Monday’s planning tip for authors

Planning can help authors greatly increase the likelihood of getting successfully published. Authors must plan their book before they begin to write their book. Planning a book involves tasks like analyzing existing books in your field, choosing a unique title for your book(i.e., one that creates a memorable brand), and identifying the right publishing alternative. Authors can make significant progress on these planning tasks in short, daily, working sessions as little as 30-minutes, or less.

Here are some examples of the tasks you can accomplish in working sessions of 30-minutes, or less:

• Analyze competing books online. In a single 30-minute working session, you can learn a lot about 3 or 4 of the books your’s will be competing against, noting details like the strengths and weaknesses of their titles, the years the books were published, the names of the publishers, and what readers had to say about the books.
• Visit author websites. In another 30-minute working session, you can visit 2 or 3 of the websites their authors have created, noting the author’s qualifications, how they promote their books, other books the authors may have written, and the kinds of incentives they use to build their e-mail mailing lists.
• Research publishers in your field. After identifying the publishers who have published books in your area, you can visit their websites to download their proposal submission requirements and find out other titles the publisher has published.

Missing books
Perhaps the most important task you can complete in 30-minutes, or less, is to begin grouping existing books available in your area of interest into categories, and then ask yourself the question: “What books are needed, but haven’t been written yet?” Brands are not built by writing books that duplicate existing titles. Even a little time each day spent searching for a unique position for your book can pay big rewards.

To learn more about these planning tasks that you can work on in short, daily, working sessions, visit Published & Profitable video topics like Choosing the Right Title for Your Book and How to Analyze Existing Books In Your Field.