Many aothors think they have written a book. Or even THE book, not in the sense that this is the definitive work on the subject (although there are people who are that presumptious), but in the sense that this is the only book they are ever going to write. At least on the subject matter at hand.
When you are writing fiction, that may be true, although many fiction authors return to the same base events and characters time and again. But when you are writing non-fiction, you write about a topic that exists and is based in fact. If you write a book about the Taj Mahal, you can not write in a second lover into the story. Not only did such a person not exist, it would have ruined the premise of the building. You have to stick to the facts as you see and experience them.
A book has a given form (and format). When you write a book you structure and format the information and action suggestions you provide in a certain (time-honored) way. All other books are pretty much structured and formatted the same way. While this makes books as a class very accessible once you have understood the encoding, it also means books are easy to substitute for each other. Once you know what a guidebook is like, you know how to read all guidebooks. Once you know what a novel is like, you know how to read all novels. And they become substitutes. Readers will search out the ones that they feel will satisfy their need for information. But not only that. Many books, espevially short ebooks, are the result of Internet- based research only. The sources are Web sites, the photos (if there are any) come from a stock photo service, and the content is just a rehash of the websites, with no original content and thought.
A guidenook can take two routes: It can be complete, the best information source available, the place where to look if you are searching for the opening times of that obscure ethnic back-alley restaurant that you can tell your friends at home about. Or it can be a personal compendium about a writers experiences on a subject, preferrably richly illustrated. The important point about such a compendium is to help the reader, not indulge in self-reflection. Other people may be less interested in the tar scent that permeates your pillows after buying the little lavender sachet made from old-style tarpaulin that you bought at the Old Town marketplace of Tallinn, Estonia; and care more about where to find that and other souvenirs, and what they cost. But also which stores are easily accessible, whether the staff speak English, and if you can pay in dollars as well as euro.
The personal guide book has to be based on a little more than a one-day trip. The writer has to have enough knowledge of the place to provide a credible story. But he does not have to be alone. Just as the telephone-book type guidebooks have researchers who assist the main writer in compiling information, the personal guidebook can be based on the personal experiences of more than one person. There can be a team, one or several families, who compile their experiences. As long as they do it in a consistent way and with the goal of being useful to others.
But they are different in one important aspect: There can only be one instance of the feature-complete guidebook. The families, working as a collective, could easily create one book each, based on each others material.
But when the families have written their books, do they just put them on Amazon and forget them? No, now is when the real work starts.
Even if you are alone, there is no reason that you should stop when you have written your book. It is a good starting point and marketing means (thanks to the power of Amazon). But it should not be the only product. It costs nothing to get a Wordpress site, it is free to put up a Paypal button. Unless you expect a lot of customers, you can email them the product.
Product? What product?
Not just a book, although that probably should be the main thing, if for no other reason because people are so used to paying for books that they are still surprised by free ebooks. Make the thought experiment of trying to do that with video. Nobody expects to pay anything for video, and you only make money if it goes viral on YouTube. That may not be very useful. Instead, taking a lot of photos, you put them in an ebook (not the big book, but a supplement). Even if you just charge a dollar for it, it is a dollar you did not have before. Or 70 cent, actually, since Amazon charges 30 per cent of the price of the product for their services. Not that they are not wort it. You may even set a fairly high price (comparatively speaking) on Amazon, like 15 or 20 dollars for a 50-page ebook, and give it away on your own website if people sign up on the mailing list. A proven value of 20 dollars for signing up on an email list, that is not bad. If people come to you and are angry because they just paid 20 dollars on Amazon, ask them to scan the receipt and send ot to you, and you will send them the main product for free. If they write a review on Amazon, give them an extra fivedollars discount.
Another thing you could upsell is outtakes- the things that did not make it into the book. Especially if you are a group of people collaborating on something like a personal city guide. If you are a couple of families with teenagers (or pre-teens), you know that they will have different opinions on what is fun and cool than their parents. Put that in a book (and do not judge them; if you are a parent you are disqualified from the start).
A map of where you went (watch out for using Google or Bing maps due to copyright), with notes on what you saw. A small dictionary with useful words. A photo guide on how to buy tickets from the machine. A guide to where to find the best souvenirs. All of these may not make it into the big book. If there should be a big book at all. Maybe you want to create a cloud of information services that can be generated from the activity you just undertook. This is a delicate matter and it can be difficult to calculate depending on the assumptions you are making and how realistic they are.
One of the hardest things about being a publisher (and you have now stepped over the invisible line between editor and publisher, just as you previously stepped over the line between aothor and editor) is the forecasting. How likely is it that the number of people who you think will buy the book actually will buy the book? Do you have any indicators that could substantiate that belief? If they have bought from you before, they are lokely to buy again. But if it is your first book, you have nothing which says how many people may be interested. Not even website traffic on your website, because if you sell through Amazon, most of the people (if not all) who will biy your book are people who did not even know you had a website. So you can not use that to measure interest, especially if you are just starting out with the website as well. And the reviews on Amazon are also useless, since you bought them on Fiverr. The website is not there to bring in new customers anyway, it is a sales channel. But if you have something to offer, the probability that customers will find you through Amazon is much bigger than through a website anyway. The expectation on most sites is that their content is free. Well, there is a lot of free content on Amazon as well, but it leads up to a sale. Most content on most other sites do not do that, it either is something surrounding the advertising or something that tries to affect peoples opinions directly. The original high hopes that people had when the web was new, that this would be as much as an agent ofchange as the printing press was. It lhas changed society for sure. But not in the way that those original philosophers thought. I am pretty sure (having worked with him) that Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, never imagined that his creation would turn the solid, well-establishrdbook into something that looks more like a DVD, content-wise, than a traditional work of literatture. Even if the form is still text, it is now possible to create many versions of it, one per receiver if you like. This can be automatic, as when you look at Facebook or Google. Yes, you do not get to see the same search result as the next person. The simplicity of Google, like the simplicity of the book, tricks you to believe the back-end is simple too. But Google runs one of the most sophisticated computing machineries on the planet, in the universe for all we know. The purpose is to steal your attention. They sell ads. When they bought an advertising company, that was when the "do no evil" motto became meaningless.
Books are not there yet, but that is probably because Amazon has not yet figured out a way to monetize it. It is easier for them to sell books than sell advertising.
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