Entries Tagged 'How to write' ↓

I’m sure that you’ve seen many articles recently full of doom and gloom about the financial crises.  This isn’t one of them because Continue reading →

How to write a Book Proposal list item 3

How to write a book different from your competitors

If you’ve done any of the research I suggested in the past three weeks, then you should now have a fair idea of your market and what’s already in it.

If it seems to you that the ground has been covered well already, then this is the point at which you have to apply some native cunning.

One of my clients this year wrote a book which combined two areas that have been written about extensively, but not previously in the same book.

Think about your topic.  What is your experience in the field?

Are you an expert?

Are you writing for other experts or to people outside your field who might want an easy introduction?

Are you just interested in the topic but wanting to interest other people at your own level?

Do you have experience that contradicts the expert theories?

Somewhere in what you’ve done, or how you’ve become interested in the subject, there’s an approach that might not have been tried before.

You may have been contributing articles from which you can make a book.  You may have a diary about an event – such as preparing for a marathon – that would interest both other runners or non-runners.

The wider you think about this the more easily you’ll find your approach.

Again – ask around – not just your family and friends, but spread your net wider.

And as ever – keep your focus and you’ll get there.

Let’s turn to the second item on the How To Write a Book Proposal list -

How to structure your book

I’m not sure how much we’re being shaped as readers by the web. I know that people say that we no longer read as much. Not true in my experience but I do think that we perhaps read differently.

When I’m writing for websites, I have to take into account, skimmers, scanners and readers because we have different approaches, depending on the site and why we’re there.

That’s why when I’m working with clients writing books we take that into consideration when we look at the structure of the book.

Think of yourself for a moment as your own possible buyer. How do you look at a book when you pick it up, before buying?

Do you look at the contents page first?

Do you look at the backof the book?

Do you open in the middle and dive right in?

Just as with your skimmers, scanners and readers, you have to think about having something to interest all of them. It can make the difference between a sale and not a sale.

It’s difficult to give you more specific advice since I don’t know what type of book you want to write, or who you’re aiming at. Just as with the research for your market last week, you need to look at what’s out there.

How are the books in your market arranged?

Do they have a traditional chapter structure or are they in sections?

Do they have a theme to each chapter?

Think about what you would like. It’s said that we want to write the book we want to read. But relying only on our opinion as writer isn’t always the safest thing to do. Ask other people. After all you must know people who would be the ideal customer for your book.

More research I know – but trust me it will pay off in the long run… and make your book easier to write when you start.

I want to look today at the first item on the How to write a book proposal list from last week.

How to find a market for your book

Let’s take the instance of the romantic novel that I talked about last week.

If you’ve never investigated the sector, which by the way is one of the most successful fiction sectors turning over billions of pounds/dollars each year, then you may not realise the depth and breadth of what’s available.

You can have:

• historical
• medical
• erotic
• mildly erotic
• occult
• stories with business women
• stories about women achievers
• stories about women who stay at home
• romantic thrillers

It’s a long list and you can aim for different age ranges by reflecting your readers’ interests in the characters and plots.

If you look at most romantic novels, they’re written to a formula, in terms of their length and chapter structure.

Knowing this information doesn’t stifle your creativity, it should spur you on. One way I found to challenge myself was to take a topic or a story title and see how many different ways I could treat the topic, and in how few words. Or take a common phrase like “too many cooks spoil the broth.” I tried that one and came up with a story that my friend said was quite gruesome. A touch of the Sweeney Todd about it.

If researching your novel market is important then it’s vital if you’re writing non-fiction.

So how do you research the market for your book?

These days it’s easier than ever with the tools at our disposal on line. But even if you don’t have access to the net it’s easy. The work is done for you by other authors and publishers.

Whatever your subject there will be the following on or offline:

• sections in libraries of bookshops
• magazines
• websites
• forums
• groups

Before you even start planning your book, and way ahead of writing it, you need to look at what’s out there.

It’s human nature not to want to sully our beautiful writing idea with reality because maybe we’ll find that someone has done it before us. That’s a challenge but not a reason to give up.

It will hurt more if you take the time and trouble to write your book then find out it’s unsellable.

Take heart. All things are possible… with focus.

With writing the first draft of the book of inspiration, I was thinking a lot about how we deal with setbacks in relation to people writing in particular.

When I was in the sixth form at school, I took a very unpopular subject at ‘A’ level.  Latin.  Why did I take it?  Well the teachers wouldn’t let me take English because they said my grades hadn’t been good enough so it was History which I adored and Latin which I was quite good at.

