Chapter 2

We previously looked at the really big picture. Now we're going to start getting a bit more granular and detailed. We will be more action-oriented moving forward. This whole chapter is going to be about value, mapping the value, and finding the value. Discerning what value you've already got. Where are you going to get it from? How are you going to know if it's valuable? I mean, what is “value” at the end of the day anyway?

My goal for you is for you to write a book that has the most value per page in the world. So we're not focusing on the weight of the book. We’re looking for the value per page.

Types of books

Workbook or summary
Manifesto
Cheat sheet / checklist
Process visuals
Templates / scripts
Slide deck / guide
Topical subject / fast response to market
‘Add ons’ to main book
Specialist journal/planner (part of a program)
Other...

You might write a workbook or a summary book of your work. If you have a big program, where you do big things with many people, you might then consider writing a summary workbook that goes along with it. In the old days, if you went on a course, they'd give you a great big fat folder with all the pages printed out on it. You don't need to do that anymore. You can make a really beautiful book - a workbook that goes alongside any course that you do.

A manifesto could be just a landmark that you want to take people towards, and then you have to find a way for them to follow you. This is where a cheat sheet and checklists come in handy. Who doesn’t love a very good cheat sheet or checklist anyway? And you can actually do a whole book of cheat sheets and checklists, if that's what you want, especially if that's right for your audience.

Lots of my clients are consultants and go into big organizations where they use process visuals that are not necessarily their own process visuals. They use process visuals from other consultants. As long as you credit every single thing, and you have permission to use them, you can then create a whole book of process visuals. However, I don't recommend only doing other people's process visuals. I recommend that you put your own process visuals into your framework.

There is a way of doing a book of templates and scripts. I had a client, and one of the clever things that he did was to write a book that teaches you how to sell cars. Now, he's thinking of doing templates or scripts for each different stage within the sales process. So he could have just the scripts for pre-sales or the scripts for after-sales so on and so forth. Templates and scripts don’t have to be a traditional book. It can be something different, like a slide deck. I personally put everything in slide decks and you can use your slide deck to create a minimum valuable asset book.

With regards to writing about topical subjects and fast response to market-type books, you could usually work something out with what you've already written before and then just make it “more topical.” One of my favorite minimum viable asset books is about add-ons to a main book. So if you've written a legacy book, whatever it is about, you can write an add-on to that book by taking one small section and elaborating on it.

Specialist journals or planners usually are part of a program or part of something bigger. Specialist journals and planners book is like my own book: “Little Book of Big Decisions”. It lets you put your decisions in the book where you can evaluate them. There are loads of these ideas. It's a really hot subject at the moment.

You do not have to be restricted by what books were in the past. We're going to use Amazon, rather than allow Amazon to use us.

Think Series-ly

So now I want you to think series(ly). I don't want you to think about just one book and then done. This is one of the biggest problems we encounter when writing a book. People write their big book. They write and pour their whole world, their whole heart, and their whole business idea and everything into one big book. When it's all done, that becomes the end of it all. They just have one book and have no content left for another one. So again, I repeat, I want you to start thinking series(ly). There are a couple of ways to think series(ly).

Assuming that you're writing the book for meditation. And you’re writing this book for a specific person that you've already thought of, let’s say Jim again. Your book on meditation is going to answer Jim's major problems; which is, he has a house full of kids, and they're all running around all the time and he never gets five minutes of peace. So you are going to write the book that solves Jim’s problems, when that’s done you can write the same book again but this time for a different person with a different problem. You will be using 90% of the same book you wrote, you just need to change the framing of the problem. That way, you can cater to a different audience.

You can also do a series(ly) on another book for the same person —Jim. So, what other problems does Jim have? Maybe he has a problem with teaching his kids how to meditate. So for your next book, you could write the book on teaching kids to meditate. Basically, you are writing for the same person but just from another angle. You are then collecting and creating a client/customer. The next step would be making more books for them.

Aside from writing a series(ly) for different people or writing more for the same person, comes the magic of writing for both. So you could have a series of meditation books for different targets. Then you could follow those targets and write more books. You need to stop thinking about just one book and you’re done. You need to start thinking of a series of books. The biggest benefit when you start thinking of writing a series of books is having more opportunities and more credibility.

You need to start thinking that not everything needs to go into the book. When most people write a book, they feel the need to say everything and do everything. So by breaking what you have to say into chunks - into a series of books - you can reduce the problem of wanting to tell everybody everything all at once.

