Recently I was searching for books suggestions about writing. However unsuccessfully.
The day I’ve committed myself to write blog posts, I knew it would’ve been a challenge because of the daily time required and my limited English knowledge as a non-native speaker person.
But I started without caring about the outcome, yet seeking improvements every day and expanding my know-how along the way.
It may sound cryptical but follow me.
The fact.
Do you know that reading three books on a specific topic puts you ahead of 99% of the people on that topic?
On average, people don’t read books. Let alone three books about a single subject!
So we can climb to the remaining 1% swiftly, even considering that we are talking about 77 million people.
During my research, though, I stumbled on an issue.
The problem.
There are no resources online which display the best books to read if you want to become an expert on a particular subject. There are databases, recommendations, charts, lists divided by categories, but nothing as detailed as I was looking.
Surfing the web like this is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Hence I’ve got an idea!
If it’s difficult for me, maybe it is challenging also for others.
The solution.
I wanted to make a curated list of the best books that everyone should read to master a specific topic, such as marketing, writing, productivity, etc.
As for the first step, I let the idea flow out on a paper; writing down a list of questions helped me figure that I should test the demand with an MVP first.
So following Levelsio’s story about the early stages of the Nomad List, I created a quick spreadsheet on Google Sheets, where I started adding some data.
Once I set up the draft, it was time to gain some traction. I tweeted about the idea, asking help to collect data and validate the demand simultaneously.
After 48 hours, however, my tweet was seen 28 times only. Not enough.
I deleted the previous tweet by fault. I reposted it here.
I’m pretty sure the problem dwells in not having an audience.
I have less than 50 followers on Twitter, and most of them are people I met at the University a decade ago.
Next steps.
Thinking about ways to increase visibility, I could:
✅ Create an article about the best books to improve writing skills;
⬜️ Ask some friends abroad. I guess they are more inclined to help with this kind of stuff;
⬜️ Search and reply to tweets about books, or specific topics like marketing and productivity;
⬜️ Reply and engage on known authors’ tweets;
⬜️ Post in some Facebook groups, like the Smart Passive Income and others.
If those things don’t work, I may create it anyway and use it per my future reference. It would be useful in any case.
Eventually, I’ll win, or I’ll learn. ????????