How to Research Your Market Niche Effectively

Hey friends and future authors, this is Lynn “Elikqitie” Smargis, back for another episode of Publishing for Professionals. This is episode 14, and I'm super excited today to talk about how to research your niche market effectively, and this is part one. So this is a two-parter, so we're going to talk about half of it this episode and half the next. So make sure you hit that like, follow or subscribe button wherever platform you're on, so you get both episodes and learn how to research your niche market effectively, all right. So again, welcome to Publishing for Professionals podcast. I'm your host and we're diving into the art of researching your niche market. By the end of this episode and the next one, you're going to have a clear roadmap for understanding exactly who your book is for and how to reach them. So first we're going to talk about understanding market research basics. So before we dive in, let's cover what we're looking for. All right. So reader demographics okay. So what is the name, age and gender of your reader? Is it females, is it males? What type of readers read your books? Okay, so, a lot of times for romance novels, it's mostly women who read romance novels, and then they have a specific age range depending on the type of romance novel it is what is your market size and potential? How many people are out there that may want to read your book? Competition analysis again, you don't want to get into that saturated market, so you want to see who else is out there and, honestly, the best way to do it is by using either a publisher rocket, which is a software program which I highly recommend, or the other way to do it is you can also reach out, um or, excuse me, find your competition analysis just by going on amazon and typing in keywords for your book, or typing in what you think your book title's gonna be or your book topic, and see what else comes up, who's written books on that and how many books are out there about that specific subject. So, for example, when I wrote my guide to traveling gluten-free, there was no other books out there about traveling gluten-free. There's lots of other travel guides for many other different travel topics, but not traveling gluten-free, and there still are not traveling gluten-free books out there, as far as I know on amazon. But there are other travel books. There are, like gluten-free recipe books, right, which my book is not a recipe book. So, um, again, look at your competition and their niches. What? What is out there? What price points are they selling at? Okay, how much money is their paperback selling for? What's their audiobook selling for? What's their ebook selling for? Okay, they're all different price points.

02:49

And what distribution channels, okay, do you want to do? I always just recommend just selling on Amazon. It's the easiest thing to do. 80% of people go for Amazon, a lot of. Sometimes people want to go into, like the big bookstores, like Barnes and Noble and stuff like that, but that is honestly a losing proposition as far as your money goes, because if you send your books there and they don't get sold, you have to buy them back from that bookstore. Okay, and that is very costly and a huge waste of your time, effort and money. So I just recommend people sell on Amazon and then, if you have like, if you're a speaker or you're going to a conference and you have a table, definitely buy copies from Amazon and just sell them at your table. Or, you know, if you're going to some kind of expo, sell them at the expo. But I would definitely not recommend especially if it's your first book trying to break into the market of distributing into bookstores, unless it's like local bookstores that will, you know, carry copies and it's easier then that's different.

03:48

Look at what distribution channels you can have. What are the reading preferences of your readers? Okay, and what are the buying habits of your readers? One of the things we talked about in another I talked about in another episode is you know, with book covers, your audience is looking at your book cover and in less than 10, 15 seconds, are figuring out if they're going to move on or not. So you don't have a lot of time to catch people's attention. So make sure that you know that people are going to be jumping in and jumping out really quick. So have that book cover ready and make it look good and make it appealable to your niche. Okay, find out what colors people are looking for in your niche. That's really important, all right.

04:27

Online research methods. Next part, amazon research Okay, again going back to the KDP publisher rocket. Fabulous way to figure out what the bestseller categories are. Your book you know you need to write an amazing book description. See what other people are writing for their book description. But one of the things you always want to have in there is your keywords, and we'll get into KDP and Amazon Publishing in another episode. But what are reader reviews on different book topics. What are related titles to your book? What are the price ranges of other books in your topic? Again, and look at specifically paperback, ebook and audiobook. What are the sales rankings of other books?

05:09

Okay, social media analysis what are Facebook groups around this? Instagram hashtags, twitter conversations A great way to find some Instagram hashtags is to just literally go on Instagram and type in hashtags and you want the hashtags that are between 5,000 and 10,000 uses and that sounds really counterintuitive. You think, wow, I really want the hashtags with a lot of uses, but you don't, because people won't find you in a very small if you're a small person that has like under 10,000 followers. So you want to use those five to 10,000 hashtag, use keywords or hashtags, okay. So, price ranges, sales rankings Okay, what are the sales rankings of those books? Oh, we already said that, sorry. Instagram what are some conversations in LinkedIn, if that is applicable to your category? Okay, pinterest, sports these are a really great way to also look and see what's popular and trending. And Reddit communities Also. What's happening on Substack and Medium, all right.

06:11

Another thing online research method you can find out who's talking about your niche is go on Google trends. Google trends is a free platform and you go on trendsgooglecom and you can type in anything and it gives you all sorts of information like what states this information is popular in, what topics are ranking for that item and that content, which is really good. Amazon search suggestions Again, kdp the publisher rocket Goodreads topics what are people reading on Goodreads and forum discussions, blog post popularity and search volume data All right. Direct research methods Reader surveys okay. Online questionnaires okay. So if you have a community or if you don't have a community or you're in someone else's community, look at their online questionnaire and see what people are answering. Okay, make your own questionnaire and put it in someone else's community. If they allow that, put it in your own community. Social media polls, email list feedback so email your followers and subscribers and say, hey, what do you think of this? Give them a poll to do. Okay, it's really easy to make a Google form and to make it into a poll or a survey, and that's free. So if you have a Google account, you can do that.

