How have good book ideas

Here’s a three stage process to having good tech book ideas.


1) Brainstom lots of ideas
This is very important. Do NOT commit yourself to one idea until you’ve considered several. You’re going to be putting a lot of work into your book. Take a few minutes to consider several options.

Even if you have a clear idea what you want to write about, consider:
  1. Audiences -- how much should your audience know before they start?
  2. Does your topic consist of several sub topics that might work best alone?
  3. How broad or narrow do you want to be? Consider focusing on specific tools, platforms, languages, and game genres. OR look for a way to cover a variety.
  4. What exact goal are you going to help your reader acheive? How SMART is it?
These choices can make a big difference to how much you enjoy writing your book, and how many readers want to buy it.

2) Test your ideas in front of customers
I’ve been developing book ideas for 10 years. Even now when my ideas get in front of customers they break down like this:

60% do less well than I expected
30% do about as well as I expected
10% do better than I expected

Too often ideas don’t get in front of customers until you’ve already committed loads of work. Try to find quick ways to market test your ideas before you commit yourself.

It is important to test lots of ideas in front of customers. If you ask most people whether an idea is good they will say “yes” just to be polite. If you present them with lots of ideas you’re more likely to get an honest answer.

At Packt Explorer we’re using Google Moderator to test game development book ideas.

3) Focus on what customers want to do and the fastest way to help them do it
Tech books are not like most books: nobody buys them because they like to read. Tech book readers buy because they like to do new techy things, or because they are stuck and need help.

Your book’s goal is critical. What is the reader hoping to do as a result of having this book? Then after the right goal the most important thing is finding the best, most direct path to get your reader to that goal.

Summary: Have lots of ideas, take a view on what readers want, do as much as you can to test that your view is correct, and then give it to them.