Ready to transform your expertise into a bestselling book that resonates and sells with your target readers?

Your expertise and voice make your book unique even if similar topics exist, but expertise alone doesn't create a good book without the right strategy. I cover mining your expertise for book-worthy content including years of professional experience, repeated client questions, frameworks or methodologies you've developed, industry insights others lack, case studies, success stories, and mistakes you've learned that others can avoid. The key is identifying what people consistently seek your advice about, what problems you solve better than others in your industry, what knowledge gaps you can fill, and where your passion intersects with market need.

The right angle requires focused topics rather than broad expertise since niching down doesn't lose authority but attracts audiences who love your specific brand of work. I use my book From Idea to Outline as an example, designed specifically for busy professionals outlining their books in a weekend rather than generalizing for bigger audiences. Structure your expertise into a book framework by moving from knowledge to narrative since readers need a journey from point A to point B, not just information dumps. Create signature frameworks that are memorable and actionable ensuring the framework becomes associated with your brand.

Organize chapters with logical flow building on complexity, keeping chapters under 6000 words and total chapter count ideally under 15 for nonfiction business books. Balance theory with practical application through exercises, worksheets, action steps, and pro tips. Choose clarity over cleverness for titles and subtitles using keywords your audience searches, testing three options with target audiences, and understanding that Amazon keyword rules prohibit using any words from your title or subtitle in your keyword fields since those words won't show up for purchase discovery.

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E62 Transcript

Transform Your Expertise into a Bestselling Book

This is Lynn “Elikqitie” Smargis, ghostwriter and book editor, and I'm excited to bring you another episode of Self-Publishing for Professionals. Thank you so much for coming back again and welcome to new visitors. I'm so excited you're here.

And today we're going to talk about one of the biggest ideas and biggest concepts people can sometimes get confused about and that's how to transform your expertise into a best-selling book. So we're going to talk about how to take your expertise and the content you know in your head and to make a book that sells and elevates your authority because your expertise in your voice is valuable. So someone else may put out a book that's a similar topic, right? But it's not in your expertise and not in your voice and that's what makes

the difference. That's why your book needs to be written. Even if there's another book, right, on the same topic, you have a specific voice and to your expertise. And but without the right strategy, right, your book's not going to reach its potential and be really strong. And I see this a lot, especially with people. Obviously, most professionals don't write for a living. So it's really hard to get your idea into your book correctly. So

The expertise alone doesn't create a good book, but you need to have a strategy to create a good book. But by the end, you're going to understand the exact process to turn what you know into a book that resonates and sells with your readers that you are looking for. All right, my friends, so let's get into segment one, which is mining your expertise for book worthy content. So what expertise can you use to put in your book? All right, so one, the expertise

you already have. Do you have years of professional experience? What types of problem solving do you do in your vertical? Maybe you have repeated questions that your clients ask you continuously over and over again and repeatedly. That's all expertise you can put in your book. Do you have a framework or a methodology that you've developed to solve a problem or a pain point? Those are really great. I have a client right now who has a fabulous framework and he put that in his book. I have a

in my book From Idea to Outline, which is 24 steps that get you from your idea to your outline in your book. So even if you're not sure what idea you want to have for your book, my book From Idea to Outline will assist you in getting there with the framework, and it's the same framework I use with my Ghost Writing clients.

Alright, industry insights. Maybe you have experience in insights other people don't have. That's why it's important that you write your book.

Do you have case studies or success stories from your work or are there mistakes you've learned that others can avoid? Those are all really good thought leader pieces you can put in your book. Now identifying your book worthy expertise. What do people consistently seek your advice about? What are the lessons people are always asking you that you've learned? What problems do you solve better than others in your industry? What knowledge gaps exist?

that you can fill. What can you teach someone that's going to transform their business, their career, or maybe their personal life?

