Wednesday, October 17, 2012

e-Book Topics

Welcome to the world of e-books! Like myself, many of my friends are working on a shorter e-book project, while at the same time working on a (usually) longer major book project. Why do we do this? For me, is gives me short breaks from working on my WIP, allows me to research new material (which for me is fun!), and will hopefully bring in a bit of extra money.>p> Sooooooo … how do we go about picking a topic for this e-book that is going to bring us money? There is all kinds of advice out there on this. One piece of advice is never to focus your book on a specific holiday, or even on the holiday season, as this was limiting. It is limiting, yes, but it will sell during the time period that it is focused on, and will more than likely stay in your readers mind (MHO – no facts to back this on e up!).

The advice that I did feel worked was to focus on genres that sell well – romance, fiction, mysteries, and, to some extent, the paranormal. Go see what people are buying, then decide what in those categories you would like to write about. Writing should be fun – picking a topic and writing about it just because you think it will sell could very well turn out to be not so much fun. So pick a genre that sells, and find a topic that you resonate with.

How do we find topics to choose from? Like most things, e-book topics tend to trend. You need to know what people are talking about, and focus on that. Remember, though … pick a topic that you yourself can relate to! That will make you and your reader happy! An easy place to find ideas, and see how they are trending, is Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com/index.html ). You can also use CB Engine (http://cbengine.com/ ).

Cheat a little … check out the Amazon.com Kindle bookstore (http://tinyurl.com/btjrodq ) and see what is there. Cheat some more … do a keyword search! Jot down a few topics off the top of your head that you think might sell. Using a keyword search tool, such as https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ , put your topics in one at a time. You will be able to find out how many people are searching for that keyword each month.

The sky is the limit on topics for e-books. Winnow your topics down to ones that are relevant, that people want to know about, and that you can connect with as a writer. Your passion for writing, combined with knowledge of what people want to read, will open up a whole new world for you!

© October 2012 Bonnie Cehovet

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