So you have decided to write that book finally…what book that is on the top sellers list is it like? That needs to be your first question, look at other books in the category you are writing in and see what has worked for them and what hasn’t. Are there 1000 books which have tried to copy the formula which E. L. James utilized? If so following in her exact footsteps will not be the way to go.

Although it has worked for her, she was the first to come up with this blue print, for this reason it worked. With the thousands of copycat writers out there however, if you use the same aspects of her writing you will find yourself one in a herd of authors trying to be a part of the same plan. This will not work for you.

The “Look Inside” this book feature that Amazon offers on its site is a wonderful tool that you should use to your advantage. It allows you to “Look Inside” books which are similar to yours and read some of the content. You can browse the table of contents, you can see the chapters and content, and see what else is out there.

Research is part of any authors due diligence, when you pitch a nonfiction book to a publisher they ask you specifically to write a book proposal. Part of that proposal involves finding other writers who are similar to you, why your book is different, and what your marketing plan is for the book.

Large publishers will spend some money in the realm of marketing, but a lot of the time this is left up to the author as well. The publisher believes that an author must have skin in the game and for this reason they usually do not cover the cost of all marketing. However, if you are a self-published author, marketing your own book will be more important than ever. For this reason homework and due diligence are merely a step in the road to becoming a best-selling Kindle author.

Step 1: Research your competition

Isolate the elements that the other author has used to make their work stand out. Is it for example a lot of credible research and charts to back up their viewpoint? Is it memorable characters and awesome plot development? The key element is to find what they have used that has been popular and sold and to completely customize this for your own use.

Step 2: Find winning elements

Just as you will find the winning elements in a manuscript there are always things which could have been done better. For example, should a chapter have had more research on a particular topic? Could a character have been just a little more juicy with a few more paragraphs of description?

If you really want to do your due diligence, buy a hard copy of the book and mark the manuscript with flaws and accolades. This way as you are creating your own book you are able to reference the manuscript as many times as you want to see the way a particular author handled a situation. Do not hesitate to write in books, I remember as a child I was always told never to write in books, when I look back now I find that some of the best ideas I ever generated were in the margins of texts while I was reading them. Remember, the whole reason you bought a hard copy was to learn, so treat it like a textbook blueprint for your book.

Step 3: Find weaknesses in other’s texts

Now that you know what works and what does not it is time to form a blue print for your books. As Aristotle said, you cannot understand a whole without understanding the sum of its parts. For this reason, you must draw up an outline which will become your beginning blue print for the book.

Do not concern yourself with whether or not this is going to be a fiction or a non-fiction book, the whole point at this moment in time is to merely get your ideas and your words down on paper so they can be edited and tweaked as you move along in the process. This is merely a skeleton to begin in the process of building the book.

Step 4: Start an outline

Remember as well that starting an outline does not mean that you are committed to its contents 100 %. As you write and as you move along you will find that your style will change, and with those changes in style and content your outline will also be modified. Part of creating anything is realizing that until it is sent to press it is a Work In Progress, and that means that it can be modified at any time.