Goodreads asked Alan N. McClain:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Alan N. McClain I would say to ask yourself, what is a message I have that I would like to share with a wide audience? It may take a few years of exploring many subjects to build a collection of ideas around this. You may find that your interests are making you a developing expert in a subject you like to study, or that you have observed many events and the ways that people respond to them. Our interests carry us far.
Looking at books on subjects of interest helps to give us direction. One of the best-selling self-published books was a highly original one about "Back Roads in California," by a dedicated traveler who went out and explored back roads, drew drawings of what he saw along each route he traveled, and hand-lettered the text. There was no typesetting -- it was all in his own lettering!
That book caught my interest because I myself had explored many back roads, far out on the desert and up into the mountains.
It will take time and thought to decide on a marketable subject. Then you should ask present book marketers for their opinions.
I had three subjects: (1) A book on career tips; (2) A book on health and nutrition; (3) A book on improving the performance of cars.
A marketing expert had great enthusiasm for only #2 because I had found a way to solve a worldwide epidemic vision problem. He thought little of #1 -- too much competition. I gave up on #3 long ago -- not practical any more -- too much has changed.
At long last, I was off and running on a subject in which I have become a genuine expert, after 39 years of dedicated health and nutritional studies, a necessity for holding up under my 12-hour days on challenging jobs. I hammered it all into 125 pages.

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