Another way to ride the wave of another’s success is to make a spoof of a popular book. Do a search on Barnes & Noble for “parody” and you’ll find many examples. There is “The Cat Who Killed Lillian Jackson Braun”, “Bored of The Rings”, “Who Cut The Cheese”, “Chicken Poop for the Soul” and many more. Juvenile? Of course! Who knows, maybe you can come up with a parody off of another popular book and rake in some cash.
The government writes and publishes books and other information on hundreds of topics. Since this is paid by you, the taxpayer, it is free to do whatever you wish with. You should first check out http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov or the Federal Citizen Information Center. Here you will find topics available from Cars to Travel and more. You may want to search and browse around and perhaps you’ll find some topics that could be expanded upon. Also check the Catalog of Government Publications.
What obvious book ideas are right in front of you, right under your nose? Do you live in a tourist town that you could take advantage of by writing a travel guide for? Are there other interesting aspects of where you live that could be written about? Are there any obvious things you could write about that you know you should do something about? You constantly get complimented on how you look younger than you actually are – do you have a secret?
You are successful at business and can always find a new way to make money. You found a new way to lose weight that worked for you and could work for others. What achievements have you had that you could share with others to help their lives? What obvious things are easily available to you that you could write about? Why not explore these areas first, before exploring more complicated, harder to research subjects. What’s right under you’re nose that you might be overlooking?
Look in the Writer’s Market and contact editors of magazines and journals and newspapers in your area of interest and ask what their upcoming subjects are. Advertisers in magazines do this to slant their ads towards the content in magazines. Get a head start on articles that will be in future magazines and perhaps you can spot a good idea for a book before someone else does.
An obvious but perhaps overlooked place to find a good topic for a book is your job and other people’s jobs. There are thousands of different occupations and each has the potential for a book. The nice thing about this is that whatever occupation you have there are likely thousands of others that have the same occupation that could benefit from your experience or any other information you can give them to improve their quality of life on the job. Some occupations will be easy to find others in the same occupation so you will be able to offer your book to them for sale. Perhaps there is information from your job that would be valuable to the general public. It could be one aspect from your work experience – you are a plumber, could you offer advice to homeowners to do their own plumber? If you are an accountant, offer advice to help people manage their own finances. A Chef – put a cookbook together.
If you’re a waiter and make good tips, perhaps you can share your tips and tricks on how others can get good tips as well. Doctors, lawyers, managers, computer specialists and more all have something you can offer to someone. Take inventory of your job and what you might be able to take from it to add value to others in the same occupation, or others in the general public. Take a look at the Occupational Outlook Handbook in your library for detailed information about some of the occupations that make up some 60% of the US Economy. You can read and search the Occupational Outlook Handbook online at http://www.bls.gov/oco. There you can find average salaries, description of work, working conditions, job outlook, related occupations and more.
Have you written a dissertation or thesis as part of finishing your degree? A dissertation or thesis can be an excellent source for book ideas. You may simply adapt your dissertation or thesis and write it to a more commercial, public audience. Or, you might use it as a starting point for a closely related idea. It might simply lead to a similar idea with a few modifications. If you haven’t written one, you can use other people’s dissertations and thesis papers as a starting point to finding a nonfiction book idea.
Go to http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations and you can search for dissertations that have been written by others. Search and browse around and perhaps you will find something that catches your attention that could be reworked into a book. Also search on Google.com and you will find many dissertations, theses and papers. There are tons of papers out there, so start searching browsing for ideas.
This is an excellent way to get good book ideas. You will probably have a better sense of what could be expanded on if you are well read on a particular subject. Do you read any books on a particular subject from different authors and notice that they seem to skim over a particular topic and you are still left with questions in your head after reading it? Or, are you simply more interested in that particular aspect of one of your favorite books and feel like doing an in depth study on it? This is a great way to find book ideas. Start with your own books and browse through the chapters. Take note of any chapters that perk you up. Hit the book stores and libraries. It probably won’t take long for you to find an idea for you to seriously consider.
Here’s an interesting technique. Take a look at your books, go to a library or bookstore and try to figure out how someone came up with the idea for a particular book. Is it a parody? Does it solve a problem? Taking advantage of a fad or collectible? Keep some of the previous ideas generating techniques in mind while you browse. Choose your favorite books and try to find some techniques. You may even discover a new technique of generating a book idea that you can use again in a different subject area.
Take a look at direct mail mailing lists that you can “rent” from companies that offer them. One of the best companies in the business is American List Counsel and their web site is at http://www.alc.com. Search and browse for mailing lists on hundreds of markets. This is exactly what you want – a targeted group of people that you can reach. Find mailing lists that you are interested in… what book could you provide this market? Take note of the quantity of names available for each list you are interested in. Other information for each list is available such as geography, income, sex and other demographics available. You can also choose a list by SIC code. If the list exists, they have it.
Once you find a market you are interested in writing a book for, you should do some market research to see what potential that market has. You may be pleasantly surprised to find markets for things you consider to be everyday interests to be in the billions of dollars. Go to http://www.academic.marketresearch.com and search or browse for your area of interest to find more information on the potential market. Another way to get an idea of how much money is spent within a particular market is to search on Google. Do a search for “bicycle billion industry” or “gardening billion industry”. You may substitute billion for million, and bicycle or gardening with your area of interest. Billion or million in the search means dollars of course. Now all you need to do is offer something and hopefully capture a small percentage of the amount spent annually in an industry and you should be doing fine. Well, it probably won’t be that easy, but it is very motivating to know a market’s potential.
There are many sites out there that offer detailed market information, but you will likely have to pay for their services. You will find many links to begin with at:
The more you know about your potential market and potential readers the better. A lot of information is available including info about where they live, age, income, sex, education, what they read, what they watch on TV and more. Graphs and other statistics are sometimes available.
You can even do your own market research if you like. Rent a mailing list and create a survey. Offer the chance to win a prize to increase survey response and you’ll have detailed up to date information about a particular market.
Contact magazines for market information. If you contact them for advertising rates and information they will very likely provide this for free along with a copy of their magazine.
Again the more you know about a particular market, the better. Don’t get too caught up in studying the market, eventually you need to write your book. The more you know about your potential customers the better. You want to get “into” the customer as much as possible so you will know what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes.