Finding the Right Market – Beginner Book Marketing Guide from Write Zero

This post is part of the Beginner Book Marketing Guide from Write Zero

1. It is Perhaps the Single Most Important Post in the entire Book Marketing Guide, and on this entire Blog
2. If you get what this post is saying, it will perhaps become the single most important post you have ever read about marketing and sales

This post is part of the What to Write Pillar. That is the Second Pillar of the Beginner Book Marketing Guide and perhaps the most important Pillar. The entire game is won and lost in deciding What to Write!

This post is divided into 14 parts

1. The 3 Core Skills and why Knowing What to Write is the Single Most Important of the 3 Core Skills
2. What exactly does it mean when we talk about ‘Knowing What to Write’?
3. Knowing What to Write = Finding the Right Market for You
4. Is it easy to ‘Find the Right Market’?
5. After Finding the Right Market, you must find The Right Product for this ‘Right Market’
6. Product Market Fit trumps everything else
7. Product Market Fit is MUCH more Important than Product Quality
8. Product Market Fit is MUCH more Important than Marketing
9. Product Market Fit is MUCH more important than Everything Else Combined
10. Blue Ocean Strategy and the Importance of Finding a Blue Ocean or a Green Ocean
11. Defensibility and the Importance of Finding a Market you can Defend
12. Why Finding the Right Market is The One Thing (The One Single Most Important Thing) for your Entire Author Career
13. Various Strategies to Find the Right Market
14. Various Strategies to Test the Right Market

Please read this post very carefully. It will benefit you greatly, regardless of your level of experience and regardless of how successful you have been so far

The 3 Core Skills and why Knowing What to Write is the Single Most Important of the 3 Core Skills

The 3 Core Skills are the most important skills Authors must have to succeed. They are

1. Knowing What to Write
2. Writing Very Well
3. Marketing Very Well

If you want to read up more on The 3 Core Skills, please read our post on Levels of Mastery of The 3 Core Skills

1. If you are good in each of the 3 Core Skills, you will almost certainly succeed as an author
2. If you are very good in each of the 3 Core Skills, you will almost certainly do very, very well as an author

These 3 Core Skills are far more important than everything else you could spend your time on. You could go as far as to say – everything else does not matter – and you would be right

What’s interesting is that within these 3 Core Skills, there is one skill that is the most important

1. Knowing What to Write

Why Knowing What to Write is the Most Important of the 3 Core Skills

Consider what an extreme specialization of each skill would look like

1. Knowing What to Write – you are able to figure out EXACTLY what the reader wants to read and produce exactly that book
2. Writing Very Well – you are able to write very, very well
3. Marketing Very Well – you are very, very good at marketing and able to create amazing marketing strategies for your book

If there were three different authors, each one specializing in one of these three skills

If they were to produce three books, each reflecting their mastery of one of the 3 Core Skills

You would get

1. Book 1 from the Author who is an expert at Knowing What to Write. It is EXACTLY the book readers are looking for and dying to purchase
2. Book 2 from the Author who writes very well. This is a beautifully written book
3. Book 3 from the Author who is very good at marketing. This is a book that is marketed very, very well

Of the three, Book 1 would do the best

Why?

1. Because in the end people buy what they want to buy
2. That’s all that matters – whether or not readers are looking for a book like yours
3. The single biggest mistake authors make is not writing something that readers want to read and will pay money for
4. The quality of your writing does not matter if readers are simply not interested in the book
5. How good you are at marketing i.e. getting the book in front of them, does not matter if they have no desire to read the book
6. The only thing that matters is – do readers have a strong desire to read the book? will they spend their hard earned money to buy the book?
7. Everything else is pointless if you do not write something readers want to buy and will pay money for

Writing Exactly what Readers are looking for makes everything else very easy

1. Readers are forgiving of writing flaws, because the book is exactly what they want to read
2. Readers don’t care about the marketing. To be more precise – they do not even have to be convinced to buy the book. As it is exactly what they are looking for
3. Readers will share it with each other. They will become your sales team
   1. Why? Because it is what they want to read and it becomes natural to want to share when you are given PRECISELY what you desire and want

Rather than being the author who does not understand why it is important to write what readers want to read

Rather than being the author who complains that certain successful authors ‘do not know how to write well’

Be the Author who can figure out Exactly what readers are dying to read. Be the author who writes Exactly what readers are asking you to write for them. Be the Author who becomes successful because you gave the Market exactly what it was asking for

Such a quaint notion, no? Giving a market the product it wants to purchase

Quick Example if you Still don’t get it

Sue is looking for a Television and she wants a flat screen Television that is 50″ and supports Smart TV functions

1. Knowing What to Write = Producing that EXACT TV
   1. Then Sue JUMPS at the opportunity to purchase it
2. Writing Very Well = Producing a very high quality TV
   1. However, the quality does not matter AT ALL if your TV is not a flat screen and not 50″ and has no smart TV features
3. Marketing Very Well = Reaching the Target Audience and Marketing to them Very Well
   1. However, reaching Sue does not matter until and unless you have Exactly what she is looking for

Where things get really crazy is that Sue will prefer a lower quality TV, which is not marketed that well, provided it is exactly the Television she is looking for

Even if you had a much better TV and it was marketed very well, if it is was not the TV Sue was looking for, she would not purchase it. You could produce the best curved screen 35″ TV in the Universe, and fly it in on a helicopter, and Sue would still walk away. Because she wants a 50″ flat screen TV with Smart TV features

Knowing What to Write is so important, it is more important than the other 2 Core Skills (writing very well, marketing very well) combined

What exactly does it mean when we talk about ‘Knowing What to Write’?

Knowing What to Write is a skill. Knowing What to Write is the Single Most Important Skill an author can learn

But what exactly does it mean?

Knowing What to Write means the following things

1. Writing what will sell
2. Writing what readers are dying to buy and read
3. Knowing what you should write such that it would compel readers to buy your books
4. Knowing that you must write what readers want to buy
5. Knowing that figuring out what readers are buying and what readers will buy is the Single Biggest Key to succeeding as an author
6. Knowing that you must talk in the Language your Readers talk in
   1. If they prefer their books to be called Novels, then call your book a Novel
   2. If they prefer their books to have happy endings, then you better make sure your Novel has a happy ending
   3. If they prefer a fast pace and thrilling twists and turns, you have to make sure you write a roller coaster of a thrill ride
7. Accepting that you will find success only when you get readers what they desire
   1. It has absolutely nothing to do with what you desire as readers do not care at all what you desire
   2. You can only get what you desire if you give enough readers what they desire
8. Accepting that what you wish readers would buy does not matter at all
   1. Readers do not care two hoots what the author wishes they would buy
   2. Readers only care whether or not the author is producing exactly what the type of books that readers want to buy and read
9. Knowing What to Write means doing exhaustive market research and confirming what sells and what does not sell
   1. It is the actual sales data from the book stores and ebook stores that will confirm whether or not you have figured out What to Write
10. Knowing What to Write means you keep listening to the Market and shift when the market shifts
    1. The ultimate test of whether or not you know what to write is – Are readers buying your books?
    2. If they are buying your books – Great
    3. If they stop buying your books – listen to the Market. What is selling now? Adjust and Adapt

To Figure out What to Write

1. Look at what is selling in the market
2. Look at what is not selling
3. Look at which of your books are selling in the market
4. Look at which of your books are not selling
5. Listen to the Market

The only true test of whether or not you Know What to Write is whether or not your books are selling

The Market can be cruel if you do not give it what it is asking for. If you start listening and give the Market EXACTLY what it is asking for, it will reward you handsomely

Knowing What to Write = Finding the Right Market for You

In the process of Figuring out What to Write, you should come across The Right Market For You

