How to plan your business book even if you have too many ideas

There’s one thing that stops more people writing their business book than any other.

If it’s happening to you, I can guarantee that it’s confusing you, frustrating you, and confounding you.

It’s the barrier that’s killing the author in you before you even begin.

What is it?

It’s?idea overwhelm. Or in other words, having lots of ideas about what you could say in your book, but not knowing whether you should include them all.

On one day you seem to have it sorted. The next, you’re not so sure. Aarrgh! One of my clients likened it to looking at one of those paintings at Hogwarts that changes every time you see it.

The natural reaction to this can be to give up, but that would be a great shame. Instead, what you need is a way of organising your thoughts that helps you to decide what to include.

It revolves around three key questions to ask yourself. Here’s what they are.

What do I want to achieve with my book?

People write business books and self-help guides for different reasons, but in my experience as a?ghostwriter ?and?book coach , there are three main ones.

These are: to help other people, to build their authority and credibility, and to promote a particular aspect of their work.

Which is yours? Your book must help its readers to solve the problem they have, but it should also deliver results for you, the author.

You need to be clear on exactly why you’re writing this book. What’s in it for your readers? And just as importantly, what’s in it for you?

When you know what you want to achieve with your book, you’ll find that all the other decisions about it are so much easier.

For instance, if promoting your expertise is your main aim, you’ll need to make sure that your book’s content revolves around that. And if you’re wanting to attract people to your coaching programme, the content should reflect what they’ll learn when they work with you.

What’s my book about?

It sounds like an obvious question, doesn’t it? But when I work with authors to clarify their book’s message, I often find that they focus on all the myriad things they want to say to their readers.

That’s great – they have loads to say! But it doesn’t help them to narrow down and organise their thoughts.

When you’re thinking about what your book’s ‘about’, you’re asking yourself: ‘What’s the key wisdom I can offer that will solve my reader’s big problem?’ That means being specific.

I call it the ‘gold’ in your book, and you can read about how to find it?here . When you know what your gold is, it’s easier to see which topics will fit and which won’t.

For instance, if the gold in your book is that it will help small business owners to sell their companies for the best possible price, you want to include content that’s aimed at those very people (and no-one else) to achieve that aim. Your thoughts about other aspects of business, while possibly very useful, belong in a different book.

What do my readers need to know?

Now you’re clear on what you want to achieve with your book and what it’s truly about, you can turn your attention to your readers’ needs.

Given who they are and what they’re struggling with, what do they need to know?

It’s a simple question, but one worth asking in stages. What do they need to know first? And second? And third? This linear approach will help you to focus your content on what’s necessary.

It can also work well if you do trainings or presentations, because you can think about the order you present your materials in – you’ve road tested this many times already.

Another aspect of this is what your readers?want?to know. The insights, the stories, the results they’ll achieve if they do what you suggest – this is all crucial for their motivation. Keeping their interest going is one of your main tasks.

Bear in mind that your book should never be about?everything?you know. That’s impossible, and not helpful for your readers in any case. They want to discover how to solve a problem, or to learn about to a topic they’re fascinated by, and they can only do that if you’re selective with what you include.

This can be hard, but it’s in service of writing a great book. For instance, I worked with an HR consultant whose specialism was helping organisations develop their cultures. He could have included other aspects of HR, such as training, but this would have lessened the impact of the crucial insights he had around culture. It was a bit of a wrench for him to leave out these elements, but it led to him writing a more effective book.

Of course, there are many ways of approaching the task of narrowing down your content for your book. This list of questions isn’t intended to be prescriptive.

You might choose to think about what outcome you want for your readers in each chapter, and then work backwords to decide what points to include.

Or you could brainstorm all the ideas you have, and use the above process of ‘Achieve, About, Need’ to filter out the ones that don’t fit. Whatever works for you is the right way.

The important thing is that you now have ways of deciding which topics to include in your book and which to put to one side. Those ‘rejects’ might end up being blog posts, trainings, or even . . . another book.

There’s nothing stopping you from planning your business book or self-help guide now. You’re ready to go.

This post originally appeared on?Ginny Carter's blog .