One of the trickiest questions to answer because the statistics are not shared amongst the different retailers but I suspect that, apart from people buying hardcopy books from places like Amazon, the bulk of the ebooks sold are How to… type books.

If you think about it that makes sense.  People buy things which they see as having value to them.  They couldn’t give a rats about what you see as valuable for them.  They’re so selfish aren’t they?  Me Me Me, that’s all they care about.

I suppose you are different.  You buy things because you want to help out the person selling it right?

Perhaps not.  OK.  If it is true that people buy what they see as having value for them it would be nice if there was some way of finding out what they want?  After all, when we know what they want to buy we might be able to create it and let them buy it right?  We are all writers and can write about any subject that we choose.

Did I hear you just say “How to books are not real writing”?  That’s not true you know, all writing deserves the highest skill you can muster, even blog posts like these.  The aim of all writing is to communicate ideas right?  So why wouldn’t writing a How to book require good writing?

If you had read some of the How to books I have you would cry at the shocking grammar, spelling etc. but they still had value because they managed to share the ideas and information that I wanted to learn.  Would they have been better if they had been written better?  Absolutely.

Did you know that there are several ways of finding out what people want to know?  You can ask them or perhaps just watch them talk amongst themselves.  No that’s not a joke.  Do you have a hobby or an interest, apart from or as well as writing?  Go to Big Boards and search for a forum on that subject.  Those people are discussing things that work for them, things that don’t work for them, problems and solutions.

Get in there, join in the discussion, do some research from other areas – most people are too lazy or don’t have good research skills – collect the information and collate it.  Then write the How to book.  Upload it here, add the link to your forum signature and whammo.

You can do this, it doesn’t take a lot of effort or creativity and these books do sell.  No it won’t get you the Pulitzer Prize but it just may help fund the time you need to write that novel.