Many people, when first deciding to write a book, land on what they know best: a personal experience. This is exactly where I started. But publishers like originality, and as Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us, “there is nothing new under the sun” (NKJV).
My first book dealt with child sexual abuse by a family member. It’s been 10-plus years since I wrote Carried by Grace, but even then there were thousands of books on the topic. That meant my book had to have a unique angle on the topic, which it did: I was the mother of the victim and the book addressed a mother’s healing. (Carried by Grace is available in my bookstore and at Amazon.) At the time, there were no other books to help mothers navigate that journey.
If your book lacks an original topic, that means you’ll need a unique angle, so my recommendation to you is to take your idea through an analysis first to determine its viability.
A Good Place to Start
Do a topic search on Amazon and find out how many books are listed. Examine many of them to discover what angle they use, how the books are unique. Do any of them tackle the subject in the same way you do? If you are considering traditional publishing, this is a required part of your proposal called competitive analysis.
Remember that people generally read nonfiction to find an answer to their problem. Does your personal experience provide one? Does it do so in a unique way from the books already on the market? If not, spend some time brainstorming your idea and your personal journey to see if you can discover that unique approach.
Literary agent Dave Fessenden, in his book Writing the Christian Nonfiction Book: Concept to Contract, states “a truly compelling idea has to ride the line between being commonplace and eclectic…so downright weird that nobody understands what you mean.” Your idea must have an element that readers have in common with you yet distinctive at the same time. The book has a whole chapter on determining the viability of an idea. Check it out.
If you feel driven to write about your experience (you just can’t lay it down) yet discover the market can’t support it, consider that writing it might be for your own healing or to record the story as a family legacy. Let the idea ferment; that unique angle might yet present itself.
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