If, after a few days or weeks of thinking, you still believe you have a great book idea, you need to test it. The absolute worst thing you could do next is start writing a book with the assumption that people are interested, without actually knowing for sure.
Have you talked about it with anyone? Have you taught it? Have you written a blog or social media post about it? Don’t just guess. Bring it up at dinner with friends. Do people want to talk about it? Do they ask follow-up questions? Are they really interested? I don’t just mean your spouse or your best friend. They love you, so they will tell you it’s a good idea no matter what. I mean coworkers, acquaintances, strangers online, the person sitting beside you on the plane.
Of course, there are some ideas so compelling to you that you will want to write about them even if no one else is interested—your manifesto, or your life story. There is absolutely value in writing that book, but I would caution against writing it if this is your first book. You face so much creative resistance when you’re trying to finish your first book. If you don’t know for a fact that there are people somewhere out in the world who care about what you’re writing, the likelihood that you will quit is very high.
“But I don’t care if anyone reads it. I’m writing it for me!” Well, I don’t believe you. But if you’re telling the truth, then don’t write a book—just keep a journal. A book is something different. It’s an egotistical act based on the assumption that you have something to say that the world needs to hear. If you don’t truly believe that, save yourself a lot of time and effort and just stick to posting about it online.
But what if someone steals my idea? Okay, are they going to spend the next 18 months writing a book about it? Ideas are cheap—it’s the execution that matters, so don’t be afraid of sharing your idea. You should be much more afraid that no one cares about it. So talk about it until your friends are tired of talking about it. Keep posting it in slightly different ways and see what kinds of comments you get. You’re sharpening your proverbial axe, like Lincoln said, because you’re about to try to chop down a massive tree. A dull idea won’t get it done.
Testing the idea accomplishes a few things: First, it helps you articulate the idea. Things make sense in your head sometimes that don’t make sense when you say them out loud. The more you talk about it, the clearer you’ll get about what you mean and what you don’t mean.
Sharing your idea also helps build it. People may have interesting responses or recommend a book or podcast on the topic. Someone may inform you that a great book about the topic has already been written. As tragic as that is, it’s better to know now. Every time you talk about your idea, you have an opportunity to see it in a different way. In this way, idea development is a sort of scavenger hunt. When someone gives you a clue about a book or podcast, and you check it out, then that leads you to another clue, and then another. You’re still in the investigative stage, so every clue is a potential treasure. If I’m reading a book on a topic I’m interested in writing about, I underline every book the author references. I may or may not read it, but I at least want to know who they read in their discovery, because it helps me on my journey.
Another reason you need to test your idea is that it will evolve. I can’t say this is true for every author, but for me, my finished book is almost never about the original idea I had. It’s related, but it has morphed and changed, because that’s what ideas do. What’s important is that you are looking at it in different ways in different settings.
Maybe you started thinking you would write a book on parenting in a technological age, but as you tested and developed the idea, you realized that what really excited and interested you was how technology has evolved in the last 50 years, and now you’re thinking your book needs to be about how technology has changed modern life, and parenting needs to be a chapter in that book. So you see how ideas evolve?1
You need time to think, time to test, and time to talk. As a general rule, it’s hard to write a good book quickly. Yes, there are some exceptions where an author claims to have written a classic in a weekend or a few weeks, but even in those instances, the book’s origins usually trace back years.
Don’t start writing with a half-baked idea. Live with it. Wrestle with it. And this is the most important part—if, after a few weeks or months of sharing your idea, no one is genuinely interested, take it out back and set it on fire. It’s hard to do, because we love our ideas, but if your post hasn’t gotten engagement, or none of your friends ever followed up after dinner, or even your spouse isn’t interested, take it to the dumpster and leave it for dead. Don’t waste two years of your life writing a book no one cares about.
If, on the other hand, you notice that every time you bring up your idea, people lean in, they click the link, they comment, then and only then do you need to start organizing it. That’s next.
