How to Write a Book to Stand Out In the Crowd and Sell

Did you know there are about 1.5 million books in print at any one time in the United States alone? Furthermore, there are over 195,000 new titles published each year in this country.

Many aspiring authors feel their book would be lost in the sea of books already in print? May I be honest? That feeling is correct if you don't target your potential book readers well.

To write your book to stand out in a crowd, you must write it for a targeted audience interested in your book's topic. Identifying a (niche) targeted audience is really hot in the marketing world right now and rightly so.

Simply put, to target a niche market or audience in your book's topic area: Identify a problem/solution and research your competition. Then develop a different approach. With all the books in the world on your topic, it's not enough to know the solution. You must present the solution in a different way than existing books do.

Develop a way of making your book different. You need a different viewpoint, a niche, or a different spin on perhaps the same information. Examine the problem again. Look at the solution your book solves with the goal of coming up with a way to present your knowledge differently than existing books.

Here are several ways you can do this:

1. Market Segment. You can develop a niche by focusing on an occupation, sex, or age group, i.e. Lose 14 Pounds in 2 Weeks: A Guide for the New 30 at 40, Lose Weight Safely Before, During and After Pregnancy.

2. Experience Group. You could write a book for people experiencing the same thing at the same time. For example, Fit at Forty: A Exercise Guide for the New 30 at 40 or Newbie Mothers Eating Healthy.

3. Broadening Market. Consider appealing to a broader market: Lose 14 Pounds in 14 Days: A Guide for Working Class Men & Women.

4. Focus. Attack a big problem by emphasizing a particular tool or technique that you have experience with. For example, show how heart attack survivors can lose 14 pounds in 2 weeks by eating only fish, white meats and walking 10 miles a day.

5. Program. I love this one. Base your solution on the way you solve a large problem by breaking it into steps, i.e. Write Your Best Book Now: A 7 Step Program for book writing.

6. Expertise. Base your niche on your market's previous experience with a topic, for example, "The Last Business Book You'll Ever Need!"

7. Goal. Organize your existing information around benefits of achieving the goal: Free Again, Healthy Again!

8. Affinity. Perhaps you have a relationship with a high visibility organization that has benefited from your ideas. You can reframe your knowledge by leveraging off your association: The Bank of America Financial Program or the Southern Methodist University Weight Loss Program.

You might notice in each one of the above examples of the same market, the contents of the book would probably be the same! The books would contain the same basic ideas, suggestions, tips, etc. For example, all the books about diets would probably stress the importance of eating right, choosing the right foods in right portions and daily exercise. Yet, each book presents a different viewpoint targeting a different market.

Be bold; have no fear about approaching the same subject as existing books. Focus in on your unique ideas and viewpoint. Remember, according to the writer of Ecclesiastes, "There's nothing new under the sun."

Even, Bernice Fitz Gibbon said, "Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were only thought up only little more than a century ago." So start today; make your book different, make it count and make it yours. Write your significant book to stand out in the crowd and sell.