It will usually have the following characteristics

1. You will know what the readers in the market want
2. You will be able to deliver it
3. You will (most of the time) enjoy writing these books for your reader base
4. You will not have competition because there is such a good fit between what you are writing and what your readers are looking for
   1. The biggest problem readers face is – finding enough very good authors writing books they want to read
   2. Imagine that
   3. Tens of millions of authors in the world and yet the majority of readers can’t find enough good books to read
   4. When you write exactly what readers want then the competition fades away
   5. Most people are forever focused on what they want and on their own needs and desires
      1. Step away and consider what readers’ desires are
      2. It is an unmatchable advantage
5. As you write more and more books your earnings will gradually start rising
6. Your work will start improving and you will enjoy becoming a better writer
7. Your reader base will keep growing and will become more and more loyal

You want to develop the kind of reader base the big established authors have

For, that you have to focus on Finding the Right Market. Figure out what to write and find the right market and everything will fall in place

All the FRICTION is replaced by SMOOTHNESS

Everything FLOWS

Everything becomes EASY and EFFORTLESS

Of course, Finding the Right Market is a journey in itself. It often requires putting in a lot of smart and hard work

Is it Easy to ‘Find the Right Market’?

The first step is starting off on the journey of finding the right market

1. Once you start focusing on Figuring out Exactly What to Write
2. Once you start searching for the Right Market
3. One you start looking for the Right Readers for you

Things sometimes move very quickly – within a few months or a year you’ve found a great market and everything starts becoming wonderful

Things sometimes can be very slow – it might take you a few years of concerted hard and smart work to find the right market

There is definitely an element of randomness and an element of luck involved. However, the three biggest factors are

1. How determined you are to Find the Right Market for You
2. How smart and well planned out your search for the Right Market is
3. How much hard work and effort you put in

After Finding the Right Market, you must find The Right Product for this ‘Right Market’

At this stage, you have

1. The Right Market – where readers are dying to buy books
2. The Right Author – you, who is willing and able to give readers exactly what they are clamoring for

Now, comes the somewhat straightforward and supremely dangerous step of

1. Figuring out The Right Product for this Right Market

Well,

1. If you can put yourself 100% into the shoes of the Readers in the Market
2. If you can put aside your personal desires
3. If you can embrace reality and look only at what Readers in the Market are actually buying (not what they are saying, or what you think they are saying)

Then you can create The Right Product in a very straightforward manner

What makes things dangerous and sidetracks a lot of authors, even after finding the El Dorado of a great market filled with great readers, is

1. Authors tend to project their own desires on to readers
   1. Please do no write ‘the book that you wish these readers would buy’
   2. Please write only – The EXACT book that these readers are buying and will continue to buy
2. Authors tend to get thrown off by what readers say
   1. Please only look at what readers do
   2. Readers always say one thing, and then do another thing
   3. Only look at what gets them to open up their wallets
3. Authors tend to See Reality As They Want It To Be
   1. Please look at what Actual Sales are
   2. Please look at what products/books are actually selling in this market

After you find the Right Market

1. You have to exercise Supreme Detachment from your own desires
2. You have to exercise iron will power and not care about ‘making people happy’ or ‘winning a Nobel Prize in literature’
3. You have to write EXACTLY what the readers in this market are buying and will buy

Figure out what is the Perfect Product for this Market. Deliver it!

Product Market Fit trumps everything else

Product Market Fit = creating The Perfect Product for The Right Market

Marc Andreesen (Netscape founder, Facebook Board of Directors and first investor) has a beautiful post on ‘The Only Thing That Matters’

He is talking about Product Market Fit being the only thing that matters for new startups

It fits PERFECTLY for authors because all authors and most publishers are basically startup companies

An author is an entrepreneur who has

1. Started a company
2. Which sells a product (books)
3. To customers (readers)
4. If the author can find good Product Market Fit his company is successful and he makes a decent to good living as an author
5. If he can find great Product Market Fit his company is very successful and he becomes a big name author and makes a very good living
6. If the author cannot find Product Market Fit his company is not able to survive

Authors are entrepreneurs and both authors and entrepreneurs need one thing above all other things

1. Product Market Fit
2. To Find a Great Market and have the Perfect Product for that Market

You could argue that it is all they need – and you would be right

If you’ve found The Right Market and can provide The Right Product to the customers in that market, then everything else becomes easy and/or unnecessary

Product Market Fit is so important that it makes everything else pale in comparison