Where is the intersection of your passion and the market need, right? Like where does your passion meet up with people's pain points? That's the golden spot you want to be in when you're writing your content for your book. All right, now you got to think about your content, all right? List the presentations you've given or maybe you have articles or blog posts you've written and identify a common theme in your your client work. OK, so these are all areas you can pull from to get ideas to write your book.

are some industry trends that you might have a unique perspective on and testimonials about your expertise. These are always good to put in your book. All right. Now, what is the right angle for your book? All right. You don't want to do a broad expertise. You want to do a focused topic. That's always better, especially with like you want to do it a niche topic. OK, so one of the things like with my book for my idea to outline, I didn't just write like, if you want to write

like any book, this is what you want to do. It's specifically for busy individuals who want to outline and write their book in a weekend because they work a nine to five job or you're working your business all during the week and you don't have time to do your outline and gather your ideas and your thoughts during the week to outline your book. So you're going to do it in a weekend. Right now, can you use my book to outline your book like in a week? Sure. It's just going to take a little longer, but it's designed for busy professionals who are writing their books.

and they have a short amount of time to do it. So you want to have a very niche topic and you want to narrow it and you're not going to lose your authority or your audience. One of the things publishers typically do is they generalize books for a quote unquote bigger audience. You don't want a bigger audience. You want an audience that loves your specific brand of work and your specific brand of work comes from niching down your idea and your concept to something that is yours.

because if it isn't yours, anybody can have it, right? Anybody can use it. So use something that is specifically yours and specifically an idea you've developed over the years. All right, and that's the sweet spot between, you know, that's the sweet spot that you wanna achieve when you're writing your book.

All right, so we're going to take a little break. We're going to take a little break right here, my friends, and definitely jump in to my new my new writers group. It's called Publishing for Leaders. So just like this podcast, self publishing for professionals called Publishing for Leaders. And it's on the school community as KOL because every author needs support and every author needs help with writing their book. So our school community is fabulous. I love the engagement in it. I love all the people who

coming in it. They're doing such a great job supporting each other and just asking questions. And I have a once-a-month authors brew. So we sit around and chat with each other about the challenges we're having on our books. And we put our heads together and figure out what's the best way we can help our fellow authors in achieving their goals. And so come into the group. I'd love to have you. It's very based with nonfiction, but fiction writers are also invited as well. And it is free.

for the first hundred members beginning now because our membership is building up super fast like way faster than I expected. So I'd love to have you in the school community. Make sure that you click on the link under the video or in the show notes and join the school community today. All right, my friends, let's move on with our episode here. So now we're going to talk about structuring your expertise into a book framework. All right. So you want to move from your knowledge to a narrative because your expertise

This isn't automatically a book structure. You need to have an outline, a framework. So readers need a journey, not just information. So what does that mean? So people don't want just facts, right? People don't want like 10 tips. People want to know how to get from point A to point B. So if you're going somewhere and you're planning your vacation and you're road tripping or you're flying or whatever, right? You can't just say, I'm just going to get in my car and drive. I mean, you could do that, but are you going to have a planned trip?

have fun, you might not. But I like when I'm doing a road trip, right? I know where I'm going, where I'm stopping. And then I figure out like, am I going to camp? Am I going to stay at a hotel? And if I am,

going to stay? How much is that going to cost? So that's what you want to bring your reader on is your journey. So bring your reader from point A to point B in your book. So where are they going to start and where are they going to finish? Obviously, they're going to start with some pain point that they have, and then they're going to finish with some type of solution for their pain point. And that's what you want to achieve when you're moving from knowledge to narrative. You're going to organize your knowledge into coherent chapters.

And then that's going to help you create your signature framework. So frameworks are memorable and actionable. So just like my firm idea to outline, I have a framework in there. It's actionable steps that you're going to take step by step. And I literally walk you through every step of writing your book. The power of naming your methodology is really important because you want to have a name that sticks, that makes sense, that is not like a super fancy name people aren't going to remember. And that's really important.

All right, so you can have three steps, five phases, pillars, whatever it is, whatever types of like, you know, structure you want to put in your framework, you can call it whatever you want, just make sure it makes sense. But you don't want to have obviously something that's like 19 steps, okay? Well, mine actually is 24 steps, so I shouldn't say that. Anyway, but.

literally like three sections to my framework. Okay, so how your framework becomes associated with your brand, right? Like Tim Ferriss, the four hour work week, and then there's the seven habits of highly affected people, the lean startup, right? So these frameworks get associated with the brand. So mine's from idea to outline. That's the name of my framework, and that's associated with my brand, right for you.

book structure strategies. So you would have a problem solution structure, a chronological journey approach. So they're going to start at A, they're going to do this, this, this, this, and this until they get all the way to be at the other end with their solution. You can organize by topic or themes. And then obviously you have a case study in each of your chapters. One of the things one of my recent clients did is she had a book that she had a lot of client testimonials in and they told her there's too many client testimonials, but

what you can do is take those testimonials and write them as a story because that's still legitimate to put in your book because just because they're not word for word testimonials doesn't mean it's not authentic, right? As long as you're not changing the meaning of it that it is authentic content that you can rewrite and put in your book.

