There are four defining features of bestselling personal development books: They are written for a distinct audience. They solve a sticky problem that is a constant source of pain in their readers’ lives. They propose a novel approach to solving that problem. They cut through the clutter with simple genius. Last week, we talked about your reader. Hopefully you know your reader pretty well, and you have a good sense of what’s important to them, and what they want their lives to look like. This is critically important, because nearly every decision you make for your book needs to be filtered through the lens of your reader’s eyes. And your reader has a problem. Right now, your reader’s life does not look like what they want it to look like. There’s something big standing in the way of them getting what they want. It’s multifaceted and complex—something not easily solved. When your reader needs a new phone or a hamburger or a change of scene, they just go out and buy it. But not so with this problem. If it were easy for your reader to get what they want, they would just go out and get it, and you wouldn’t need to write a book about it. Sticky Problems Your reader has what I like to call a “sticky” problem. One that won’t just go away. One that’s going to haunt them until they get the answer. One that is a perpetual thorn in their side. This is the second necessary element of bestselling personal development books. Let’s take a look at just three of the top selling nonfiction books right now, as of March 2022: Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (#3 on the Amazon Bestsellers chart) From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur Brooks (#4 on the NYT Bestseller List – Nonfiction Hardbacks) The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van der Kolk (#9 on the Amazon Bestsellers chart, #1 on the NYT Bestseller List – Nonfiction Paperbacks) You can see the problems clearly identified in these titles! You know exactly what problem these books are addressing, and that’s a key part of their allure: For Atomic Habits, you read it if you have bad habits you want to break and/or good habits you want to build. (And isn’t that all of us?!) You’ll read From Strength to Strength if you’re in or approaching your second half of life, and wondering how to redefine yourself. In The Body Keeps the Score, you’re learning about how to heal from trauma. But the lesson here is not about the clarity of the book title (although that really helps!). Think about the weightiness of those problems for a minute. Bad habits can be debilitating if they get out of control. There’s a reason people have a “mid-life crisis”—because getting older can trigger all kinds of existential questions. And if you have suffered from any kind of trauma, then you know how disruptive that is to your life. These problems are pressing; they haunt your reader. There’s an urgency to getting them solved. The reader knows that as soon as this problem goes away, their life will transform, and not just a little bit. This will be a radical, life-changing transformation. The solution to this problem represents a new life of peace, comfort, and happiness in some way. That’s the kind of problem your book should seek to solve. But sometimes, when we choose a book idea, we have problems with our problems. The Wrong Kinds of Problems It is possible to choose a book topic that tackles the wrong kind of problem. The wrong problems are: Too small or narrow No longer relevant Not best solved by a book Not a priority for your reader Problems that are too small Problems that are too small don’t have enough complexity to them—they are too contextual. They might be just as easily solved by a blog post or an article online, and really don’t require the length of a book to get the job done. Here are some examples of too-small problems for books: Making the perfect French Onion soup. You don’t need a whole book about this; you probably just need a single recipe. How to style a home decor photoshoot New beauty products for sensitive skin Problems that are no longer relevant Sometimes, the world has moved on and certain topics are already passé. If you come to me wanting to write an instructional manual on using a typewriter, I’m going to tell you no. Not enough people use typewriters anymore. A good way to check if your topic is no longer relevant is to search Amazon books for the same topic. If the most recent book was published over 5 years ago, I would think twice before pursuing that idea. Problems that are best solved another way Books are an extremely versatile medium—but they are not the answer to everything. Sometimes, an online course, Youtube video, or other format is a better option. For example, the following problems are solved much more efficiently through video: Setting up a blog Fixing your sink Building a garden bed Problems that aren’t a priority for your reader Sometimes, problems are meaty and complex, but just not weighing on your reader’s minds. For example, if you try to write a book about gardening for astronauts, you’ll quickly run into two issues: 1) not many people are astronauts, and 2) it’s difficult to garden in space. The problem with this type of problem is that sometimes we are persuaded that our reader should care. For example, you might write a book on stewarding the environment for outdoor sports enthusiasts—which is certainly a weighty, meaty idea and worthy of attention—and might catch the eye of some conscientious sportsters—but would probably be a hard […]
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