Product Market Fit is MUCH more Important than Product Quality

It is absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who creates products that Finding the Right Market is far more important than creating a beautiful product

It is the anti-thesis of everything our education and our apprenticeship in our trade has taught us

We have been taught that

1. The only thing that matters is how elegant and beautiful and well made your product is
2. You build it and they will come
3. You have to have the highest quality product, and then the world beats a path to your door

We are creators and we are taught to focus on our art

Marketing and Market Research are mostly ignored

1. At most, you might have been told that after you create a great product, a little bit of marketing is required
   1. In reality, Marketing is Just As Important As Product
2. Market Research is almost completely ignored. We are never taught anything about how to search for our right customers. Everyone just assumes our customers will find us
   1. In reality, Product Market Fit is more important than the Product
   2. It is, in fact, far more important than the Product
   3. Without a Market to Sell It In
   4. Without Customers to Sell It To
   5. Does a Product even have meaning?
      1. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it fall

The hardest part for Authors (and other creators) is that they suddenly have to accept the brutal reality that

1. A beautifully made product which does not find a market (Zero Product Market Fit) will sink without a trace
2. A mediocre product which finds a great market and is a good fit for that market (Excellent Product Market Fit) will do very well
3. If you can combine the two. Create a beautifully made product. Then find a great market where your product is a good fit for the market. Then you have the chance of something spectacular happening

A beautifully made product is worth ZERO unless it is The Right Product for The Right Market

Product Market Fit is so much more important than product quality that creators have mental breakdowns when they realize they have spent the last 20 to 40 years of their life living a spectacular lie (believing that the only thing that matters is creating a beautiful product)

When you experience Product Market Fit, you will realize what we mean. It is a power unto itself and even the powerful wizard of Marketing and the resourceful sorceress of Product Quality are left far behind

Product Market Fit is MUCH more Important than Marketing

The way creators are wedded to the notion that product quality is the only thing that matters

Marketers and Salesmen believe with all their heart that they can market and sell anything. Refrigerators to Eskimos. Microwaves to the Bedouin

Marketing and Sales is, in fact, one of the toughest and most challenging occupations and deserves all your respect if you are a creator

Yet, Marketing and Sales can do absolutely nothing if there is no Product Market Fit

What does Sales and Marketing depend on?

1. Finding out what the needs of the Customer are
2. Showing the Customer that the Product being marketed will satisfy their needs

If this sounds very similar to finding The Right Market and creating The Perfect Product for that Market, it’s because it is The Exact Same Thing

Let’s take two marketers, Fitch and Abe. Abe is a better marketer and likes to take on ‘difficult’ challenges to demonstrate his expertise. Fitch is a decent marketer who goes for the sure thing

1. Fitch targets a Market with a Product that has Perfect Product Market Fit
   1. The Market is a good market, with customers dying for their needs to be met
   2. The Product is the Perfect Product for that market – it meets the needs of customers perfectly
   3. Fitch walks in and floors customers with how perfect the product is
   4. Sales go through the roof
   5. The company takes over the #1 spot in the market
2. Abe targets a Market with a Product that is not a good fit at all. However, Abe is confident he can sell anyone to anything
   1. The Market is a good market, and there are good customers
   2. The Product does not fit the market
   3. Abe struggles to sell the product because it doesn’t meet the customers’ needs
   4. He bulldozes through the market and convinces some customers and sells them the product
   5. Those customers, sooner or later, realize the product is wrong for them and start complaining
   6. The company now has dual problems – low sales, high returns and complaints rate
   7. The company struggles and either is stuck in zero growth mode, or slowly dies out

It does not matter how good a marketer Abe is. If the product does not have very good Product Market Fit in the market, he cannot make it a success

On the other hand, Fitch does not have to be a superstar marketer. His Product meets the needs of customers perfectly. He will sell a lot of the product without needing very good sales skills

