When I'm Sixty Four

The When I’m 64 challenge is to write an e-Book to publish on Amazon and Kindle. So how am I doing, so far not too bad. I’ve written 11 Chapters and about 150 pages, well actually I have worked with my trusty AI (Claude.io) to write the book.

So as this proeject is now a month in I wanted to update you on how it’s progressing. Starting at the beginning, these are the steps I laid out for this project:

Step 1 – Research what is involved in publishing an e-book, can anyone do it and what are the costs?

Yes anyone can publish a book on amazon, that doesn’t mean someone will buy it but all you need to do is set up an account and then register your book. When you have finished your book and are ready to publish you apply for The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and you are ready to publish.

Step 2 – Research into what sort of book I should publish – Before starting down the path of actually writing the book I spent quite a lot of time on Youtube and in google researching Publishing an e-Book on Amazon. You’d be surprised how many videos and articles there are on this topic.

Many have great titles like “How I make $7,000 a month selling my e-Books”, or I don’t need to work anymore because of my e-Book sales” etc etc. Most of these videos are put together by people who are actually trying to sell you their Guaranteed to succeed model to become rich selling e-Books online.

I’ve sat through a lot and they are all pretty well of the same format. Intro ; -” I’m a simple person who never wrote a book before …..”, then quite a bit about their techniques and how they started their 1st book. Including horror stories of how they ended up doing so many things wrong with the first one …. That’s the Hook. Then there is usually some very helpful information on how they now do things differently now. This is usually where I gained most of the information I used in my approach to writing the e-Book. Than they throw in the big pitch …. “Now I have x books making me a motsa and I don’t have to work to hard as I have learned the secret of writing successful e-Books”. Then the sales pitch … “so sign up for my course” and like these 100’s of other suckers (see testimonials running in background) and we will help you become richer, happier sexier and lighter of pocket.

At that point having dually written down all the key tricks and tips from the early part of the video I go on to another video and see how the next expert suggests I become a publishing superstar.

Don’t get me wrong there are some really great pieces of advice that I have learned from these videos and after watching 20 or so I felt more comfortable that I could actually write a non fiction book and publish it on Amazon.

My top tips from the initial Research are as follows:

1. Search for Topics that you have an interest in and which people want to buy

Go into Amazon select the books category and start searching for non fiction books in an area you are interested in pursuing.

For me given I’ve started a blog and soon a Youtube Channel about the challenges you face as you get into your 60’s I wanted to focus on this area.

While I’m still pretty fit and active a friend of mine has been having a lot of trouble with his flexibility and movement so I have decided to write my first book about “Fitness after 60. Exercises for Strength, Flexibility and life” working title at this point.

2. Research the titles that are selling well and why

Look at the types of e-books in your category that are selling best and start comparing them, firstly with other top selling books in that niche to try and identify any similar traits they have. Ask yourself things like: What sort of pictures and copy are they using on the cover, what does the blurb about the book say, who are they targeting, what features do they offer. Basically spend as much time as you can to try ad list the things that the successful books have in common.

Then compare those with books in the same category that do not have many sales. What are the differences, why are some books selling and others with similar content are just not attractive to the audience. You can then make sure that you take this into acount when planning your e-book.

3. Use AI to confirm your thinking

Once I had done quite a bit of research myself I jumped into my AI program. In this case, I’m using ClaudeAI for the e-Book as I find its writing style is a little more informal than Chat GPT or some of the others. And ask Claude to list 10 top topics for a book on Health and fitness for the over 60’s. Claude then rolled out a list which can be used to generate some ideas.

I then look at the topics I think look good, or ask for additional titles until I get a list I like.

I then jump over to the Google search page and run key word searches on my topics and ask google to supply me with the list of top search terms on my selected topics and see which have the highest search numbers. Normally you will find a couple of topic areas that have a high key word search number, this helps you focus on topics that will do well in your chosen category. If here is no interest or searches on your topic then you have selected an area that is not going to generate interest from your audience.

Then it’s back to Claude where you can simply ask it to “supply you with 10 great e-book titles for a book in your category that will resonate with your audience”. Make sure you give the AI some background on what you want to write, who you want to sell to and any other insights you have as this will improve the outcome. You will then have a list of great titles that you can select from.

That’s how I got to selecting my area of interest for my e-book and it’s working Title. Fitness after 60. Exercises for Strength, Flexibility and life.

Hope you enjoyed the first post on my WIM64 writing an e-book challenge. Why not register to my blog so that you will be kept informed when I publish the next post where I will take you through how I used AI to create the book outline and structure.