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How Persuasive Writing Increases Book Sales

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Written by Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD

Thursday, 01 May 2008

Persuasive writing is a perspective on your book that makes your reader more important than your topic. It is a mindset that reminds you that you are writing to persuade your reader.

by KalindaRoseStevenson,PhD

Persuasive writing is a perspective on your book that makes your reader more important than your topic. It is a mindset that reminds you that you are writing to persuade your reader.

This is a perspective that will keep you from falling into the "topic trap" that affects so many writers. The topic trap is the tendency to pay so much attention to the topic of your book that you don't pay enough attention to your potential reader. The topic trap mindset fails to identify why any potential reader would be interested in buying and reading your book.

You might not realize how much a book is an interaction between the writer and the reader. In fact, a book is an interactive medium. You might not think so when you spend so many hours working by yourself to write it, facing the blank page or the empty screen.

The process of writing can be very lonely and it is easy to forget that your ultimate goal is to have someone buy and read your book. Your primary objective is to persuade book buyers to buy what you have written. This means that your potential reader needs to be part of the process from the very beginning.

With the topic trap mindset, writers begin with the question: What is the book about? With a persuasive writing mindset, writers begin with a different question: Who would want to read this book? An even more important question to ask is: Who would actually pay to read this book?

Consider what happens when your book is published and available in the bookstores. Typically, a bookstore browser will look at a book for a few seconds before deciding whether or not to buy it. This means that you have only a few seconds to persuade the book browser to buy your book.

Although we are living in what is called "the Information Age," writers with a persuasive writing mindset understand that many book buyers don't want more information. They want to find a solution to a problem.

How do you make sure that your book solves a problem for your targeted reader? The best way is to focus your book on a problem-solving thesis.

Writing to persuade is fundamentally an effort to prove your thesis, in a way that solves your reader's problem.

This means that a persuasive writing mindset is also a strategy that will increase your book sales. The more you can persuade a potential reader that your book is the solution to a problem the reader wants to solve, the more likely the reader will buy and read your book.

About the Author:

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD. www.WriteToPersuade.com.If you need an easy guide to the difference between the "topic trap" and writing a book with a thesis, "What's Your Point? A Writer's Guide To The Simple Idea Behind A Great Book," teaches you to identify your book thesis.

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