I speak from personal experience here about structuring your book both through the self publishing route and working with a top UK publishers.

I was very lucky in that Pearson's enabled me to work through the structuring of my book in a way that worked for my creative mind. I personally think of lots of different ideas at once and dislike lists or spreadsheets, preferring mind maps to enable my brain to work in its most creative format. Even for those that tell me they are not creative thinkers you need to adopt this kind of process to really get into your subconscious mind where the good ideas that will make your book stand out exist.

Bringing the publishers needs together with mine is what I will share in the lessons related to structuring your book. The publisher will want to understand what will be spoken about in each chapter, and because there are many people in the publishers process it has to be worked in a way that any mind can successfully understand your book proposal and help move the manuscript on to a successful publication. For instance;

• How does that chapter connect to the one before and after?
• How does it ensure the reader can take the actions that you say they will be able to?
• What images, tables, graphs etc will you want to include to enable the reader to understand your book?
• What messages do you wish to highlight?
• How will you ensure your books message doesn't get diluted or change direction causing your readers to lose the will to read your book or finish it!

Remember we think in different ways and your publisher will want to see how you are ensuring your readers with their different learning styles will be able to process, understand, enjoy and benefit from your book.

However, where do you start?

Part 1 – Ideas

Get a large piece of paper and write down everything related to your book;

• The subject matter.
• Readers needs, ideas, worries, results, ideas that your book could cover.
• Case study examples.
• Solutions you will provide
• Outcomes you wish to see.
• Various topics you wish to cover.
• Statistical information and research. Including references.
• Key messages they will leave with.

Write everything and anything that is associated with your book and its subject. (At this stage do not narrow the field. Do not dismiss ideas. Write everything. It doesn't mean that it will feature in your book, however, the deeper you explore the subject matter in my experience the better the quality of your ideas. And the wealth of additional content that you can start to appreciate too.)

Do not be tempted to write a list or use your laptop. You need these ideas to expand and even the most structured laterally thinking mind can benefit from using mind maps. Do not feel that you are restricted to one colour either. When I first structured my 1st book the different colours helped me to see what we talk about in Lesson 2 on structuring your book

If you really dislike mind maps get lots of sticky notes and write one idea for every sticky note. Bravestorm's new system may work for you too.

You want to end up with a lot of ideas that may even look too complicated and difficult to decipher at this stage, that is fine. Get your creative brain juices flowing and get writing. Don't scrimp on this stage even if you know what you want to write about.

Still look to go deeper into the ideas that could exist. This is a very important part of this course to help you create a stunning book.

The next 4 lessons will help you understand how to structure your ideas into a winning book!