Product Market Fit can turn a decent salesman into a huge success

A Lack of Product Market Fit can turn even the best salesman into a failure

Product Market Fit trumps everything else, including marketing and sales

Product Market Fit is MUCH more Important than Everything Else Combined

This is the part that will upset everyone

1. You can take the creator who thinks Product Quality is the most critical aspect
2. You can take the sales man who thinks Sales & Marketing determines success or failure
3. Mix in everyone else in the company – Testing, Customer Support, Accounting, Human Resources, Logistics, IT
4. Take all of these people and their contribution
5. Let them create an amazing product, which is marketed very well, tested very well, has great customer support

Even if each and everyone of these people are world class and do their very best. If their product does not have Product Market Fit they will fail

The Market does not care unless you meet its needs

Meanwhile, another company with B team players and a mediocre product will succeed wildly IF they have very good Product Market Fit

On the one hand it makes no sense at all

• How could an amazing product made by a world class team fail while a mediocre product made by a far less accomplished team succeeded

On the other hand it makes PERFECT sense

• The mediocre product was exactly what customers wanted to buy and it satisfied customers’ needs
  • So it did spectacularly well
• The amazing product had no market. It did not satisfy customer needs and they had no reason to buy it
  • So the amazing product failed

Product Market Fit is much more important than everything else combined

Blue Ocean Strategy and the Importance of Finding a Blue Ocean or a Green Ocean

Please read our post on Blue Ocean Strategy for Authors if you are unfamiliar with Blue Ocean Strategy

In summary, there are 6 types of markets you can enter

1. Super Blue Ocean
   1. A Super Blue Ocean is a Blue Ocean (new untapped market with no competition) with one additional great feature i.e.
   2. It’s a market which you can take the lead and keep the lead in for a very long time (20 years+)
2. Blue Ocean
   1. A Blue Ocean is a new untapped market
   2. A market where you can be the first entrepreneur/author/business to sell products (books) to this market
3. Super Green Ocean
   1. A Super Green ocean is an evergreen ocean, where the Top 5% of companies (top 5% of people) consistently make a very good amount of money
   2. If you can’t find a Blue Ocean, a Super Green Ocean is the best type of market to focus on
   3. In Books, examples of Super Green Oceans are – Romance, Steamy Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Christian Romance, Historical Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Fantasy
4. Green Ocean
   1. A green ocean is a good market, where the top companies (or top 1% of people) make a decent to good amount of money
   2. If you cannot find a Blue Ocean, or a Super Green Ocean, then a Green Ocean is the best choice
   3. In Books, examples of Green Oceans are – Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, Adventure, Sea Adventures, Suspense, Horror, Young Adult Romance
5. Red Ocean
   1. A red ocean (also known as ‘Read Ocean of Competition’) is a bloody market with brutal competition
   2. It’s very tough to make money in a Red Ocean. Only the #1 business in the market makes money
      1. In some cases, not even the #1 business will make money
   3. You should avoid Red Oceans as much as possible
      1. In Books, examples of Red Oceans are – Young Adult, Children’s Books, etc
      2. If you can’t be #1 you will most probably make nothing and struggle
6. Black Ocean
   1. A black ocean (also known as ‘Black Ocean of Death’) is a market that is not just tough, it kills everyone who enters the market
   2. You must avoid Black Oceans at any cost
      1. There is no one who enters a Black Ocean and survives
   3. Black Oceans usually have to do with the ecosystem and not with the book genre. Certain companies create Black Oceans and make sure that everyone who enters their store/platform/ecosystem dies

 

You must avoid entering Black Oceans of Death and Red Oceans of Competition as much as possible

You should focus on identifying or creating a Blue Ocean. Then you must work very hard on capturing that Blue Ocean and building a strong reader base/customer base in that market

If you can’t find a Blue Ocean find a Super Green Ocean or a Green Ocean and enter that and focus on that

