After ghostwriting 54+ books, I can tell you that the topic is rarely the problem.
Most people who contact me already know what their book should be about. They just don’t trust the answer yet. What they’re really asking is whether the topic will sustain an entire book, and whether anyone will care. You can test both, and I’d much prefer an author test them now than discover at chapter nine that the book has run dry. The self-test I use with clients comes out of 54+ ghostwriting projects.
Why should a book topic start with the problem you solve?
From the podcast
Doris Walsh describes the moment people arrive, having done everything the productivity advice told them to, on Leaders and Their Stories:
I’ve downloaded the app, I’ve read the books. Why am I still not there yet?The tools were never the missing piece. Neither is the outline, so topic selection starts with a problem instead of a table of contents.
The strongest business books are built around a specific problem the author solves for a specific audience. General topics and industry overviews give a reader nothing to hold onto, and I steer clients away from them early.
Through the questionnaire, I keep pushing toward the single problem the book solves for the reader. One problem. We don’t have to find it in the first five minutes. I use a bit of the Socratic method, open-ended thinking questions where I ask and you answer, and we go over it several times. There is an answer, and the answer will be simple. It has to be a problem readers already see, or we have the added hurdle of educating them on the book cover. That’s hard.
One of my clients ran a cybersecurity company, and his book covered the vulnerabilities that companies ignore until they get breached. That focus gave the book a clear audience, a clear argument, and a reason to exist that no other book on the shelf provided. For more, see how to choose a ghostwriter for your book.
If you’re a consultant, coach, or business owner, the book topic is usually sitting inside the conversations you already have with clients. What do they ask you about repeatedly? What do you explain in every first meeting? What do you know that your competitors either don’t know or don’t talk about? That’s the book.
Is your story the topic, or the vehicle for it?
Many entrepreneurs want to write their story. That instinct is correct, but the framing matters. “My entrepreneurial journey” describes a memoir structure with no topic in it yet, and memoirs need more than chronology to work.
The book topic is the insight your experience produced. What did you learn that other people in your position haven’t figured out yet? Your story is how you deliver that insight. The story makes the insight credible and memorable. But the insight is what gives the reader a reason to pick up the book.
The clients who produce the strongest books are the ones who can answer this question: “After reading my book, the reader will know how to ___.” If you can’t fill in that blank with something specific, the topic needs more development.
How do you test a book topic against your audience?
A book topic that interests you but has no audience is a journal entry. A book topic your audience needs but that bores you will produce a flat manuscript. The right topic sits at the intersection of what you care about and what your audience will pay attention to. Your audience is the group of people you want reading this book, and “everyone” never qualifies. For most of my clients, that’s prospective customers, conference organizers, media contacts, or industry peers. The book topic needs to serve that audience directly.
Try this: if you described your book topic in one sentence to someone in your target audience, would they lean forward or check their phone? If the answer is phone, the topic is either too broad, too obvious, or aimed at the wrong people.
Should a book topic be narrow or wide?
The most common mistake is picking a topic that’s too broad.
“Leadership” isn’t a book topic. “How I built a leadership culture in a company where the previous three CEOs failed” is a book topic. “Marketing” isn’t a book topic. “The marketing framework that took my company from $2M to $20M in three years” is a book topic.
Narrow topics feel risky because they seem to exclude readers. The opposite is true. A narrow topic attracts readers because it promises specific value. Nobody picks up a book called “Business Strategies” expecting to learn something useful. Everybody picks up a book that promises to solve their exact problem.
Across 54+ ghostwriting projects, the books that performed best for my clients were the ones with the tightest focus. The broad ones mostly sat there, and that frustrates me, because each of those authors had a narrower and better book in them the whole time.
Do You Have Enough Material for a Book?
A book needs 40,000 to 60,000 words. That’s roughly 15 to 25 chapters of real content. Before committing to a topic, make sure you have enough to say.
I test this with clients by asking them to list every subtopic, story, structure, case study, and lesson that falls under their main topic. If that list produces 15 or more distinct items, each of which could sustain a full chapter, the topic has enough material. If the list stalls at six or seven, the topic is either too narrow or the author hasn’t thought deeply enough about what they know.
If you want help pressure-testing the topic with a ghostwriter, that’s what the brainstorming engagement is for. This page is about doing it yourself first.
What Book Topic Traps Should You Avoid?
After 54+ projects, I’ve seen patterns in the topics that stall or produce weak books.
The autobiography trap. “I want to tell my whole life story” without a unifying theme or a reason the reader should care. Memoirs work when they’re about something larger than the author’s chronology.
The everything trap. “I want to cover everything I know about my industry.” This produces a textbook that nobody reads voluntarily. Pick one thing and go deep.
The revenge trap. “I want to expose what happened to me at my old company.” I decline revenge memoirs outright. A book about what happened to you can work, with careful legal review and a story bigger than the grievance, but a book built to punish somebody hurts the author more than the target. The reader needs to gain something beyond watching someone settle a score.
The me-too trap. “I want to write a book like the one I just read.” If the book already exists, yours needs a different angle, a different audience, or a different argument. Otherwise you’re writing a copy of someone else’s book.
What do you do once your book topic is clear?
The right book topic passes three tests. You have real expertise or experience in the subject. Your target audience has a real need for what the book delivers. And the topic can sustain 40,000 to 60,000 words of original content without padding. If your topic passes all three, you’re ready to start the project. If it passes two out of three, the brainstorming engagement can usually close the gap. If it passes one or none, you need more time before the book makes sense. Schedule a free consultation to discuss your book topic and see whether the project is ready to move forward.
If you have too many possible topics, the Book Discovery Intensive is built to settle which one the book should be, with a strategy and a sample chapter to prove it.
Don’t let a ghostwriter start on a topic that fails these tests, and be wary of one who’s happy to. A weak topic turns into months of interviews and a manuscript you can’t use, and the author is the one who loses that time and money.