Or had been.  Of course when you step up a notch to ‘A’ level it all suddenly seems harder.

And there was no doubt that I was the weakest person in the small group who took it.  We had three different teachers for the separate parts of the syllabus and for two years they made it plain to me that they thought my chances of passing the exam were equivalent to the snowball and hell combination.

I was allocated extra tuition and even then I struggled.  Felt bad didn’t I?  Some days I hated the lessons but this was in the days when pupil choice was not to the fore in schools. 

Even if they’d allowed me to drop it my mother wouldn’t have agreed.  You have to understand that my mother was fair.  But firm!  On the rare occasions when I allowed myself a grumble about Latin her advice was blunt.  “Try your best.  You can do no more.”

So I did.  Hating a lot of it but I tried. 

Came the exam and I remember finishing and thinking that wasn’t so bad.  Then immediately covering myself by thinking I probably had blown it.

You know in Roman times they had many different gods.  For all sorts of causes.  I like to think that there was a god for those who persist even when it doesn’t seem sensible.

If there was then the god had looked after me.  Because I passed.  Yippee!

Not a distinction but a definite pass.

And you know what?  Two of the other members of the group failed.  I didn’t gloat did I?  Course I did.  I’m only human not a divine Roman after all.

It wasn’t until many years later that I came across the Thomas Edison quote:

“Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”

I know that the high flyers sometimes seem to look down on those of us who just keep going.  But if you don’t keep going you don’t reach your goal, or your heart’s desires.

Went to a lovely book launch this week for New Writers UK, a Nottingham writers group.  They were celebrating that six of their group had published books.

The more I write and the more I talk to people who want to write, the more I realise how much it can achieve for the writer.  Not just money, though of course everyone wants to make money from it.  But for each of the writers featured at the launch there was a story behind the book and why they’d written it.

So come on all you writers out there.  You can do it.  Take your pencils out or power up your computers and get going.

Remember, till you start you can’t finish.  And if you keep going and finish, you too can pay homage to the god of those who persist.

For the next 4 weeks my How to write a book thread will be about creating a book proposal.  That’s because I think it’s the most vital thing you can do before you start to write.  Why?  Well I learned how to think about…

researching a market twenty years ago when I worked for a medical equipment company.  My boss was a product development specialist.  Unlike many development people, his approach was rooted in the real world.  So many innovators come up with an idea, become convinced that it’s going to revolutionise the world and pursue that idea through thick and thin.

My boss was quite different.  I’ve seen him design a product, do all the process calculations on the back of an envelope and then set about getting it into the marketplace as fast as possible,  But he was only able to do this because his product was rooted in what people were asking for.  He’d talk to anyone who was involved in using similar equipment and ask them what their problems were. Then he’d design something that fixed the problem.

In 5 years we introduced 8 products into the market and had them selling successfully.  Rough and ready it might have seemed as a process but it worked.

That’s why it surprises me that more people who write books don’t do the same thing.  Whilst I believe that books are the key to so many things, can introduce people to ideas and ways of improving their lives, they still have to be considered as products.  Because that’s the way publishers treat them.

And it isn’t like the publishers don’t help you to find out what they want.  A few months ago I met a woman who wanted to write a romantic novel.  So I directed her to the site for the company that publish most of the Mills and Boon books and the Silhouette imprints.  They have an enormous amount of information on the site helping you plot characters, work out your themes.  Has she been there yet?  I’ve no idea but I doubt it.

I investigated the site because I wanted to do the same.  In fact I’ve written three, all unpublished, but what great experience in actually doing all of that and getting to the end of a book.  Tried the last one out on a few people who liked it but not acceptable to the publisher… yet!

But any publishing site will have a book proposal outline and they don’t differ much.

Key points in creating a book proposal are:

• Who are you writing for?
• The structure of the book’s content.
• How you can offer something different from competitive titles.

There’s a lot more to the proposal but if you can crack those three you”ll be ahead of most would be writers.

More next week.

Editing is a dirty word to some writers.  And not only creative ones but also…

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I know I always talk about headlines but they are so important.

One of my clients sent me drafts of two press releases recently to check out. They did have a headline for each but the problem was that… Continue reading →

I’ve written about passion recently in the blog and I wanted to re-visit that again.

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How to improve your writing

Quick Tips 4 Writing headlines

Why write headlines? Continue reading →