So you want to have a, you can have thematic by topic, case driven, a framework based chapter progression, right? Whatever it is you want to do, it has to make sense. That's the most important part. It has to flow from one to the next. So each chapter may solve a specific problem. The logical, but you definitely again, need to have a logical flow from chapter to chapter and it builds on your complexity. So one of my clients I'm working with now, he's always wanting to jump ahead and say, well, we need to explain XYZ. It's like, okay, but we can't put

everything in chapter one. And so you want to make sure that you're not putting too much information all at once, right? You don't want to overwhelm your readers. You don't want to fire hose them with information with one chapter. Okay, so you want to be like, give it to them in little spoonfuls until their fault. But you don't want to give them in big spoonfuls because you can't put all that in your mouth and it's going to start falling out of your mouth and then it's going to be a mess. So make sure that you're giving them a little spoonfuls in each chapter and that the chapters aren't like

super duper long. So I would say anything over five or six thousand words in a chapter is going to be too long. Right. And then obviously it depends on how many chapters you have. I always recommend for nonfiction business books you want to keep it under 15 chapters; ideally like 10 is really great, but you don't want to do like 19 or 20 chapters. People are going to be overwhelmed even if there's some short chapters. It's better to have slightly longer chapters with fewer chapters than have like 25 really short chapters. So I picked up a

book I needed to learn something and it had 25 chapters, I'd be like, my gosh, it's gonna take forever to read. But if you pick a book and it has seven chapters, you're like, awesome, I can read this in seven chapters, even if it's the same amount of content, right? Because it looks daunting to have more chapters. So that's where you need to be careful, my friend.

All right, so you can balance your theory with practical application, right? Because you don't just want to talk about theory or ideas. You want to talk about how it applies to the real world or how it applies to the problem or whatever it is.

All right. Include exercises, worksheets or action steps. I love pro tips. They're one of my favorite things to do. And when I work with my authors, I recommend them putting pro tips. So you can have one per chapter. You can have a couple per chapter. I just wouldn't have more than three pro tips per chapter because then it gets to be too much. But like one pro tip per chapter is great. It doesn't have to be at the end of your chapter, but it can. But you don't want it at the very beginning of your chapter because that doesn't make sense, right? Because people need to read some of the information and then be like pro tip.

This is what the highlight of this section or the highlight of this chapter. And then I love when I format my books for my clients, putting it in a nice little box, call out box, so it stands out really nicely. And if you want to see a great example of this, purchase the book by Jen Longworth called Build a Strong Podcast. We formatted her book with pro tips in it and it looks fabulous. Love her book.

Alright, the Experts Balancing Act. it needs to be deep enough to demonstrate your expertise, but not put so many details in there that it seems like you're just talking just to talk. so, and with stories, same thing. The stories you use, great to use stories. You can use personal stories in your business book, you can use business stories in your business book, but the most important thing about any story is that it has to relate to the topic or give a lesson, okay? So you can't just, don't just put a story in there just for fun.

any sense whatsoever, the story needs to relate to the chapter that you're doing. So make sure that it somehow ties in with your chapter information to make it have a high impact. Because the story that doesn't tie in is A, going to confuse your reader, and B, going to really lessen the impact of your book. And that's not what we want for our books.

Alright, so you want it to be accessible for your target reader, so don't use a lot of industry jargon unless you're writing for an industry expert.

comprehensive enough to be valuable and focused to be consumable. Just like I said about the chapters, you don't want really long chapters and you don't want a ton of chapters. Actionable enough to create results. So it has to create some kind of outcome for your reader. If not, why are they getting your book? And what with a nonfiction book? Or even with a fiction book. You still have an outcome for your reader. It's entertainment. And so it's a different type. So a nonfiction book can entertain. But for business books and business books that

and personal branding books, it can be entertaining, but your main focus is most likely with a business book going to be teaching people a concept, a framework that they can apply to a challenge you're having so they have a solution.

