Does your book have a strategy?

Good strategy has three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.

Books should also have a core strategy:

1. A problem you want your books to solve for the reader, and a clear view of why that problem exists. That's diagnosis.
2. A general plan of how your book is going to solve that problem for them. An overall message, philosophy, or approach. That's your book's guiding policy.
3. The specific decisions about how the book will be constructed. Style, length, order, topic coverage. In the best books, every element works together to support the guiding policy. And the guiding policy is a solution to the reader's problem.

Good strategy is rare in business, but the businesses with strong coherent strategy usually rise to the top.

The same is true for books. Most books don't have a clear, coherent strategy. Most authors try to cover the topic, rather than solve the problem.

But the most successful books have great strategy. Check out the top sellers on Amazon, or the books that have stood the test of time. They all have a good, solid strategy behind them:

A clear focus on a problem, with diagnosis. A guiding policy for solving the problem. And coherent decisions about the book's design, all chosen to support the strategy.