The blank page isn’t the problem
Most people who want to write a book don’t fail at the writing itself. They fail much earlier – at a foundation that was never properly laid. You throw yourself into the first chapter full of energy, write twenty or thirty pages, and then realise: I don’t actually know exactly what I want to say. Or, more uncomfortably: this exact book already exists ten times over.
That’s not a lack of talent. It’s a lack of clarity before you begin. And clarity can be created – with two questions you should answer honestly before your first sentence.
Question 1: Who are you – and what do you really want to say?
A book carries your voice. But at the start, “your voice” is often a feeling, not a clear thought. What drives you? Which experience, conviction or pain wants to come out here? For novels it’s often an emotional core you can’t yet name yourself. For nonfiction it’s the question of your own expertise and position: why you, why now?
Skip this question and you’ll often write past yourself – technically clean, but without the thread that holds a book together from the inside.
Question 2: Is anyone actually waiting for it?
The second question is less comfortable but just as important: what already exists? A book idea feels unique inside your own head. A look at the market often shows something different – comparable titles that serve exactly your topic, or the opposite: a gap an audience is practically waiting for.
That’s no reason to give up – quite the opposite. Knowing what already exists lets you position your book more sharply:
- Comparable books show you what you’ll be measured against – and where you can be different.
- Trends on TikTok (BookTok) reveal which topics and tropes are riding a wave right now.
- Discussions on Reddit and in communities show what your potential readers actually talk about.
That’s exactly what the self-assessment is for
These two questions sound simple – but answering them honestly, alone in front of a blank page, is hard. So we’ve built a self-assessment into Hermes 3000 that walks you through it step by step. It has two parts:
- An adaptive coaching conversation. Not a rigid questionnaire, but a real interview that responds to your answers – psychological for novels, positioning-focused for nonfiction. The result is an author profile: who you are, what your book should express, your book idea in one sentence.
- A live market analysis. Hermes researches comparable books, TikTok trends and Reddit signals on your topic in real time – and tells you honestly where your gap in the market lies.
In the end you don’t even have to commit: you give your book a working title and go straight into the editor – with a foundation instead of a blank page. And because your book chat knows the result, its suggestions are tuned to your idea and your audience from the very first minute.
Built with a book coach
We didn’t build this module in isolation, but in cooperation with Yvonne Kraus, book coach. The questions the interview asks come from real coaching practice – not from a marketing checklist.
Try it – for free
The self-assessment is free and with no strings attached. It takes a few minutes and doesn’t replace weeks of research – but it keeps you from running full-speed in the wrong direction.
Before you write your next chapter: start the self-assessment and find out where you stand.