All right, so let's talk about your title and subtitle. So you want clarity over cleverness. You don't want to name your book something crazy. Like one of my clients, one time she wanted to name her book, like After a Greek Goddess or something. And I'm like, no one has any idea. Like I don't even know what the name, how to even pronounce it, let alone no one's going to search for that name. So I know it's kind of bland and it's kind of boring, but it's just like with podcasting, right? Like my podcast, Self Publishing for Professionals, not like super sp-

sparkly, but you know exactly what it's for. Same thing with that applies to book titles, my friend. You want your book title to be super easy and recognizable and somebody should pick up your book, read your title and understand is it for them or is it not for them? Okay. So I recently went into a craft store called the Mary artists. It's a local store here where I live and I love it. It has all sorts of great like paint art, you know, things. And I found a book and it was like the book title was like, crafts like

for outdoors. And I'm like, my gosh, I wanted to do some outdoor crafts. this is exactly, I looked through the book, exactly what I was looking for. And the title, very boring, but explained it all. I knew it was for me. So that's a really good example. All right, you wanna have keywords that your audience is searching for. You would have a subtitle that has a specific transformation, like my book from idea to outline. My subtitle is, it's a,

Step-by-step guide for busy professionals who want to get their book outlined and set up in a weekend or something like that. But basically, it's very, very specific. So you can read that subtitle and know if it's for you or if the book is not for you. Testing titles with your target audience, super important. I would say don't test more than three at a time. Pick your three favorite and then put it on a poll and be like, hey, here's my title. Which one do you like best? And then find three subtitles you like once you pick a title and then put those three subtitles

on your title people pick, say okay, here's the subtitle, which one do like best? And you'd be surprised, sometimes the one you pick is not the one everybody else picks, so go with the one everybody else picks, because they're the ones you're gonna be reading your book.

So SEO considerations for Amazon discoverability. One of the things that a lot of people don't know, which I found out when I published my third book, I think, is that your title and subtitle, none of those words, my friend, can be in your Amazon keywords. So let me say that one more time.

Any word in your title or subtitle cannot be in your Amazon keywords. Because when you upload your book to Amazon, it's going to ask you for keywords. You can't use anything in your title or subtitle. It's not going to show up for people to purchase. You're going to see it on your Amazon bookshelf, but you're not going to see it live for someone to purchase. And so one of our members of our self-publishing group, I think that's what happened with her book, because we're trying to troubleshoot it right now.

So when you are doing your keywords, just remember your your title and your subtitle can be in your Amazon description. No problem. But you cannot put it in your keywords that you fill in. So remember that. All right, my friends, remember your expertise can become a best selling book, but you have to have a strategy on how you're going to set up your book. Make sure you get my book from idea to outline if you're really confused or you're not sure about how to take that step by step process. I outline everything for you. So exactly what I do when I walk through it with my

clients. All right, your action steps are identify your unique expertise angle, your target audience, create your signature framework that's going to structure your book. Whether you do it with my book from idea to outline or not, start building your email list and launch team because you want to start adding that if you don't already have an email list because that's really important for marketing your book.

Your expertise is needed, my friend. The world needs your book, even though there are other books out there like it, because you do things a little bit differently, and that's what's going to attract people to reading your book that you've written. The professionals who transform their expertise into books separate themselves from everyone else. are study upon study upon study that shows that

Having a book makes you an authority in your field, makes you more trustworthy than the other person that you're competing against and elevates your status as an author, as a professional. So go out there, my friends. You wanna write your book. It's gonna be awesome. And you wanna make sure that obviously higher professional editor, like I say, everyone, it's really important.

Okay, my friends, and remember go out there and grab From Idea to Outline. It's really important if you're not sure what to do. It's a great investment and you can use it in one weekend. You can take a couple weeks to do it. But we'll walk you through step-by-step on how to take your book from idea to outline and how to organize your book content on your computer. All right, my friends, until next week. This is Lynn “Elikqitie” reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.