Monday’s planning tip for authors

Mind maps make it easy to identify the contents of existing books in your field, so that you can position your book apart from them. Start by identifying the most important books in your topic area. Search online, identifying important books by using criteria such as their sales ranking and the number of reader reviews they have generated.

There are 3 ways you can analyze each book’s contents without buying the books:

• Online retailers. On the sales page of many of the books sold at at sites like Amazon.com, you’ll find a “Search Inside” feature on the book’s sales page that allows you to review the book’s table of contents online.
• Author and publisher websites. You can frequently find a downloadale copy of the book’s table of contents on the author’s or publisher’s websites, or available for download from their sites.
• Bookstores and libraries. Finally, you can also examine books at local bookstores and borrow them from libraries. Note that, often, if a library doesn’t have a specific title in stock, it can borrow it from other libraries, on inter-library loan. (Check with the librarian.)

Whenever possible, of course, It’s a good idea to purchase the 1 or 2 top books in your field for close examination, especially if they’re available in paperback.)

Create a mind map of each book’s table of contents, using a mind mapping software program like Mindjet’s MindManager 7.0 Pro. Examining these mind maps will give you a birds-eye view of each book’s contents, as well as provide you with a new perspective on what’s not covered in existing books, helping you position your book apart from the competition.

AUDIOS + MAPS
Published & Profitable members can access mind maps of dozens of important, career-building books by selecting them from the Audios + Maps section of the Case Studies category. As the samples show, a mind map of a book’s table of contents, reproduced on a single, printable, sheet of paper, can often tell you more about a book than its table of contents, which can spread over several pages.

Learn to pace yourself. Research is something that can be done in short working sessions. Get in the habit of spending a little time each day researching existing books in your field, and learning how to do it as efficiently as possible.

Click here to review the lists of titles available with mind maps, audio commentary, and note-taking sheets at Published & Profitable. New titles are added weekly.