EDUCATING READERS IS WHY YOU WRITE YOUR BOOK
In a July 2021 post, you were encouraged to expand—expand your reach by writing a book. You want to make a name for yourself in your field. You have knowledge that you want to share. You are sitting at your desk with your laptop open, ready to write your book and…what?
Writing is not always easy, but it is not really hard either. It just takes answering some questions to get you focused in the right direction. You want to share your knowledge of your topic, so you want to educate your audience.
Writing a book is just educating your audience on your topic. You can make it as basic or as in-depth as you see fit. If you know enough about your topic, you can create a series and start with the basics and move to more advanced concepts with each new book.
After you read this blog, do a quick exercise. Write down your topic and ask yourself these questions. Write two to three sentences under the question.
Why do I want to educate my audience?
How can I educate my audience?
What do I want my audience to know or be able to do after I educate it?
These three questions can get you on track, keep you focused, and set you up for success. Let’s look at them more closely.
First, let’s think about why you want to educate your audience.
Most of the time, we want to educate our audience because we want to share what we know about the topic. For example, if we know how to program in JAVA, we may have found a way to do this more easily. If you are a math teacher, maybe you have figured out how to help students remember how to work complicated equations. If you are in cybersecurity, perhaps you have seen a new trend and want to share the information quickly. Or maybe you have created a new lure for fly-fishing that has fish jumping onto your lines.
It really doesn’t matter what your topic is. You want to educate your audience because you have information or knowledge you deem important and want to share it.
Now on to question two. Consider how you will present the information in a book to educate your audience.
Another way to think about this is the way in which you will structure your book.
There are many ways to do this; it is just finding your perspective on the topic, then creating your way of presenting the information in book form.
For question two, you have to consider your topic and what you want to do with it. If you are educating your audience on how to sew or create a lure, your book will be instructional. You will be explaining the process of the project or projects covered in the book by giving step-by-step instructions for each project. You will probably want to include a few paragraphs to build a rapport with your audience, but the bulk of your manuscript is instructions.
Another way to structure your book is to clarify misinformation. There are a lot of rumors on the Internet that people take for truth. If you are frustrated with the misinformation about your topic, you can list all the misconceptions about your topic, then have a chapter or a section explaining why and how the information is wrong. Then you can follow that with accurate information to show your knowledge and build credibility with your audience.
Similar to clarifying misinformation is answering a question in the field. You may be asked the same question repeatedly and feel that this question is obviously a much broader issue than you initially thought. You decide to write a book about your topic and answer the one big question or several questions that seem to repeatedly come to you.
Another option is to give your solution to a problem in an industry. Maybe you work in the industry, but no one at your company is listening to you. Through your network, you know other companies around the world are having a similar problem. This is a perfect time to write a book explaining the problem, introducing your solution, and then showing how your solution will solve the problem.
Finally, for the last question, when you write a book, you want to always give your reader a call-to-action in some sense.
Just as a teacher provides a homework assignment after preset a less, and since you are in the business of educating with your book, you will want to ostensibly do the same. This means now that they have read your book, what do you want them to do? What should they do differently? For instance, you can add action steps, exercises for them to try, a list of recommended readings or other resources to extend their knowledge on the topic, or questions for them to ponder at the end of each chapter/section or at the end of your book.
Your next thought probably is “Will my book reach enough people?” Sure, not everyone goes fly-fishing, but plenty do; and they would love to learn about new lures. Not everyone is interested in cybersecurity; I know that is hard to believe but true. Still, there are more and more people every day who are interested in learning more about cybersecurity. A book is one of the best methods for teaching those interested in your topic or your field.
People buy books on subjects that interest them. They usually purchase several books on the same subject, so don’t stress if there are other books out there on a similar topic. People like different perspectives and different ideas. They want to be students.
Once you see your readers are your students, you’re ready to start educating your audience. The great thing is that they are waiting for your class to start. What are you waiting for? Write your book, get it published, and start educating your readers.
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Content credit: C. Storm
Image credit: Element5 Digital