In the next few weeks we will list some questions that you can use as guidelines in order to help you discover the purpose behind your book. The more you think about the answers to these questions, the more they will help you discover your intentions for yourself and your readers. I have provided for you possible answers to help get you thinking, but I encourage you to extend upon these answers with your own personal responses.

This question is a good opportunity to really think about the message you want to leave to your readers once they have finished reading your book. Even if what your readers learn from your book is not directly derived from your intended message, it is still a good place to start. Your book’s message and what your readers learn might be correlated, but they could also be completely separate. Your book might have an educational component to it; in this case, answering this question should seem simple. If you wish your book to teach your readers either from your past personal experiences or from case studies that you have conducted through your own business, then you must frame your book in a way that your readers will learn what you want them to from reading these scenarios.

As you think about your answer to this question, and depending on the content of your book, you might realize you want your readers to learn how to communicate better with loved ones, or learn how to approach a task that will improve their business platform, or even learn to accept and value people of various multicultural backgrounds in their everyday lives. If you are a cancer survivor and writing about your journey through cancer, then you might want to help the reader understand what they are physically and mentally going through, what treatments and therapies worked and what didn’t, what to look out for, what to avoid, or how to talk to their loved ones during the whole process. Your book might be about how to handle the grieving process after the loss of a spouse or family member, or it could enlighten your reader about how to help and communicate with work colleagues in the office environment. No matter what your book’s subject is, you should think about what the most appropriate or useful skills are, the behaviours, coping mechanisms, tips, tools, or actions for your reader to learn from.

These questions are used in the InspireABook® Webinar program to help the writer understand who they are writing the book for, and what language they will use for that reader. In discussion groups, the answers to these questions helps the writer to understand how to write the book for their specific readership and how to market to that readership.

For more information on the InsprireABook® Webinar program and to watch a free educational seminar please go to www.inspireabook.com/publishing-coaching/

This blog is an excerpt from the E-Book “All you need to know about publishing your book” by Amy O’Hara. To get this E-Book for Free, register for our newsletter here.