If you’re like many people who are building publishing businesses, you’re on a constant quest to find great, marketable topics on which to write. Let’s focus on some strategies that fall outside the normal “which genre is selling the hottest” mindset.

There are two primary problems with “the hottest genre” books. The first is that you will have considerable competition because everyone has tickets for that game. It’s very difficult to build a reputation among the Amazon pages of selections. It’s roughly the equivalent of trying to build your band’s reputation when all you play are the elevator tunes of the 60s without vocals. You all sound the same.

The second problem is that you’re likely to get tired of all that competition and drop out of the business before you get your feet on the ground. You’ve seen these folks. They’ve learned a bit about what it takes and are now selling the stories of how they failed via membership sites and packaged training courses. Has it occurred to you that if they were truly successful, one doesn’t stand on a mountaintop and shout out the directions to your private gold mine?

Kindle publishing, in particular, has become an extension of a Google search. If there’s an earthquake in Bolivia, the world will know about it roughly 90 seconds after it takes place, courtesy of Twitter. If you’re watching for those big stories, and know how to predict them, you can have the “hot off the press” book on the topic. The world has earthquakes daily. Have 90% of the book ready and add in a chapter about Bolivia’s history with quakes and you’ll be on the top of the charts by nightfall. Get your basic ingredients into place and customize it.

Is there some celebrity who is likely to not last out the year? Are there rumors of a government about to be overthrown? Have you heard of some new experimental drug to treat cancer? The point is, we are moving at a global speed and the public wants all the background information—now.

You get Google ranking, Amazon ranking, perhaps invited on a few radio talk shows… there’s nothing but positive press involved. You can write the book, be the expert, before the event even happens.

What’s one topic you could write about today that will, without fail, become a news headline in the near future?

A very interesting phenomena exists among writers who want to become published authors; very few of them actually know how to write.

This isn’t some elitist commentary; not in the least. Almost everyone can tap a few words onto a keyboard and to them, it reads wonderfully. Of course! That’s because it came from their own imagination. The trick is, however, that in order to become a successful published author, you have to make others want to read it; and hopefully to be willing to buy more of the same.

Things have changed dramatically over the past two decades. Traditional publishers controlled the market and to become one of their rank was more difficult than winning the world poker tour.

Then came digital publishing and a strange phenomenon came about. Suddenly those who played poker were interested in writing about it. It became part of their personal brand. They wanted to “write the book on it.” They did, and digital publishing and on-demand fulfillment slayed the middlemen, as well as the guards of the hallowed golden gates of big name publishers.

Now the market became flooded with so-so books and content that, while authentically voiced by the poker champ, was hardly in demand in numbers large enough to really become a money maker. This called for a new business model.

Enter the marketers. These are clever folks who hire others to write, edit, design and quickly, while they load the books onto Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks and soon a new kind of business model came about.

The key to success in all this is to know how to market. It’s hard work. There is no secret formula—if there were, everyone who does it would be filthy rich. They’re not.

One of the reasons is because the content they invest in was written by someone who would turn out poorly-written drivel that, no matter how widely marketed, simply died there.

The moral of the story is if you’re not a great writer, become a great marketer and spend your budget on hiring that high level writer. To do anything less is to frost a moldy cake. There’s simply no market for it!