Writing a book is a gargantuan feat. A book is long, takes years to write and it’s hard to know if anyone will even read it.
But just because people think you have to hide away in the mountains and type 100,000 words nonstop until your book is done doesn’t mean YOU have to do that.
Here are a few prototype-driven ways to get start writing your book and testing the waters.
1. Start blogging about it. Tell short stories. Write blog posts about topics you’re exploring. Share interesting data points. If people don’t like the posts, you probably shouldn’t write a book about the same topic. On the other hand, if a post goes viral, then maybe that’s a sign that you should dive deeper, possibly in book form.
2. If you’re not sure how to title your book or what angle to take, run some small experiments using Google adwords. Tim Ferriss famously did this with “The Four Hour Work Week.” His original title was much less interesting. It wasn’t until he bought adwords for a variety of different title/subtitle combinations that he was able to measure click-through rates thus indicating which titles were most appealing to consumers. Without that experiment we might never have heard of Tim’s work.
3. Another trick from Tim Ferriss but this time about book covers. In another lesser known experiment, Tim went to a book store with two potential book covers. He put them on physical books in the store in a prominent location and sat nearby watching to see which one consumers picked up more often. Though we don’t advise people to judge books by their cover, as an author it’s just a fact that people will do it. Thus, you better make your cover as appealing as possible. Before you make a huge choice about the design of your book, run a cheap experiment to see if you’re on the right track.
All in all, there are countless ways to run small experiments and gather rich data in the process of writing a book. Develop a prototyping mindset and it will take you far and wide.