Where’s the money?

Obviously, you want people to buy the book, use the book, or you want it to be part of your business. So you have to start asking “Where's the money?” because your book has a job to do. You have to know what to write about. And the best way to know what you should write about is to follow the money. I have different places for you to go and explore. That way you can work out where the book buyers are, where the book readers are, where your potential clients are, because remember, your book is an asset.

So these are the best places to go and explore:

1. Your Bookshelf

2. Amazon Data

3. Ask your ONE reader what they want (most important)

4. Competitor’s Books

5. Partner’s Books

Your Bookshelf

Your bookshelf is filled with people like you, it contains books you have read and liked, that have been your path to where you are now. What you can do on your bookshelf is look at the short books you have there. I want you to be alert for shorter books, they are out there, there are a lot of them; you don't have to watch only the big books. Also, check your bookshelf for books that you have been gifted or books that have been referred to you by friends. I want you to keep an eye out for valuable books because I want you to be thinking about what value you are adding so that you know your book will be marketable. You need to start thinking of valuable books that help people get from where they are to where they need to be.

Amazon Data

Using our example of writing a book on meditation you would start typing “meditation” on Amazon’s search bar and see autocomplete suggestions. You want to search on Amazon to see what else is already out there. While you're doing this research, you need to save the titles. So if you like a book or you recommend a book, if you've been referred a book or you see a competitive book, then save the title because you’ll be needing that later.

Another way of deciding what type of book you need to be writing is by checking the bestsellers lists. You can look at the top-level bestsellers list as well and try looking in your own chosen category. You need to write all the outputs down and save this data.

Amazon is a data treasure trove. You can also see what books customers have bought. You can see what books have sponsored adverts and so you can see who is targeting that group. At this moment, you might be thinking that you don't really need to know all this information and you probably don't really need to know all of this information. But I want you to see this because I want you to know all your options and the possibilities.

You can also check reviews on various books. You can then use the bad reviews you see on other people's books to find out what's missing. Check out what they didn't like, what they did, what's wrong etc. this is very useful data. You can actually write a book just from finding out what other people didn't like or was missing from a top-selling book.

Ask your ONE reader what they want (most important)

The next place to look into is your “one reader.” So you ask Jim, what does he want to know? You need to talk to your reader. So the point of the book, the point of any communication, any business communication is to move someone from the pain that they have now to the gain that they can have tomorrow. It's to actually get a movement - a transformation. You want movement in their feet, heart, and hands. You can ask your one reader, what is the problem or pain that they need solving?

What you need to realize is that, in general, people search for solutions to their problems. They search for problems online using Google. Just think about your last search. When you searched last on Google, you probably weren't looking for a book. But the thing is, there could be a really big book for what you needed solving.

So you should keep in mind, what is the problem? Going back to “the one reader” you have his information because your one reader is the one person that you really know. So you can call up Jim and say to him: “I can solve all of your problems.”

Competitors and Partners

So who do you want to compete with? What does the competing book look like? What’s the book that you want to knock off that top spot? Find it and make a note of it. In fact, print out a picture of it, then tell yourself “this is the book that I want to compete with.” You then need to go into depth on their Amazon reviews, what people like about it. What people didn't like about it. All this knowledge is going to help you write an outline.

Now we come to the part that most people don't think about — partners. So going back to the series idea, if you were doing vertical series or horizontal series, you might not have the depth of knowledge in each of those. You might only know the ones that cross in your matrix, however, imagine having a good partner who has in depth knowledge. You have the knowledge to put the book together, and they just provide an extra element, so they get something from it, and you get something from it. What could you do together? Who could you partner with tactically to do that? Sometimes, your competitors could even be your partners, or your future partners.

Map Value - Where

1. Previous Works

So now comes the part where we map the value. Where? Where are you going to find the material to write this book? Okay, I suggest that you look at what you've already done. I'm a big advocate of reuse, recycle and upcycle. Repurpose what you already have. So maybe you may already have 90%, or 80% of the stuff written. It could be in blogs that you've written, articles or even workshop recordings.

One of the first books that we did with my client before was a compilation The Clarity Papers. It was a compilation that contained half of her blog articles that she'd already written. Obviously, we had to put things in the right order and make everything fit nicely together. That very same book helped her get a deal with Bloomsbury.

So don’t diss your previous work, or previous articles, or previous blogs, or workshops or recordings. Those are all of huge value that you could take advantage of.

