7 Ways to Choose a Book Topic

Many persons want to write a book but don’t know where to start. If you are planning to write a short helpful non-fiction book real fast, here are seven ideas you can use to choose the topic of your book.

1. Things Discussed the Most: What do you find yourself talking about often? Is it sports, relationships, money, love, retirement, hope, church, justice, life lessons, etc? Think about it, and let that become your topic.

2. Your Expertise, Knowledge or Training: What are you good at? What have you been trained in? That is a good way to decide what to write about and help you to write a purpose-driven book. Those who will be speaking and/or coaching, write along those lines. What kind of coaching do you do? What topics do you speak on? Turn them into books. Are you a financial, leadership, fitness or relationship expert? Are you a counsellor? Document your systems and turn them into manuals and guides. A book with your expertise will amplify your reach and increase your impact and income.

3. Brain Picks: What is it that people request from you the most? What are they always picking your brain about? What is it that when people have a problem, they turn to you to solve it? Again, this could become a how-to book, guide or manual.

4. Something Valuable or Worth Sharing: This could be lessons learned over the years and solutions to a problem. So, is it worth sharing? Do you feel that this information could change lives? I’m sure the author of the book, “Hidden Figures” which became a movie, recognized that she had found something that could help young women take on more of the STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

5. Your Inspirational Story/Journey of Overcoming: If you’re writing an autobiography, a good way to make it a winning book is to let it be based on the lessons learned, so you’re not just telling your story. If you all remember Aesop’s Fables, all of those have a moral lesson. It could be someone’s legacy that you want to preserve or chronicle before they die.

6. Exceptional Life Experiences: It could be experiences of your travels or just interesting experiences you had that contain lessons in themselves, which you believe can help others. In Jamaica, we had this veteran journalist, Ian Boyne, who over a period of 30 years conducted weekly interviews of high achievers. Eventually, he collated these, and they became a book called The Profile of Excellence.

7. Teaching, Counselling or Coaching Material: What is it that you can teach others? Do you know how to write a book, cook, build things, market and sell, etc? Everything is teachable, and you can create an instructional book around things you wish to teach. This could be related to your business, counselling or coaching program as well.

Bonus: If you are a Christian or other religious person, what is the topic that you believe God is telling you to write about? This is how I get most of my book topics. I get ideas in dreams and in my times of prayer.

These are some of the ways of choosing your winning topic.  I trust that this will help you to start your book now.