Here are my posts about writing this week, along with some posts about writing from others. This week there are posts on developing products, telling stories, and learning which niche topics will work.

My Posts about Writing Better

Developing Products for Your Future

If you’re an information entrepreneur you have to spend some of your time developing products that can provide financial security.

3 Kinds of Information Products

Here are three kinds of information products you can develop as standalone products or to enhance your book.

Thinking about product development as you write your book

A good time to think about product development is while you’re writing your book. Here are some questions to ask and what to do with the answers.

Posts by Others about Writing Better

From Patricia Sellers: How great marketers tell stories

“According to legend, the iconic Louisville Slugger bat was born in 1884, when a 17-year-old baseball fan invited a major league player to his father’s woodworking shop. The star of the Louisville Eclipse was mired in a hitting slump and had broken his bat. The teen handcrafted a new bat to the player’s specifications. The next day the Louisville star got three hits. The Brand Ideal, or Purpose, of Louisville Slugger is ‘to make players great.’ That statement could sound like puffery, except that the stories surrounding the brand make it plain and true. This is the case for most Ideal-driven businesses. Stories make the Ideal wheel spin.”

From Gordon Burgett: Writers: ideas for creating top-selling nonfiction books

“I think of top-selling two ways. The most obvious is to sell more copies of your book than any other book like it in the market. If you sell 10,000 copies of the book, you outsold a person who sold 5,000. Duh. The less obvious way is to measure the effectiveness of your book’s sale. If the purpose of your book is to create a core for an empire, starting with the book and spreading into other information dissemination means, a book that sells 150 copies but generates 50 $1,500 speeches, spinoff books, keynotes, and lots of related consulting, and so on, is a huge deal too.”