There’s no definitive guide when it comes to writing a bestselling book. In fact, finding your way to the shelves in and of itself relies on a number of factors that include things that are completely out of your hands, such as luck. However, there are things that will help you on your way to that acclaimed list of bestsellers. If you need to be pointed towards the right direction, then memorize these 5 Cs to writing a bestselling book:
Calibrate
Before you even type the first word of the draft, you need to calibrate and get your strategy down – you have to think about the goals and objectives you want from the book first. It doesn’t have to be fully fleshed out or set in stone, there’s room to change things later. You just need a rough idea of what your bestseller is going to be.
Create
Don’t be intimidated by a blank sheet of paper (or a blank document in MS Word.) Once you know where you want to go, it’s time to create the best selling book. You can get inspiration from everywhere, not just internally. Crawl social media, read white papers, play videogames, anything that will help stretch your mind so that you can see what your planned target audience will find engaging. Remember that you’re not writing for the sake of writing, you’re trying to create a bestselling novel: something that sells.
Curate
In any bestselling book, chances are you’re going to have information that originated from somewhere else – whether its urban legends, some quirky fact, news items, or anecdotes – you have to learn how to curate. Make sure you get the presentation right, which will depend on how you approach your book. It’s not just about finding good content; you have to learn the skill of organizing and presenting it in a way that will give it more impact. If you get good at it, what you include will not be a passive element of the reading experience – it will be part of the conversation between the book and the reader.
Circulate
Getting a book to become a bestseller is more than just creating the book itself. You have to circulate it to enable it to gain exposure. Who’s going to buy it? You have to make sure that people will see your book, and that means you have to research and look for the right distribution channels for your oeuvre, which could vary greatly depending on your topic, your target market, and other goals.
Convert
Finally, never forget that trying to get a book to the bestseller list is basically an exercise in marketing. You have to know how to push prospects through a sales funnel and get them to “convert.” It kind of rubs many authors the wrong way as they see it as some sort of “selling out,” but you have to disabuse yourself of this notion. It’s only a bad thing if what you’re selling isn’t really worth reading. If it is, then getting people to convert is just a natural part of the process. Alternatively, if you really don’t want to deal with the marketing aspect of book publishing, you can get an agent and he or she will handle all the gritty aspects of the business.
…and that’s it! The 5 Cs are not magic bullets that will make your book shoot straight to the top of the charts, but they will help a great deal in pointing you towards the right direction, showing you general things that you have to do if you want to reach the top of the literary charts.
Image credit: Gareth Simpson on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.