Wally Bock has you covered with your first six steps towards a published book.

Long before any writing starts, most authors spend a great deal of time preparing to write. At this point, they usually don’t have a specific idea about what they want to write, but they do have some ideas and a few hunches about what might work.

This is the stage where you do some research. You probably already have some good sources and you’ve probably spoken about the ideas you want to write about several times. Try to get some more information. Dig down. Don’t worry about being comprehensive. It’s almost certain that you’ll need more research once you start writing.

— How the Book Gets Done by Wally Bock