07:24

Beta reader input. So a beta reader is a person who you have given the book to and you've asked them to critique it in some certain way, not for grammar, but mainly for like topic and flow and also like hey, what do you think this is? Is this topic relevant? Okay. And also focus groups Okay. So if you get together with a group of people and ask them questions about your book, you send them your book ahead of time and then you meet two or three times with that group of people when you publish your book, you give them a thank, you give them a book copy and that is a focus group, so you can ask them all sorts of questions about your book or about that topic.

08:02

Industry, professional input, bookstore owners. Talk to some bookstore owners, librarians, literary agents, publishers, book marketers or writing groups to see what is hot and trending, what is applicable in your field. All right, my friends, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk more about how to research your niche market effectively. So make sure you stay tuned in for the second half of the show.

08:50

And today we're talking about how to research your niche market effectively, okay. So analyzing your competition okay. Study your competitors okay. What are they doing for page counts, cover designs, marketing strategies okay. There's lots of different marketing strategies out there. We'll get into that more specifically in another episode. Social media presence okay, there's certain platforms that are good to be on.

09:15

You definitely want to have a website for your book, whether that's an author website, whether that's your namecom, whatever it is. You want to have some type of website that your book is listed on to look professional. And what are the unique selling points of your book? What are your pain points that you're going to cover that other books don't cover? So maybe your book is a playbook and there's other books out there that aren't in playbooks and they don't give you a guide, someone, a guide on how to do whatever it is that you're teaching them to do. Okay, so what is it that makes your book unique? Um, and other people's book not? You know, you're, excuse me, your book unique as opposed to other people's books. All right.

09:50

Next section we're talking about data organization and analysis, how to organize your findings. Okay, so there's lots and lots of information here. How are you going to organize it? And I always recommend people pick what works for you best. Okay, if you're not a digital person, then don't do this digitally. If you are, then definitely do this digitally, okay.

10:10

One easy way is to create a spreadsheet, either on Excel or another spreadsheet program. I like to use Google Sheets in my drive and then I can download that as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV if I need to. So creating a spreadsheet is really easy. You can do all sorts of topics on your spreadsheet see how many followers people have, like you know how many books are out there, how many. You know what are the most common color designs okay. So you can get really really deep in the woods with this if you want to. So there are market research templates out there you can use. Track key metrics, identify patterns okay. Document insights right. So if you find something really interesting as you're doing your research, definitely document that. Write it down. You never know when you're going to use it later. Update your research regularly if you choose to do so.

10:54

And then next step, taking action okay, applying your research. So maybe after your research you find out you want to refine your book concepts okay, or the focus of it a little bit. Maybe it's not completely changed. Maybe you're just changing your sub-sub niche okay. So your first niche was good, but you're editing up your second niche a little bit, so that's going to make your outline change and that's going to make your book content change a little bit, but it's going to make your outline change and that's going to make your book content change a little bit, but it's going to be a better book, okay. So this is where the taking action step actually helps your book be a better book. Maybe you're going to adjust your writing style a little bit differently to make it, you know, stand out a little more or make it more talking to the people in that niche.

11:34

Target your marketing Okay. So where who's your marketing go to? Target your marketing? Okay. So where who's your marketing go-to? Target your marketing your book specifically to those places. Price your book strategically.

11:45

One of the things I had to counsel a couple of my ghostwriting clients on lately is that once you price your book, it doesn't mean it's set in stone. Okay, you can change your pricing on Amazon. It only lets you change it, I believe, every 30 days, but there is a limit. You can't change it like every week. You can run specials on your book. A lot of people run specials during Black Friday and then they send out to the email list hey, we have this book on special, so make sure that you are aware of what other people are pricing their book. Because the other thing Amazon will do is, if you price your book too undercutting of everybody else, amazon will jack up your price.

12:17

It did that to me and I didn't actually try not on, I was not trying to undercut my competition, but what it was doing it was comparing my guide to traveling gluten free to cookbooks. Okay, and cookbooks are going to be costing more because their color inside and their color out, you know, and you know, they're harder to put together. So cookbooks are going to cost more than a travel guide. So, but they were thinking, oh, this is all gluten free and so, because this, these topics are both gluten free, that they should be priced the same. And that is not correct. Right, a recipe book should not be priced the same as a travel guide. So that's one thing to consider. So make sure you're not undercutting your the other people. Uh, because Google or Google, excuse me, amazon will figure that out eventually. Okay, let's see Price strategically positioned effectively.

13:01

Okay, so how are you going to position your book in the market and plan your distribution? Like, ideally, six months before you plan on publishing is always a really great time to start your marketing plan. Like, how are you going to market. What are you going to do? Where are you going to post on? So there's lots of different things to talk about with marketing. We're not going to deep dive into it, but I just want to give you kind of a general overview of that distribution when you're choosing your niche.

13:25

All right, my friends, before we wrap up today's episode, I want to invite you to join our magical circle of writers in the publishing for professionals community, and the way you do that is by hitting subscribe or follow. Wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast because it's not up yet but if you're a professional and you're on the journey to becoming a published author, this free community is going to be your creative sanctuary to connect with fellow writers who understand your publishing dreams, and you can get invaluable self-publishing support from myself. You can access our treasure trove of self-publishing videos. You can talk to other people who are on this journey with you. It's like having a supportive writing family right at your fingertips. So make sure to hit the subscribe or follow button so you'll be the first to find out when my new community opens, because if you are one of my first 100 community members to join, you're going to get a special gift Until next week, my friends. This is Lynn “Elikqitie,” reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming and keep creating. Your book is.