When you have an idea for a book, or you’ve been told ‘you should write a book’, it’s easy to get focused on the book subject, what you want to share and start working out how long it’s going to take and how much writing time you can carve from your busy schedule. But – stop!
You definitely need to do all these things, but first you need to know your market. If you were launching a new product, you wouldn’t start development until you’d done your market research – and a book IS a product.
There are three things you need to do some digging into – who will read your book, who else has already written books on the same subject, and who publishes books like this.
Your reader
I’ve written about this at length already – my advice is that you read this blog, where I dig into getting to know your reader.
And this is the tip of the arrow that will result in successful marketing. Having a clear reader profile is the foundation for starting to grow your tribe. This is something you need to start doing right away – so when your book is ready to publish you have a community of eager fans ready to purchase.
Other authors
Unless you’ve created something really unique like maypole dancing for dogs and cats (and that would probably come under the category of pet training), there will be other books on your subject. That’s not a bad thing. It shows there is a market for information around your subject.
You’ve probably already got a few books on your area of expertise – because that’s what people do, they don’t just buy one book on a subject they’re interested in, they buy several. Why? Because they’re all different, with individual perspectives, experience and collected knowledge.
This is where Amazon becomes a valuable tool to aid your research. It will do some of the heavy lifting. Look up another book on your subject and scroll to see the ‘people who bought this also bought … ‘ where related books are often listed. And, of course, you can just do a search on the subject and see what else comes up.
The more you know about the other books in your genre, the better. And reading reviews can give you insight into what the readers are interested in.
That doesn’t mean you should try to write a ‘copycat’ book, but knowing what works and what people want will help to shape your book into something that will sell.
Publishers
The bigger mainstream publishers will have a broad spectrum of genres in their catalogues, but independent publishers sometimes focus on specific genres. There are publishers that only publish non-fiction, or only fiction. There are publishers that focus on children’s book or wellbeing books.
When you’re researching other authors, check who has published their book. That’s a good place to start when you’re looking for a publisher.
If you’re going the traditional publishing route, your agent will have a better idea of where to place your book. But you’ll need to go through the same process in choosing an agent – they don’t all work with authors from all genres.
