Even if you haven’t written it yet we are going on a journey to getting your book published in hard copy format by February 2011.

See that?  I wrote hard copy.  That means printed and everything.  You will also publish it in ebook format but that’s just a bonus.  I’ll get to that ‘ron.

For now lets begin the journey to publishing success.  Have you written a book yet?

Sheesh folks, what have we been talking about all year?

OK.  Doesn’t matter because I am, beginning this post, going to walk you through the whole process of writing a book from choosing a topic, getting the content, writing it, putting all the guff together to make it a viable publishing candidate, getting the cover done, finding a publisher and getting it published.

The ebook will happen right alongside this whole process as a natural function and I’ll show you how to get it published and available for Kindle users – just so happens that you can tap the iPad market at the same time.

This will take a bunch of blog posts here as well as some video which I’ll tell you about once you are ready and they’re in place.

Today the lesson is – Choose your topic.

If we are going to publish a book it’s probably a good idea to publish one which has a good chance of selling so lets skip the fiction for now OK?  Hey I like fiction as much as the next person but getting a fiction novel to sell really well is a challenge.  So let’s just not for this exercise at least all right?

People are looking for information, hints, tips, shortcuts.  Pretty much anything which will deliver information has a market.  There are typically two markets, the flash in the pan, trendy, hot as hell today frozen tomorrow type which generally is anything to do with what’s been on the news in the last 6 months.  The other market is the evergreen one.  This is really where you should be looking because you get to write the book once and sell it for years.

How to, inspirational, informative, cook books, gardening, craft, hobbies etc.  These are easy to write even if you are not an expert because you can research more information easily and you only have to know more than the person who is looking to buy your book.  You don’t have to know everything.  If that was the case there wouldn’t be so many books published.  One per category by the most expert person and that’s it.

As an example, I have a particular interest in radio communications with a special interest in antennas.  This has been a hobby for 30 years so I have a bit of knowledge on the subject.  This will be the subject of my book because I haven’t found a book on the subject for years which had more than 1% new information for me and yet there are new books on this subject printed daily.

Time I had one in print.  But I am not an expert on the subject, there are many people who know far more than me about this.  They are not writing the books though.

What is your special subject?  It doesn’t have to be something you know a lot about, it may just be something you have an interest in and would like to learn more about.  Do your research, learn more and then collate your journey of discovery into a book.

Are you with me here?  OK, lets all write a book and get it published by February 2011.