Recently, many friends asked me how to write a book.

I want to come up with a parenting book, can I?

I want to write a neat book, do you agree?

I want to write a book about fast cooking, which should be very marketable, right?

An editor asked me for a manuscript, but he had to pay 60 thousand publishing fee. Is it reasonable?

Well, about writing a book, I'll tell you the simplest process.

1. Read similar books and determine the standards for writing books. What similar books are there in the market and who wrote them? Is it selling well? (Look at the quantity and quality of comments)? What is the selling point of this book? If I write, can I exceed it? Why can it exceed?

There are many books on parenting, classification, cooking, health and wellness. If you want to write about your predecessors, you have to make greater efforts than your predecessors. Many people are not as good as their predecessors, and they can't sell it if they write it.

Some people read other people's books, saying that there are shortcomings here, and they want to write one themselves. But if they really read other people's books, they should ask themselves why they sell well, not why they write poorly.

If others sell well, they must have done something right and won some good cards. You can't see these. You think if you write well, you should sell well. Are you naive?

2. Determine the topic

Who am I going to read this book for? Why do people like this read books? What kind of books do they want to read? What is the starting point of my book?

People have many ways to get information. Many people would rather read today's headlines than read books. You should make sure that your book has a real readership.

If one of the 10,000 adults in China buys my book, selling books is not a fantasy game.

Step 3 write an outline

What chapters should the book be divided into and what logic should be used to follow the content? What are the writing points in the catalogue, and why do the titles of these points catch people?

If you can't write an attractive outline, basically don't expect this book to be attractive.

4. Sample preparation part

Write a paragraph to show you the genre style, writing style and graphic style, and throw it to the media to see the reaction of reading volume. Generally, a good article will be a good article wherever it is placed.

Of course, the manuscript is still different from the official account of WeChat, and it will be written more orderly, but good writing, opinions and content can still be tested.

With the outline and sample part, you can ask the editors of the publishing house to evaluate it and see if they accept it. Even Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, has been rejected by many publishers.

5. Enhance resources

If you write a book, can you underwrite part of it or digest part of it? Is there anyone or channel to help you promote it? who is it? How will it be pushed?

This publishing house attaches great importance to why celebrities don't want money to publish books, because they bring their own promotion traffic.

If you are not famous, the new author publishes a book, and the publishing house is not particularly sure about your manuscript, then I hope you can underwrite some of it yourself. The cost of underwriting this part is the cost of your publication, which varies according to the reputation of the publishing house and the quality of the paper, about 30 thousand to 80 thousand.

Documenting these contents is the main point of your book topic selection plan.

A book is also a product. Only when it is planned and written can there be a basis for operation.

2

Writing a book is hard to pay off.

The industry defines a book that is biased towards economics and management. The standard of selling well is to issue 30 thousand copies a year.

Writing a book for half a year, publishing cycle for half a year, sales cycle for half a year. The payment standard for 30,000 books is 8% of the pricing. If the price is set in 50 yuan, your contribution fee before tax is 6,543.8+0.2 million, and after tax deduction is about 6,543.8+0.0 million, with an average monthly income of 4,000 yuan.

This is a very good return. Most people should be glad to sell 5000 copies.

Then why do so many people publish books?

Some people study and ask, some people seek fame and packaging, and some people just don't understand, thinking that they can publish books and become popular.

three

Some people still get paid to write books, such as me.

There are actually four kinds of rewards for books. Let's get to know them first.

1 manuscript fee, what I don't value most now is exactly what ordinary people value most. Just published a book, care about this.

2 popularity, this is very important, but only if the book is really good can it be truly famous, otherwise it will be famous.

3 channels, good books will make others have professional trust in you, which is much stronger than the trust generated by WeChat articles, because readers are relatively easy to become consumers of your follow-up products or services.

Cultural derivatives, usually novels, can be adapted into TV movies and comics, which is of great value. This kind of book is the real IP.

For example, I have written a three-piece series "Persuade-Let Your PPT Speak", which has a high sales volume, totaling more than 654.38+00,000 copies, so the manuscript fee is not bad. More importantly, it opened my popularity in PPT field and promoted my internal training and subsequent online course sales. Books have become an important channel for me.

But it is difficult for my book to derive other products, such as developing an office software. This is unrealistic, and it is impossible to turn it into a movie. So in terms of returns, the imagination space is still limited.

four

There are only three ways to improve the return on writing books.

1 improves the speed and quality of writing books, thus saving investment costs.

When someone else writes a book 1 year, you only need 1 month, which naturally means that under the same writing quality, the time return of writing a book is 12 times that of others.

Therefore, writing a book is also a technical job. Write more, write more quickly, and write more books with publishing quality at the peak of creation, and you will get a return that exceeds the average expectation.

However, many people simply can't write a qualified book in one month. Without the guidance of the old driver, their first book could not be written and could not meet the publishing standards.

2. Increase the investment and time of pushing books, thus expanding the popularity of books.

If you are sure that your writing style is good, there is market potential, for example, you can sell 6,543,800 copies. You are not a celebrity, so you should promote it.

The promotion of books is actually to fight for personal strength, not to fight for funds. Because the book industry is too poor and the return is too low, there is no way to fight for money.

Networking mainly does three things: 1 Invite celebrities to write book reviews for you.

Invite media magazines to recommend your new book.

