niche.

How do you do that?

This in itself is a subject that would take a whole book to explain in detail, however, there are specific tools on the market that can help you to find winning niches (keywords) to target. KDSPY is one I use. This piece of software will tell you if a keyword used on Amazon is profitable. It tells you the approximate amount of sales and reviews of every book on amazon using that specific keyword or a related keyword.

So, where do we start?

Once you’ve decided on your target audience and you’ve found your specific keyword to target, the next stage is to actually write the book. This is usually the point where people struggle within themselves, as most people don’t really believe they can write a book.

“Who would want to read a book written by me?”. The answer to this is MANY PEOPLE. Everyone is unique and everyone has a unique way of saying things. This is why many books are written on the same subject but are written by many different people..

You don’t have to be a genius to write a book (remember earlier when I said the bar isn’t that high?) Maybe your first book won’t be an international bestseller (who cares)?

Keep writing books. There are hundreds of thousands of subjects to write about. Every time you write a book, you get better.

How To Write A Book – The Process

Step 1. Find your target audience. Find a profitable niche within a niche. This is called niching down or finding a sub-niche.

Step 2. Write the outline. This is like a roadmap for your book. Imagine you are writing a plot for a movie. You have a beginning, the middle, and the end. The idea is to give your audience a mix of emotions, hopefully, happy ones in the end. With a book, you have chapters to explain the process.

Make sure that each chapter within the book flows well and that each one is a logical step onto the next chapter. With a nonfiction book, you have an introduction, you have your chapters, and then a conclusion.

In your outline, for each chapter, add links to where you can find the information to construct that chapter. There are plenty of blogs on the internet with the information required to fill your book. – Don’t copy other people’s information, just use it for ideas.

Now you have your outline for the book. Start writing the damn thing.

It used to take me a whole year to write a book, now I write one in around a month. Here’s how I write a 30,000-word book.

After I’ve found the target audience and I’ve completed the outline, I sit down for 2hrs each day at the computer and just keep writing. I don’t get up when I’ve completed 1000 words, I just keep writing until the two hours are up.

This way, I know that if I complete 1000 words in one sitting (about the size of a normal blog post), I would complete the book in 30 days.

How To Write A Book – Even If You Are A Complete Idiot

If you really, really, can’t write a book (you can), you can always hire a ghostwriter to write it for you. This is very common in the world of literature. Michelle Obama, Donald Trump, and thousands of other well-known people don’t write their own books. They simply transfer to the ghostwriter the bare-bones of what they want to appear in the book.

The ghostwriter then goes ahead and writes the book, for a fee. A half-decent ghostwriter will charge around $1000 for a 30,000-word book. So, as you can see, you can get your book written, even if you can’t write a book.

All you need to know, is how to write an outline.

The next step

The next step is creating the title. If it’s a nonfiction book, you would want to put your keyword, or keywords in the title and subtitle. Leaving this out is a common mistake of a lot of nonfiction book authors on Amazon. No one can find their books because their book titles are sadly lacking in keywords.

People find books on amazon by using the search facility. Whatever their problem is, they are searching for answers. Your book is the answer. Make sure they find it.

If you are a famous Self Help writer like Mel Robbins, Napoleon Hill, Steven Covey etc, it’s not such a big deal as these people have millions of followers and just releasing a new book sends their following into a buying frenzy.

But if you are like me, you need to market your book and you need to keyword the title so people can find it. Make your book title interesting. This is the first thing that people actually see when going to your book listing on Amazon (apart from the book cover).

And, the next step.

Get a great-looking book cover. Don’t skimp on this stage. Your audience definitely do “judge a book by its cover”. If your cover sucks, people won’t click on your book listing at all. This is another reason why a lot of books don’t sell well on Amazon.

Your book cover is your shop window. Make it good. If you yourself are not a designer, hire one. I’ve used many sources for covers but 99designs do a wonderful job. They aren’t cheap but their designs are first class.

Once you have your manuscript, your book cover, your keywords, your book title and your subtitle. You will want to add some descriptive text to your book listing on Amazon. This will help you sell your book. If you are not great at copywriting, your ghostwriter may be able to help you here.

You now need to upload your book to Amazon (KDP). We can have this book appear in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardback formats. Personally, I do all three, this means you now have at least three products for every book you publish.

I hope you have found this post useful. It would take me an entire book to explain this process fully, however, you may find my own book “How To Write A Book” useful to you if you are just starting out and you want to learn the process of writing and self-publishing a nonfiction book.

Have a great day, do leave a comment below and give this post a share, it will only take a minute or so.

Thanks in advance

Keith

P.S For more information on how to get your first nonfiction book written, click this link or click the image below.