DT – It’s not just about your reader. Why do you want to write a book? It matters.

DT – It’s not just about your reader. Why do you want to write a book? It matters.

You can get started with writing a book today.Pen for writing a bookBefore you write a book, you need to plan your book. But there’s more to your plan than just what you want to say.

Stephen R. Covey said, “Start with the end in mind.” A well designed planning process for your book begins with your overall goals related to the book. It then develops a vision and a set of detailed goals and objectives for your book from there. Then you can write a book that meets those objectives.

When I wrote “How to Document Your Project Plan”, I wrote it to support a course that VProz was going to give to potential customers in partnership with another company. This was all well and good. At that time the course was aimed at my customer and the book was only to help fill in the blanks — and help fund the course.

However, when the course failed to proceed, I found that I had targeted the wrong customer. The book was focused on people who were new to project management and needed a leg up on developing a project plan. What I needed to do was to write a book that attracted my target customer — small and medium business senior managers and entrepreneurs. Without the course to attract those customers, the book was targeted to the wrong customer.

It all comes down to why I had written the book. When I used the book to support the course, it worked. When I tried to use it to get new customers it failed. In order to sell the book I needed to write a book that would attract the customers. Which frankly didn’t make sense.

Similarly your book’s success will stem from how closely it meets your reason for writing it in the first place. And by the way, to make money is acceptable as a reason but often it indicates that you aren’t  exploring your reasons for writing this book deeply enough. If you write a book just to make money, it is unlikely that anyone will care enough to read it.

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