In today’s episode, I’m going to go back to the process, as I defined in an earlier episode, where I talked to you about the seven steps to writing your first draft of your manuscript. And today I want to focus on defining your topic. 

As I said before, a topic is not the same as a subject. A subject is much, much bigger and wider and it can be defined as your general area of expertise. But it’s way too big in general to write a book on. Within that subject, you need to choose topics. And it’s a topic that you use for your book. One topic in one book. 

Think of it in terms of your business. If you’re a consultant, for example, you probably don’t just have one thing that you deal with for clients. Maybe you consult on different aspects of business. Maybe you consult on real estate property. Maybe you…you know, whatever it is, there’s probably more than one thing. And so therefore, there’s more than one topic that you’re an expert in and, potentially, more than one book. So you want to narrow it down. Let me give you some examples just to kind of set your thinking on the right track.

Supposing you are an accountant specializing in tax. Well, you could write a book on the tax consequences of opening a factory in another country. And, in fact, I have worked with an accountant who talked about that very thing. I counseled him, don’t try to say everything that you know about tax. Focus on the specifics of cross-border tax obligations, and that’s what he did. 

If you’re a lawyer specializing in family law, you could write about the importance of keeping track of family assets and, specifically, how to do that, because that would be useful to your reader. 

If you’re a renovation contractor, you could write about the legislation that determines what you can and cannot do when you’re renovating a home. 

All three of these demonstrate a very specific, deep expertise in a subject, and that’s the way you want to choose your topic. 

Think about the kinds of questions that your clients ask you. What are the things that they zero in on? What are the questions that clients ask you that you might consider, in a way, kind of silly questions, but they’re not because they don’t know the answers?  You’re so wrapped up and have such a deep knowledge of your subject that of course you know the answers. But they don’t and, of course, that’s why they’re hiring you. 

And so one of the best ways to choose a topic is to look at the questions your clients ask you and the kind of information they need, and choose your topic based on that. 

The renovation contractor I was talking about earlier said that a lot of people want to do things in their renovation but they’re simply not allowed to because of local zoning laws. Well, they don’t know that. So he’s written about that in his book so that he is, one, educating them on what they need to know, but two, he’s also educating them to understand that he is an expert in the subject area and that they should listen to him. 

So those are some of the ways you define your topic, as opposed to your subject. So start thinking about your topics and I’ll talk to you next week.