Thinking of it in terms of Book Stores

Let’s consider Blue Ocean Strategy in terms of Book Stores

1. Super Blue Ocean – a huge book store that gives you premium placement, and constantly makes you money for 20 to 30 years
2. Blue Ocean – a huge book store that gives you premium placement, and makes you a good amount of money for 5 to 15 years
3. Super Green Ocean – a huge book store that has been around forever, gives you decent placement and visibility, and makes you a good amount of money as long as you keep writing good books
4. Green Ocean – a large book store that has been around forever, gives you somewhat decent placement and visibility, and makes you a decent amount of money as long as you keep releasing new books
5. Red Ocean – a large book store that is very overcrowded. It charges you for a place and it puts you right at the back where you have almost no visibility. You might never make any money
6. Black Ocean of Death – a large book store that is built to marginalize authors. It charges you a lot, almost the entirety of what your books make. It ensures by charging you for placement and visibility at a very high rate, that you will become completely dependent on it, and never be able to go anywhere else. It is built on the premise of keeping all authors weak and dependent on it

You need to avoid Red Oceans of Competition and Black Oceans of Death or you will have no chance of becoming successful as an author

Please make a note of this:

To Succeed in Books -> It is just as important to avoid Black and Red Oceans, as it is to find and focus on Blue and Green Oceans

Defensibility and the Importance of Finding a Market you can Defend

You are going to have to put in a lot of smart, focused work

1. It is going to take a lot of work to Find the Right Market
2. It is going to take even more work to write books and validate the market
3. Lots of smart thinking and testing to figure out what the Right Product for the Market is

After all of that – you finally have a Great Market and you have The Right Product for this Great Market

Things seem Perfect

Don’t get careless. You need to start thinking about Defensibility

You have this beautiful market and are making good money from it

Can you defend it? HOW can you defend it?

1. Can you reach your reader base directly? Cheaply?
2. Are they loyal to you?
3. Can you sell to them directly? Or are you dependent on a third party like a bookstore?
4. Has the book store or platform killed authors in the past? Does it encourage winners or dies it increase competition and turn winners into losers?
5. Do you have a strong brand?
6. Can you write better than other authors who will copy you?
7. How can you keep sales going when 10 authors start copying your books? What about when 100 authors start copying your books?

It is imperative to set up defences. Build a very strong brand. Build very strong relationships with your customers. Have direct channels to reach them quickly. Have the means to sell them your books directly

Finding a really good market is a once in a lifetime opportunity

Make sure you defend what you have worked so hard to find

There are people in this ecosystem who will go out of their way to steal or destroy what you have found and created. If you do not defend your Beautiful Market which you worked so hard to find, they will tear it away from you

Why Finding the Right Market is The One Thing (The One Single Most Important Thing) for Your Entire Author Career

Everything you could ever do in your author career – is all meaningless compared to the Immense Value of Finding the Right Market

5 reasons Finding the Right Market is the best thing that could ever happen for your Author Career

1. Your chances of success go up dramatically
   1. Once you Find the Right Market you can then figure out what The Perfect Product for that Market Is
   2. Then you can create it and start selling it
   3. Provided you are willing to do the work, the money will come in
2. You start making money and it gives you Time Freedom and Financial Freedom
   1. Two massive advantages which 99% of authors do not have
   2. These are such big strategic advantages it is hard to put it into words
3. You can be at your creative best when you are free of money troubles and free of confusion about what to write
4. You get a shot at really big success
   1. If you find a Blue Ocean or a Green Ocean
   2. You can start aiming for big time success
   3. Once you Find the Right Market and figure out what The Perfect Product for that market is, it’s up to you how many books you want to write for that market
      1. The more you write, the more money and success and readers you will gain
5. There is nothing else that can compare
   1. Not even signing a book deal
   2. Not even becoming a bestselling author
   3. Those things are minor (as crazy as it sounds) compared to Finding the Right Market

Finding the Right Market

1. Gives you success
2. Gives you happiness
3. Frees you of money constraints
4. Frees up your time
5. Brings the joy back into your work

There is nothing quite as spectacular as stepping out of the rat race and being in Control of Your Destiny

Various Strategies to Find the Right Market

This is a topic for a separate post. We will, however, list down some key strategies that will help you find the right market

