They say everyone has a book in them and recently I’ve been thinking about a friend of mine who claims to make a lot of money writing books about subjects he claims he is not an expert on.
How?
Firstly, he thinks about something that he’s interested in (he figures that if he wants to know more about it then, by extension, other people may want to know more too).
Then he begins researching. So it’s already fun right? You are learning about something that you have a personal interest in.
My friend says that once he’s become knowledgeable enough on the given subject that the novice (that’s 99% of all people) would consider him an expert, he writes a short, easily digestable book on it.
He then sells it as an e-book, online, from his website and amazon.com.
To me, the most interesting aspect of this was when he said ‘you don’t have to actually BE an expert in order to be considered an expert by 99% of people’.
That is fascinating to me. And it makes sense if you think about it.
There are so many subjects to know about in this world, yet there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for everybody to dig into all of them. The way I see it is that, even if you spend a grand total of just fifteen hours researching something, you have already put in an amount of work that most people can’t be bothered to do because they’re too busy scrolling Instagram.
How many hours research does one need to put in to put together something that’s worth 3-4USD?
That’s worth something.
I ask myself, would I pay a measly 3-4 dollars to read a 50 page book on something that I have an interest in and can make me better? Even if it’s just an introduction to the topic? If it’s well-argued, well-sourced and well-written, sure. That’s worth a few bucks to me.
And by selling online, you have virtually no costs. Amazon takes a small fee, it costs something to run your own website, but not a lot. And your business has unlimited scalability.
So I started thinking what I could write a book about.
I am a 35 year old man who makes the bulk of his money from online English teaching, DJing and hosting the odd event. I’m sure I could write enough about those subjects, all of which I have 10+ years experience with, that would be of interest to people. But they’re kind of niche.
My brother on the other hand is a chef. He’s four years younger than me, but has been studying cooking since his early teenage years and now, at the still relatively young age of 31, cooking is all he’s ever known. And he’s seriously passionate about it.
Also, cooking/food/health is something everyone has an interest in, so it’s not difficult to persuade a great number of people to buy your book.
You just take a random sentence like the one I read the other day, which is ‘By the year 2030, food and health knowledge is estimated to be 20% more important’ and use that sentence to entice people. This may seem like a kind of bull shit quote, but it isn’t difficult to find quotes like this. Try for yourself. Then, you use it to begin the blurb of your book…and hey presto, you’ve got people’s attention.
Food for thought!
…sound like a book name? ;)
By the way, if you're interested, my friend's website is www.siamohajer.com.