You may have already an written blog posts, eBooks or special reports and posted on these your website as a free 
opt-in offer. But many entrepreneurs find just getting started to be one of the greatest challenges they face once they set their minds on writing. The one thing you need to decide first is what your goal is. This is where it all begins.
The Basics
If your goal is to simply have a book to use on your website as a free gift to visitors for opting in to your newsletter or eZine, then this can easily be done in a just a couple of hours. It’s really unbelievable how easy it is to put together a 5-10 page basic eBook or special report to use for this purpose and it’s a great way to get your feet wet if you’re just launching a new business or just want to try your hand at writing.
All it takes is compiling a few of your previous blog posts, putting it into a word document and saving it as a PDF. It’s really that simple. You can then ask your website manager or resident techie-person to post it to your email opt-in provider if you’re not so technically inclined and you’re good to go.
The real benefit to self-publishing your own book comes in using your book as a lead generation tool, and posting or selling it online in places like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
So, where do you start? Very simply, you begin with a great idea, your own expertise, a process you have developed, or even a personal experience. Don’t over-think it!
Use What You’ve Got
By far, the easiest and quickest strategy for creating content for your book is to simply re-purpose content you might already have such as your own past blog posts or eZine articles. Many entrepreneur authors have had great success with this method of creating content for their book and it’s a brilliant way to make use of great content you already have without re-inventing the wheel.
So, how can you be sure you’re writing about something your market really wants to read? How can you uncover what your ideal client really desires? You can start by surveying your subscriber list.
Talk it Out
Another super simple strategy for writing your book is to transcribe yourself talking on audio. I love this method and I use it in many of my Entrepreneur Author workshops.
This is how it works:
- Create an outline of what you want to cover in your book.
- Record yourself speaking about each of the points in your outline.
- Transcribe the audio yourself, or hire a transcribing service to do this work for you.
- Viola’ – you have an instant book ready to go!
Choosing a topic for your book is a lot like choosing a business idea. Sometimes you choose it and sometime it chooses you.
Here’s a really cool thing about books – with traditional publishing, if your book doesn’t sell, the publisher sends all the books back to you. With self-publishing, if your book doesn’t sell, you can re-purpose your original content, re-title it, maybe even put a fresh, new cover on it and try it again, all without any additional, significant investment other than a couple of hours of your time.
What I’m getting at here is, don’t stress over this too much. Write what you know. It’s really just that simple.
Get Others to Write for You
If you really hate writing, you may want to consider hiring a ghostwriter. There’s no shame in having someone else write you book for you. In fact, this is a very common strategy used by many busy entrepreneur authors. I think you would be surprised by the number of books currently selling on virtual book shelves everywhere that were not actually written by the person listed on the cover. The fact is, not everyone finds writing enjoyable and not everyone is good at it either.