2. Your framework, System, Process

You might also get value from your own framework, system and process. You could write about what is the framework of your business? What is the system? What is the process that you take people through?

If you don’t have a framework yet, don’t worry. I have a program for that!

Your framework is the special way you do what you do. It’s the difference that makes the difference in how you get your clients their results.

3. Unfinished Work

Unfinished work is where most of my ideas come from. It is where most of my client’s books come from. They have a lot of unfinished books lying around, and they are in different stages of being unfinished. So you might have something that you’ve left unfinished, and we can turn that into a book. It may have been a big book idea, that needed 45-50,000 words and you've only done maybe 20,000. Well, something like that can be turned into a short book. It can be turned into a minimum valuable asset book.

4. Compilation

Another area is a compilation book. Here you can compile quotes, some people like little books of questions and quotes. It can also be books of models, like if you're using somebody else's models. You can do compilations with people, when considering this type of compilation book they so something like gathering six experts who will each write an article or report together in a book. There is nothing wrong with that idea. However, you now have six cats to herd. I love compilation books, but they can be such a nightmare. And you do need to consider the mechanics and the mechanism of managing input from other people. So it's good, but it has its own cons.

5. Case Studies

One style of book that I'm spotting more recently, are case study books. These are real life type books. For example, Byron Katie has lots of information, that she delivers in cases. She did interventions with people, and then she writes up the interventions. So 90% of the book is these interventions, and 10% of the work is her model. You can use real life work. Joe and I wrote an Amazon bestseller plan back in 2006. And the Amazon bestseller plan book has three case studies in it. The book follows three cases: what we did, what went well, what went wrong and what we would do differently next time. It's a thin book, it's a short book. It had three case studies with lots of data, lots of information, but it was just three case studies. And that's one way of writing the book, if you've got some great case stories that talk to your target audience, then that right there is a book waiting to be written.

6. New Stuff

The final one is “new stuff.” Where you are writing a book from scratch, or you don't have a model yet. You haven't written any blogs at all nor have you done any research for it. In this stage it’s still all in your head. You need to get it out in writing. You could also be thinking of writing a combination of old and new stuff. Maybe you have written two or three articles before, and people have really loved them. And they want to make that into a book. So you now have to write some new stuff around the old stuff to piece it together. Or you may have a framework and you want to add some case studies. So you've got two bits that you're pulling together. This is writing in some sort of combination.

What the flip is VALUE anyway?

The whole reason you are writing a book; the whole reason that you're communicating with somebody is to get them to move from where they are, to where they need to be, from the problem they have, to the gains that they can receive. From currently being in a stressed and bleeding neck or weeping wound state to happy sewed up neck. From weeping wounds to healthy and running around again.

The reason you're looking for some sort of movement from pain to gain is to deliver value. You want to get people to move, and in order to do this you've got to cover three different areas.

You've got to tell them what they need to do. So your readers need to know some stuff. And it has to be useful. It has to be real.
You have to tell them something they didn’t know before, in a way that they didn't know. That's the knowledge bit.
Next, you have to give some sort of heart and a change of state. And you can do that in different ways. You can be funny about it, you can make it emotional, you can make it exciting. As long as you remember that they have to have the knowledge and the desire from the heart to actually do the things that you're asking them to do in the book.

So you've got this arc of moving from A to B in the book, and you've got this information to add value, you then need to give them something to think about, to feel about and then to do. You need to give them that impulse to move. You need to actually excite them a little bit to actually get them to move and to do the things you want them to do.

So when you can do all those three things in a chapter, in a paragraph, or in a picture, then you are adding value.

(Hey Deb, I think it would be cool if your book had some homework page for people to work on before moving on to the next chapter. So the book can be a How to with some work book? If you don’t like it then we can cut the paragraphs below. If you do like the idea then let’s expound the portion below)

Homework

You need to decide the type of style of book you’ll be doing. Are you writing a workbook? Are you writing a manifesto? You need to decide and seriously think about doing a series. Have a think about what your series could be. You need to do some research. You need to know what your one person wants, what are the best solutions to his problems, and you also need to know what Amazon is selling.

You also need to do research on your shelves. You can look wherever you want, but you need to know that what you're going to write down needs to be valuable. Consider up-cycling your own work. Have you done some past works? What have you bought, that you can reuse or recycle?

Map The Value: What Book Should You Write?

Think: Value to you & value to them

Write to outline

Design Your Prototype

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