Go to two major book fairs in Beijing and Shanghai to do activities.

These things don't cost much Everyone is very tolerant of book writers, and many people are willing to write book reviews to support you. It is good for you to solve the most basic investment, but the question is, why should others help you? It depends on your usual personality accumulation.

Fighting for physical strength is mainly to do three things:

1 Go to Xinhua Bookstore to do activities, improve your grades and rank the open books.

Mobilize all resources to buy books in Dangdang and JD.COM, rank online stores and write favorable comments (including douban).

Go to all parts of the country to do offline reading activities and rush to the public.

These things don't cost much. The key is to make an appointment one by one and run one by one. I don't stay up late and I'm in no hurry. I'm in poor health. I really can't play. My first explosive book, Persuasion-Let Your PPT Speak, is like this. Eight years ago, my physical strength was much better than now, and I didn't start a business. Under the pressure of school work, it is much more difficult for me to run now.

You can also do things that cost money, such as inviting students to study and giving you new books from the media. Generally speaking, we need to talk about investment, advertising fees, book donation fees, mailing fees, and part-time jobs, all of which should be clear.

A simple calculation formula is that the investment in an activity is divided by your single manuscript fee, and even if it comes out, how many books can be sold to earn back the investment? The general calculation result is to lose money and earn money.

3. Write a series of books and promote old books with new book promotion resources.

This is the same old routine. For example, people who write novels like to publish series. Many people bought the first book, thought it was good, and waited for the next one. Some people see the second book and think the third one is not bad, so they will go back and buy the first one, so that they can guide each other and raise the sales of the whole set of books.

Therefore, many books on medicine, health and parenting are serialized, which is how to play. But it is not easy to write a series in professional books. First, there is not so much dry goods to write, which will hurt your reputation. Second, many people don't have such a plan at the beginning of writing a book, which leads to the completion of the first book and the repetition of the second book. So many of management books's first books were popular, so the author quickly added a practical chapter, which is a remedy.

This is how I write office books.

In 20 13, learning PPT with autumn leaves was published, and the course of the same name was launched in the second half of the year. I recommended the course of the same name in Netease Cloud Classroom and the book of the same name in the course "Learning PPT with Autumn Leaves" in Netease Cloud Classroom, which has been more draining than the general serial books.

Why?

Because I designed books and courses as a whole from the beginning, it is impossible to make a course and a book, which are similar in content and structure, and people will scold me if I buy them. Hope book is the supplement of curriculum, and curriculum is the deepening of book, which conforms to teaching logic.

Secondly, my design allows books and courses to guide each other, act as channels and amplify each other's value.

As a result, our PPT course has become the first single-item course in the market at the unit price of 169 yuan, with more than 50,000 paying users. Our book has also become the first single-item book with a unit price of 100000+ in 99 yuan.

Naturally, after the book and course "Learning PPT with Autumn Leaves" became popular, we then developed the book and course "Learning Words with Autumn Leaves". This work was officially completed on 20 15, and now our "autumn leaves study words" should be the best-selling word book on the market.

Why write Word first instead of Excel?

This goes back to Unit 1. Excel books are a dime a dozen. What are our selling points? What resources do we have to promote?

PPT book, we have brand advantage, flow advantage and writing advantage, which means we have a good card in our hand. If we don't win the first place in the market, that's our problem.

However, we need to consider how to expand our professional advantages to cover similar products. We chose Word because there are few competing products and few strong players in this category. We do a series of diversion, mainly relying on the potential energy of PPT to divert Word books, and by the way, train a group of loyal users of books to divert Word online courses.

Judging from the results, we did a good job. At present, the sales volume of "Autumn Leaves Learning Words" has broken 30,000 copies, and the number of online course students has exceeded10.5 million, which has become the first of its kind in China.

By 20 17, our online course "Autumn Leaves Learning Excel" had more than 10000 students. Everyone voted with their feet, admitting that we are not only a good PPT, but also a good word and an Excel course. We are also the industry champion and far ahead, so it is imperative to launch the supporting book "Autumn Leaves Learning Excel".

However, we have completely different expectations for Excel and Word books. We have evaluated that the sales of Excel books in the market exceed the sales of PPT books. The goal of our book is not to digest the needs of our existing users, but to attract new users to recognize our book and then choose our online courses.

Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that our Excel book has searched all the single books on Excel operation in the market, and studied their covers, titles, papers, binding, pricing, channels, contents, writing styles, typesetting advantages and disadvantages, interactive design, drainage design and reference materials. We are convinced that we have the ability to write a book that redefines Excel operation skills to challenge the predecessors in the market at present.

The way we respect our opponents is simple, that is, study you thoroughly and then challenge you.

If Excel books start to become explosive books, it will obviously guide each other with our PPT explosive books and Word explosive books, so as to increase sales and promote the promotion of the whole business sector.

This is the third strategy, writing a series of books and guiding each other, but it requires the author's overall layout ability, long-term market patience and the thickness of knowledge accumulation, but it is the most difficult to do.

After writing this article, I can't help but go to JD.COM to read a new book review. I am very happy to see this statement:

In other words, knowing how to write a bestseller is good for most people. What you really need in the workplace is not to write a bestseller, but to be truly proficient in OFFICE! So our dream is to make the autumn leaves office three-piece set become the desk book of every white-collar worker!