What to write an ebook about? How do you come up with a topic for an e-book? – Create & sell digital products #7

What to write an ebook about? Do you know how to come up with a topic for your next e-book? The idea for the topic is the most important part of this product, without devising the subject any further steps on e-book creation are impossible. To find out more about the process of subject creation read the article below.

What to write an ebook about? – table of content:

1. Best ways to come up with the topic for you e-book
2. What genres sell best?

What to write an ebook about – Best ways to come up with the topic for you e-book

1. Brainstorming

Writing an e-book may be a pleasant task if you decide to write about your own interests. Think about such aspects as:

• what are the subject you are familiar with?
• what are the topic that you are passionate about?
• what are your hobbies?
• what subjects did you like particularly at school or at the university?

Try to verify your findings try to compare you answers with the observations of your family and friends. Ask their opinion, let them tell you what you are doing best. Quite often somebody else is more likely to see clearly other aspects of our personality and point us towards the right direction. It is always advisable to listen to the opinion of the third party.

When you have your own list of possible subjects that and you feel comfortable with it, check if it is possible to divide your chosen subject into more detailed topics. Consider your future audience during this process.

Target audience

Having your target audience specified speeds up hugely the search for an e-book topic. We need to understand our target audience and the expectations of its members, as well as their: values, problems, and methods of communication. Additionally, we need to find out what is the main impulse that prompts them to buy products like an e-book.

There are some other problems that you have to think about. To help you with this, we have devised a list of important questions you should ask yourself. Check the list below:

• What is the age of my potential clients? How old are they?
• What kind of platforms my clients use?
• What are their everyday duties and obligations: family? university studies? work? kids?
• What kind of problems my clients might have?
• What is their income?

Ask your target audience

When you have your target audience specified with detail try to get in touch with its members. There is several ways to contact those individuals and you may try those:

• using your profiles on social medias – if you already work in the Internet you probably have several accounts on the social media portals and there is a chance that you have certain amount of followers. Ask your followers about their favorite topics, hobbies and interests and use this knowledge to work on your own e-book
• join social groups – on the Facebook there are many groups that bring together all the people with similar interests and hobbies. Join such communities and find out what topics are being discussed and searched for
• design a questionnaire – with the tool of Google Form you can create and analyze your own surveys free of charge
• embrace the potential of internet forums – social media sites such as Quora may be a good place to ask specific questions to internet users. Try to join discussions about related topic and find out how many users may be interested in those subjects.

Check the browser

The best way to find out what topic is most searched by the Internet users is to check Google suggestions in the browser. Insert your chosen words in the field and see the what phrases come up. It is cheap and fast method to find out if the topic is searched for or not.

There are many tools that can help you to find out about the most searched topics and tools showing, which phrases are most often typed in the Google browser. Some of the tools are available free of charge, but most of them have to be paid for. Some of the services of such type offer limited, free searches for phrases and words, therefore it is good to use them at the beginning of your work on the project them to check popular phrases ahead. The platform called Answer the Public could be an example of such service where one word generates questions and phrases related to our search.

Check your competition

Think about your competitors. Make a list of all your competitors and see what they are writing about. Analyze blog posts, social media and articles. Search for the information about their offer or do they have any e-books – if so, what about? What style those e-books are written in? Do they exhaust the topic?

When you know more about the activities of your competition think how could you stand out from the crowd. We are assuming you don’t want to do the exactly same thing. This is why, you have to find a way to stand out from the pack. Write your e-book but add more examples from your own experience or invite an expert, who knows the subject really well. Furthermore, you may ask an expert to write an article on the subject and attach it to your e-book.

Offer the solution to the problem

When you know your target audience and the most popular searches from the browser you can offer multiple solutions to people’s problems. Individuals that use Internet don’t always need pure knowledge to deal with issues that annoy them. Sometimes more practical approach is needed because your audience members may search only for the short, concrete answer to their question. While drafting your e-book try to use this insight and make your book more guideline.

What genres sell best?

To find out what are the most popular topics and genres of e-books published in recent years it is good to check Amazon Kindle Books bestsellers tab, where you can see the most read categories of e-books alongside with the prices and readers ratings.

Statistics related to the Amazon Kindle readership are published regularly in the Internet. There you can find all the information about recently popular categories and titles sold to the e-book readers. Among the most popular genres, accordingly to the stats is contemporary romance, but biographies and self-help books are equally popular.

While choosing the subject for your e-book it is worth to see the list of the least popular categories. To those less popular niche genres belong such topics as:

• Non-fiction → Science → Experiments, instruments and measurements → Microscopes and microscopy
• Non-fiction – Business and money → Taxes → Corporate taxes
• Professional and technical → Engineering → Construction → Hydrology
• Non-fiction → Science → Experiments, instruments and measurements → Weights and measures

You can find the entire list at this link. Two the least popular categories are the children’s literature and non-fiction.

Summary

All the ideas presented above are just exemplary solutions for e-book subject creation. Following all the above advice, at the end of the process you should at least have an idea about the topic you wish to write about accompanied with some knowledge about readers expectations and needs.

Now you know what to write an ebook about. Follow our “Creating and Selling Digital Products” category to be up to date with more articles in this series.

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