Tuesday’s Writing Tip for Authors

You may be pleasantly surprised to find that you’ve already written a lot of the content you need for your book! The problem is, the content is probably scattered around dozens of different files on your hard drive.

You must locate existing content before you can reuse it in your book!

Using the Existing Content Inventory worksheet shown at left, you’ll be able to consolidate the locations and characteristics of important content onto a few printable worksheets.

This worksheet makes make it convenient for you to track existing content and its location, identify its relevance, and describe where you may reuse it in your book.

Examples of existing content

The Existing Content Inventory worksheet helps you locate and track content like case studies, examples, ideas, opinions, perspectives, procedures, resources, shortcuts, tips, and warnings.

Where to look for ready-to-use content

You can usually find existing content in files you originally prepared for projects like:

• Articles
• Blog posts
• E-books
• E-mail
• Memos and reports
• Newsletters
• Press releases
• New business proposals
• Reports
• Speeches and presentations
• Teleseminars and webinars
• White papers

Once you consolidate the titles, relevance, and locations of existing content using the Existing Content Inventory Worksheet, you’ll be able to save time planning your book, creating your book proposal, and writing the sample chapters needed for your book proposal.

Published & Profitable members may download the worksheet here.