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eBook Writing Tutorial - Step 4
By Skip Pratt
©
2002 - 2003
In the first of our series, I asked you to get a notebook and write during the week. The three things you are writing about are:
1. What I LOVE to do
2. Jobs and positions that I have held
3. Skills that I have
We are doing all of this in order to select good topics to write about. One thing for sure about writing, especially if you have never written a book before, is you want to write on a topic that you have passion about AND one which, hopefully, has a built in market of buyers.
In the second installation of the series, I asked you to prioritize each of your entries under the three categories.
Last week, I asked you to migrate all that information to three brand new pages, then answer the question “WHY” and write those answers on the new pages.
Now you should have quite the set of lists. You have given a lot of thought, gone back and updated, edited and rewritten your lists.
You should have three things listed that you LOVE to do with a lot of reasons why for each. You have a list of jobs and positions that you have held and why. And you have a list of skills you have and the reasons why.
Now, the key to getting to select your ebook topics lay in the WHY section of your notes.
This week, it is time to dive into some market research to help select your topic to write on.
Next, select a couple of topics from any of your lists. Go to this URL:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Formulate some key search phrases with your topics and enter them in to the blank box.
For example, when I enter “Downhill Skiing” into the search box, this is a shortened list of the results:
Searches done in December 2002:
Count Search Term
6292 downhill skiing
217 skiing downhill picture
182 downhill skiing wisconsin
I can see that for December 2002 (a month ago), Overture, a popular Pay Per Click search engine, had 6,292 searches for that term. You can see the results drop off quickly from there.
6,000 searches for a search term is a middle of the road number, depending on the search phrase.
Just to keep our tutorial brief, use the Overture Search Term tool to discover topics and categories from YOUR list, using different keyword phrase combinations.
Be sure to copy and paste your results into a text file or a word processor and save it for later analysis. You’ll be quite stunned by how quickly you can get addicted to discovering top search phrases with this tool and forget the whole purpose you are there!
NOTE: each search phrase has a hyperlink that “drills down” on that phrase and may reveal other keyword phrases you didn’t think of perhaps.
The idea here is to see if there is an existing market for your ebook. Personally, I would be very inclined to consider writing an ebook on “downhill skiing” if I were an expert at it.
I might consider writing reviews of the various mountains and resorts that I have skied in, disclose the hot nightspots, unknown low cost hotels I discovered along the way and perhaps even review the latest skiing technology.
Alas, I am no longer an expert in downhill skiing due to some injuries a few years back. BUT, I still LOVE downhill skiing!
You get the point however.
Now, as you go about doing your market research, do not get trapped into thinking if a certain search phrase doesn’t have a lot of hits each month, that you have a bad topic on your hands.
As I have written before, sometimes the wonderful aspect of writing is for the pure satisfaction. I’m also finding there is value in writing a life story ebook just for your family members as a way for future generations to know who you were, what you did and your experiences in life.
What a wonderful Christmas gift that would be for your family! Why not get started on that today!
Sorry; I diverged.
Capture your Overture search results and next week, we’ll start to use them to begin the writing process.
See you next week!
That’s it for this week’s exercise. Send me an email to
and let me know how it is going!
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