The executives, founders and memoir clients who contact me already know their territory. They stall when it’s time to turn that territory into a book, and The Writer’s Idea Book is a good place to start working through that.
The difference between a subject and a book topic is structure.
“I want to write about my career in healthcare” is a subject. “How a rural ER doctor built a telemedicine network that serves 200,000 patients” is a book topic. The first one could go in a thousand directions. The second one has a spine.
Some clients arrive with both the subject and the structure already clear in their heads. We move straight into the ghostwriting project. Others know they have a book in them but can’t articulate what it is yet. You can find current book discovery intensive pricing on the book discovery intensive page.
Why Is Choosing a Book Topic So Hard?
Because most experts know several subjects well and have to pick the one where they know more than anyone their readers can find.
Picking the topic is the decision I care about most before a single chapter gets written, because everything downstream inherits it.
A wrong topic stays quiet for months, then shows up as a manuscript that’s competent, finished and pointless. By then the author has spent the time and the money. I want the hard conversation at the start, while it’s still cheap to change course.
| Type | Point | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What do people ask you about most? | Repeated questions point straight at what your audience wants |
| Question | What makes you angry about your industry? | A contrarian view is one of the strongest nonfiction foundations |
| Question | What story can only you tell? | Your specific decisions, failures and results make the book absorbing |
| Question | Who needs to read this? | Define the reader’s role, problem and experience level |
| Mistake | Covering too much ground | A focused book on one subject beats a scattered book on ten |
| Mistake | Writing for yourself | Every chapter should matter to the reader first |
| Mistake | Picking a topic because it sounds impressive | Write about what you know at a level no one else can match |
| Mistake | Waiting for the perfect topic | Good enough to begin the conversation is enough to start |
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The executives, founders and memoir clients who contact me already know their territory.
People who have done interesting work or lived unusual lives often have the opposite of writer’s block. They have too much material. A CEO with a 30-year career could write about leadership, innovation, industry disruption, company culture, management philosophy, personal sacrifice, or all of it. The hard question is “what do I leave out.” For more, see how to choose your book topic and how to choose a ghostwriter for your book.
Most aspiring authors get stuck on that question. They try to write the book that covers everything, and the result is a manuscript that covers nothing well. A book that tries to be about leadership and innovation and company culture and personal memoir ends up a scattered collection of half-developed ideas that no reader can follow.
The brainstorming engagement exists to solve this problem before the writing starts. Ten hours of focused conversation is enough to identify the strongest thread in your story, the audience who needs to hear it, and the structure that will support it from first page to last.
What the Brainstorming Engagement Looks Like
We start with a conversation about what you want the book to accomplish. I skip “what do you want to write about” and ask “what do you want this book to do for you.” The answers are different, and I think the second question produces the better book every time.
A client who wants the book to establish thought leadership in their industry needs a different book than a client who wants to leave a legacy for their family. A client who wants the book to generate speaking engagements needs a different structure than a client who wants it to work as a business development tool. The purpose of the book shapes the topic, the audience, and the table of contents.
From there, we talk through your material. I ask questions designed to uncover the stories, insights, and experiences that are yours: the specific things you know because you lived them.
Generic industry wisdom is available in a thousand other books, and I won’t pad a client’s book with it. Your own stories, insights and experiences become the foundation of the book.
Ten hours of focused conversation moves a client from a broad subject to a topic with a spine.
By the end of the engagement, you have a defined topic, a clear sense of who the book is for, and a working table of contents that maps the book from opening to conclusion. If you decide to move forward with ghostwriting, the table of contents becomes the project blueprint. If you decide not to move forward, you still have a roadmap you can use with any ghostwriter or on your own.
How do you narrow a book topic on your own?
Heard elsewhere
Richard talked through how a path across geology, computing and photography became the opposite of a niche, and why breadth changes what you’re able to write about, on The Web Woman.
Athletes show how this works. Sports figures are a growing share of the people who hire me, and most of them want a memoir about what the sport taught them. That’s a narrower book than their whole career, and a much better one. A reader can carry a lesson out of a book, while a season-by-season recap just scrolls past, and I’d talk any athlete out of writing the recap.
Not everyone needs a brainstorming engagement. Some clients figure out their topic before contacting me, usually by working through questions like these.
Ask yourself what you get asked about most. The questions people bring to you repeatedly, at conferences, in meetings and over coffee, point directly at what your audience wants from you. If everyone asks you about the same three things, those three things are probably your book.
Start with what makes you angry about your industry. The conventional wisdom you disagree with, the practices you think are broken, the advice you think is wrong. A contrarian perspective is one of the strongest foundations for a nonfiction book, and it’s the one I’d bet on first. If you’ve spent years watching people do something the wrong way and you know the right way, that’s a book.
What story can only you tell? Generic business advice exists in thousands of books already. What doesn’t exist is your specific story: the decisions you made, the failures you survived, the results you produced. The more specific and personal the story, the more absorbing the book.
Then figure out who needs to read this. A book for everyone is a book for no one. Define your reader. If you can describe the person who will buy your book (their role, their problem, their level of experience), the topic sharpens immediately.
My take
Anger at your industry is where I’d look first for a book topic. If you’ve watched people do something wrong for years and you know the right way, that’s a book. Check what people ask you about most, and narrow until one spine holds it together. Define the reader before you write a word. A book for everyone sells to nobody, and athletes should skip the season recap.
What Are Common Mistakes in Choosing a Book Topic?
Trying to cover too much ground is the most common mistake. The instinct is to include everything because everything feels important. But a focused book on one subject is more valuable than a scattered book on ten subjects. Readers want depth.
Writing for yourself instead of your audience is the second most common mistake. Your book isn’t a diary. It needs to serve the reader. Every chapter should answer the question “why does this matter to the person reading it” before it answers “why does this matter to me.”
Choosing a topic because it sounds impressive instead of because you have something original to say is the third mistake.
A book about artificial intelligence written by someone who has read a few articles about AI isn’t going to compete with books written by people who build AI systems. Chasing a hot topic you only half know is the fastest way I can think of to publish something embarrassing under your own name. Write about what you know at a level no one else can match.
Waiting for the perfect topic is the fourth mistake. The topic doesn’t need to be perfect before you start. It needs to be good enough to begin the conversation. The brainstorming process, whether with me or on your own, refines the topic through discussion. I’d much sooner see someone start this month with a good-enough topic than lose a year waiting for a perfect one, because a wrong first guess gets fixed in one conversation and a book that never starts helps nobody.
Schedule a free consultation to discuss your book idea, or ask about the brainstorming engagement if you need help defining your topic before committing to a full project.
With the topic settled, The Ghostwriting Advantage covers the next step. My book explains how to get your book written for you by a professional ghostwriter.
