CyberEdge’s award-winning series of Definitive Guide books and eBooks are a more cost-effective, flexible alternative to those from traditional publishers. Regardless of what IT trade show you attend, the odds are that you’ll find a few thousand Definitive Guides on the show floor. And our customers consistently tell us that our Definitive Guide eBooks result in the best-performing gated content asset in company history.

One of the first steps in developing the 48- or 72-page manuscript is to create a content outline, which is essentially a mock table of contents, but without page numbers. And in order to do that, we need to agree upon chapter topics and, ultimately, chapter titles.

The following is a list of frequently used chapter topics that our clients have selected over the last several years:

• Understanding [Core Subject] – Many Definitive Guides start out this way. The purpose of this chapter is to convey foundational concepts and to set the stage for the remainder of the book/eBook. “Defining” and “Introducing” are alternative starting verbs.
• Exploring [Topic] – Generic chapter title that can be used to expand upon a key topic, such as a common use case or key features.
• Achieving Regulatory Compliance – Does your offering help your customers achieve and/or maintain compliance with a government or industry regulation? If so, this chapter is for you.
• Getting Started – Chapter that describes the process of rolling out a particular solution once the vendor has been selected.
• Avoiding Common Pitfalls – If you’re looking for one last chapter to include in your Definitive Guide, this might be it. This chapter describes common mistakes that you should avoid when selecting the product or service associated with the core subject.
• Integrating Within Your Existing Infrastructure – If the technology that is the focus of the book or eBook features an API and/or provides other integration methods, this is a useful chapter to describe how this technology can integrate within your existing IT infrastructure.
• Scaling for Tomorrow – If the book/eBook is about a technology that scales to very large networks, perhaps include a chapter that talks about what you need to acquire and/or do to achieve enterprise-class scalability.
• Selecting the Right [Core Subject] Solution – Although Definitive Guide manuscripts are vendor-agnostic, if your book/eBook is about a product or service category, this is an ideal capstone chapter that conveys what to look for, and perhaps what to avoid, when shopping for your product/service category.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that most Definitive Guide chapters begin with a verb ending in -ing. This is not an absolutely requirement for every chapter, but most chapter titles in any given Definitive Guide book or eBook should start out this way.

The following is a list of frequently used verbs ending in -ing that commonly appear in our Definitive Guides:

To learn more about CyberEdge’s Definitive Guide books and eBooks, click here: https://cyber-edge.com/services/definitive-guide-books-ebooks/

To view dozens of sample Definitive Guide eBooks for inspiration, click here: https://cyber-edge.com/portfolio/#search/type/ebooks