A client recently asked me to describe the process I used to write my book, "How To Build The [Your Name Here] Sales System." I thought others might find the step-by-step process useful, so I converted my e-mail response into this article. 

I hope you like it.

This is a summary checklist, not a book about writing books (although most of this came from several books about writing books). My game plan was to follow this process step-by-step to the end, but, as is true in any process, I found myself adapting it to fit my skills and personality. Please use as much or as little as you like to make your own book- or article-writing efforts better.

1. Create a working title for your book. (I actually asked colleagues and customers what book they would buy if I wrote it, and listened to what they said.)

2. Check out Amazon.com to find the top 25 books that are competitive to your own.

3. Choose about 10 of the books closest to your material, and do whatever it takes to get each book’s table of contents and short chapter descriptions. (I went to the bookstores.) 

4. Put together a spreadsheet of the chapter subjects, so you can learn which subjects are most often included in these books. (For instance, I found that cold-calling and interview skills were in virtually every book on sales; although, the authors often called them different things.)

5. After you’ve created the spreadsheet, add the number of times each subject was used in the 10 books, and sort them in descending order. Take the top six and include these same subjects in your book – because they’re obviously what people want to read and what publishers want to publish.

6. In addition to these six subjects, which represent chapter titles, create 10 to 15 more proposed chapter titles. 

7. Assemble the chapter titles into a linear learning order (whatever makes sense to you).

8. For each chapter, brainstorm a list of 15 to 20 topics you intend to address in the chapter. 

9. Arrange the chapter topics in the order of “must have” and then eliminate the bottom 5. (You want 15 topics for each chapter.)

10. Arrange the remaining topics into a linear learning order.

At this point you have:

• A working title

• 15 to 20 chapter titles (six of which are the same as what your competition covered)  

• 15 topics for each chapter 

Next:

11. Convert each chapter topic into a question you will answer when writing the book.

12. Rearrange the questions into a logical linear order. (Sometimes the order needs to be modified after converting chapter topics into questions.)

13. Think of three power words that must be in each answer and write those down. (To learn about power words, see the exercise on Speed-Writing in Chapter 4 of my book.)

At this point, you will have created your book blueprint. To write the book:

14. Whenever you have 5 to 10 minutes, look at a question and the three power words, then use the speed-writing technique to answer the question. DO NOT perfect the material at this time. 

15. When you have answered all 15 questions in a chapter, speed-write an introduction to those answers – this will be the start of your chapter. Then, make whatever changes to the answers you feel are appropriate, and build in some transitional statements, phrases, examples, stories, etc., that tie the answers together.

That was my game plan when I started (having created it based on what experts had said). However, during actual implementation of this strategy, I found myself wanting to simply speed-write the chapter opening before answering questions, so that’s what I did. 

I also dedicated entire mornings or days to writing a chapter, instead of five- to 10-minute snippets, because, when I got going, it was hard to turn it off. (Thank goodness.)

Now that I’ve gone through it, here’s what I would do in the future to write a chapter:

1. Read that chapter’s blueprint.  

2. Speed-write a two- to three-page introduction to the chapter.  

3. Immediately after writing the introduction, begin answering the questions, one after another, in the order listed. (By doing this, I found that the transitions – examples, exercises, stories, etc. – were more natural and easier to write, which saved me the effort of tying the topics together later.)

4. After answering all the chapter’s questions, spend an hour or two going back over everything.

On average, I could write a 20-page chapter in about a day and a half. (For the next two to three days, however, I had a hard time even signing my name. ;-) 

When your blueprint is finished, your chapter questions are answered, the transitions are written, and you’ve polished your copy, be sure to have a “fresh” pair of eyes – preferably those of a professional copyeditor – read your manuscript. We humans tend to read perfection into that which we write, so catching our own errors is almost impossible.