1. Brute Force – just release 1 or 2 books in promising market after market
   1. Pro: Doesn’t require much thinking or analysis
   2. Pro: You cover a lot of markets
   3. Con: Requires very good measurement of results
   4. Con: Takes a LOT of time and money
2. See where Authors are doing well – Enter those same markets
   1. Pro: Markets where Authors are making money is one very good way to figure out what the right markets are
   2. Pro: This is one of the most efficient uses of your time. Easier to make money in a market where Authors are already making money
   3. Con: Markets might have a lot of competition. It’s easy for anyone to see that authors are making good money in a market
   4. Con: These successful Authors might have some key strategic advantage such as a large reader base, or excellent writing ability, or excellent marketing skills
3. Search Trends to Identify the next hot markets – Use a combination of Amazon Kindle Store hot new releases, bestseller lists, search patterns, Google Search Trends, news and analysis of markets. This will help you identify the new emerging markets
   1. Pro: When done right is the single most valuable strategy to Find the Right Market
   2. Pro: Very few authors search intelligently for emerging markets. If you identify an emerging market correctly you will have a 2 to 5 year advantage. Enough time to build a large reader base and build up a large portfolio of high quality books
   3. Con: If your analysis is wrong you invest into a market that doesn’t emerge or never becomes big
   4. Con: Even if you identify a hot market correctly, it might be a fad and might never become a Green Ocean (one where the top 5% of authors make good money, and it is a Market which lasts forever)
4.  Keyword Research Tools – Use Kindle Store Keyword Research Tools, Search Keyword Research Tools, and Amazon Keyword Research Tools to find the hot new keywords. From that identify the new emerging markets
   1. Pro: This is much more of a data driven approach. If there is enough data then it is better than finding hot markets by Bestseller lists and New Release lists
   2. Pro: When done right this is a Top 5 method for Finding the Right Market
   3. Con: It’s Data and it might be invalid or the interpretation might be wrong
   4. Con: It might always remain a medium sized market, never becoming big
   5. Con: It might be a passing fad
5. Purchase Market Research Reports and Data Intelligence Services
   1. Pro: If you pick a professional vendor who does proper market research, you will get very valuable information and can identify good emerging markets
   2. Con: It’s very, very costly. The good market research firms charge a lot for their reports
   3. Con: The Research methodology is not foolproof
   4. Con: These reports are sometimes better suited to Publishers making very high quality books. A market that is a viable opportunity for Publishers with large marketing budgets and very polished books might not be viable for a small self published author
6. Pursuing Your Gut Feeling
   1. Pro: One of the best methods when you are in flow. Your gut instincts are basically a combination of all your experiences and everything you have learnt. You might think it is random. It is actually the distillation of your entire life
   2. Pro: Many of the best books, including ones which created entire new markets, were born when authors pursued their gut feeling
   3. Con: It’s very rough and you might be wrong, or you might be ‘before your time’
   4. Con: It requires you to be very in touch with yourself. If you find your Gut Feeling works very well in other areas of your life, then do try this method
7. Pursuing Your Passions (what is in your heart)
   1. Pro: You will be happy
   2. Con: Very rarely are author passions a good market to make money in
   3. The Middle Path: Try to find the Intersection of Your Passions, Your Writing Abilities, and Markets that are Promising
8. Pursuing Your Writing Abilities
   1. Pro: You have a much higher chance of succeeding if you have a talent (natural or developed) for a particular category
   2. Pro: If you find the right market, you will be able to create a long term career because you are very good at writing in this category (one which matches your natural abilities)
   3. Con: Often, authors have gifts for categories that have little to no monetary potential
9. See what Categories the Book Stores are pushing – they want to make money so they push book categories which sell well
   1. Pro: The Book Stores have more information than almost anyone else
   2. Con: Sometimes the book stores push categories for the opposite reason i.e. to breathe some life into them. That means you must confirm that the categories being pushed are also selling well
   3. Con: This is much harder to do as Book Store pushes/promotions are very sporadic and rather erratic
10. See what Categories Book Promotion Sites are focusing their energies on
    1. Pro: Book Promotion Sites focus very much on what is selling. If they are focusing on certain categories they are very likely to be heating up
    2. Con: Book Promotion Sites take data based on what readers they have, and what authors they work with. That is a small sample size
    3. Con: Sometimes Book Promotion Sites will just copy other book promotion sites, without verifying that the categories they are adding are hot categories

