Suppose you, me, and any other writer that you choose decide to each write a story based on the same exact premise.

We agree to target the same audience with our same premise.

There will be far fewer similarities in our three stories than there will be differences.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m glad you’ve taken the last two days to think about the story you want to tell and to identify the person you want to tell it to but there’s a third ingredient: you.

You need to consider the person doing the telling.

I don’t mean think about whether the story is in first person or third or whatever. I mean that each one of us brings something different to a story. What is it that you bring?

There are lots of books on how to write apps for the iPhone. I’m starting a new book that tackles one aspect of this. There are half a dozen books in this space already but I know that my take is going to be different. I tend to write books that give you a good feel of why we do things and I show you some basic cases of how. My goal is that by the end of my book you understand the reasoning and you’ve seen the right number and composition of concrete examples that you can use the basic documentation to write the app that you want to create.

Other people are better at showing clever examples of each nook and cranny. That’s what they bring.

Together we create an ecosystem for readers. Readers can choose the writer who best fits their need or readers can combine books by different authors to completely cover what they’re trying to learn.

We’ll start writing soon. Before you do, take a look at your topic and your audience and figure out what sort of book you’re writing.

What would you uniquely be qualified to write about that topic for that person?