These are just 10 strategies. You can mix and match

By far the most important thing is to figure out which strategy works for you. What strategy helps you to successfully find book categories your books sell very well in

Various Strategies to Test the Right Market

This is also a topic for an entire separate post. This is a massive area. We will, however, list down some key strategies that will help you confirm whether a market is the right market

Before that, A Very Important Warning: You must give PROPER TIME to Testing a Market. The only thing that is more heartbreaking than never being able to Find a Great Market is

1. Finding a Great Market
2. Not giving enough time and effort to verify whether or not it is a Great Market
3. Moving on and missing out on this Great Market

So, be absolutely sure that a Market is NOT the Right Market BEFORE you walk away from it

1. It’s much better to give 2 to 3 years to exploring a market and only have time to explore 5 markets properly
2. Than it is to jump from market to market every 6 to 12 months

Please take that into careful consideration when exploring and testing a market

A few good strategies to test a market are

1. Writing a Few Books for It
   1. Pro: By far the best way to actually test a market
   2. Con: Takes a lot of time
   3. Con: It can really drain your energy and momentum if you have not done proper research to identify a promising market, and instead spend a couple of years investing in and exploring a market with little potential
      1. Basically, what we are saying is that only write a few books for a Market if you spend a LOT of time and effort and know for sure that it has a very high chance of being a big market
2.  Doing Testing using Google Ads, Facebook Ads and other advertising
   1. What this is: Use a landing page (simple website page) which asks readers for their email or which sends them to a book in the Category you are exploring
      1. You can simply say – Sign up for a Free Book in Category X
         1. Or you can promote a future new release in Category X (you don’t have to actually have a pre release novel)
         2. Or you can send them to an existing book in Category X
      2. See what percentage of readers sign up or buy the book
         1. If it’s a lot – then this is a hot category
         2. Please note that the order of validity is
            1. Readers sign up just to get news on your New Release (without the promise of a free book) – Very Hot
            2. Readers click through and buy the book in Category X you are promoting – Very Hot
            3. Readers click through but do not buy the book in Category X you are promoting – Low
            4. Readers sign up in return for a promise to get your New Release – Low
            5. Readers neither sign up nor click through – Very Low
         3. If it’s very few – this this is probably not a hot category
   2. Pro: Very low cost method to test
   3. Pro: If a market is very hot, this method will tell you very quickly
   4. Con: It is not at all foolproof
   5. Con: A good market might fail this test because you are not really testing with an actual book that you have written
3. Writing a Short Story for this Category
   1. Pro: Very quick, relatively
   2. Pro; If a short story does well, it usually means the Market is Very Hot
   3. Con: In most categories, short stories do MUCH worse than full length books
      1. A short story failing to do well, says nothing at all about whether the category is good for full length books
4. Figuring out how much the Top 100 Authors in this Category are making, and how much Top 1,000 Authors in this Category are making
   1. Pro: If you can accurately figure this out, you know what your best case and what your ‘if you are successful’ case are
   2. Pro: What Authors are already making in a category, is perhaps one of the best indicators of what you could make
   3. Con: This only works if you are willing to work hard to become a Top 1,000 author in the category
5. Writing one very good book for the category and giving it a big marketing push
   1. What This is:
      1. Write one very good book for the category. Take a year or two
      2. Polish it very well
      3. Set up very good marketing for it
      4. Send it out and market it well and see how it does
   2. Pro: Perhaps the best way to test a market
   3. Pro: Gives you great practice of writing and marketing a book (practice which applies regardless of which category you finally decide on as Your Category)
   4. Con: Your first book failing does not mean the market is wrong for you
      1. On the other hand, your first book succeeding almost always means the market is right for you
   5. Con: Very time and effort intensive
   6. Con: Costs a lot of money

This is such a huge topic. We will explore it further later

Please do keep in mind that you have to test a market properly, and at the same time you have to move on as soon as you know it’s not the right category for you

Give the Market a Proper Chance. Move on ASAP if the Market does not love you back