What Is a Niche and Why is it So Important in Writing Your Book?

00:36

I realized that Publishing for Professionals was a little bit more focused topic and definitely better described the topic at hand. Okay, so today we're going to talk about understanding your book's niche, and we're going to talk a little bit about what is a niche first, before we talk about what you know understanding what your book niche is. So, first of all, whether you're writing for nonfiction or fiction, okay, you need to understand your niche, because it's discovering your book's superpower. Think of a niche as your book's special corner of the literary world, where your unique perspective meets your ideal reader's specific interests. So your key elements for your niche are going to be your target audience definition. Okay, who are you speaking to? You can even name the person, like you can say hey, this person is Michelle. She's a 40-year-old mom of two teenagers who has a parent that she's taking care of. So be as specific as you can.

01:33

What is your topic focus? So, like, for instance, when we talked about in the other episode about travel, travel is a huge topic. There's lots of niches of travel you can do. I have a podcast called Travel Gluten Free for people who are gluten free and like to travel. Okay, so what is your niche of your main topic? So maybe your main topic is on speaking, but your niche is, like, how to present yourself while you're speaking. Okay, so that is a niche of speaking. Maybe your niche is how to get better speaking gigs. Maybe your niche is how to teach people you know how to reach out for speaking engagements, whatever it is, okay. So your niche is your subcategory of your overarching category.

02:16

Right, it's part of your market position and you need to have a good niche for a market position. You don't want to be like everybody else and you don't want to attract everybody. Okay, and even that kind of sounds counterintuitive, but you really don't want to attract everybody because, like, if it's too general, like I get all these LinkedIn invitations right for newsletters that are, like you know, something to the effect of, like you know, passion for business, okay, that means literally nothing to me. I have a passion for my business. Why would I join your newsletter to find out your like I, right, so you can't name it? Some just willy nilly kind of general topic? Okay, so that's another reason why I, you know, niche down. My podcast was niche down, but the title didn't meet with it. Okay.

03:00

So, no matter what you're creating podcasts, books especially it needs to have a niche. So, specifically, right, just using this podcast as an example. This podcast is not for people who are just publishing as a hobby or you just want to publish a book because it's on a bucket list item. Okay, yes, publishing a book might be a bucket list item for you, but the reason you're publishing a book is because you're a professional and you want a book to be your calling card, basically, and that's why you're listening to this podcast. This podcast is not for people who want to write for a living. This podcast is also not for people who aren't serious about getting a book done. This podcast is not for people who want to self-publish just for their own personal interests. This book, I mean, you could listen to this if you want to publish for your own personal interest, because it does have great information about publishing in general, but this podcast is specifically for professionals.

03:52

Okay, and that's my niche. Okay, that's my marketing position and I help my readers with their pain points on that, based on what I've experienced in my business. Okay, and you have to have a solution offering right. So you can't say, hey, I know you have these pain points and not give people a solution, okay, so segment part two is why your niche matters. So first is a market advantage. It reduces your competition, it gives you higher visibility, it is much better target marketing, better word of mouth and clear positioning. Right, you want that clear positioning to know, hey, is this a good fit for me or is this not a good fit for me? When people pick up your book or look at your book title and find out, okay, is this book speaking to my specific pain point that I'm trying to solve? Okay, so if you are professional and you're really stuck on self-publishing your book, this podcast is great. Okay, if you are a professional and you want to, you know, learn more about branding, check out brandon berkmeyer's book, my guest I had on episode 11. Okay, he specifically helps professionals, executives and thought leaders the same audience I'm speaking to, but he helps them with specifically branding. Okay, that's not my niche, that's his niche, okay. So you get that point of market advantage, reader connection okay. So if you have a niche, you have a deeper engagement, stronger loyalty, better reviews, people are more active in your community and you're getting really, really good listeners and active listeners if you have a good niche, okay. So the better your niche is, the more tuned in it is, the better and stronger your community is going to be and the more participatory your community is going to be. All right, business benefits you get higher profit margins, easier marketing, clear brand identity, expert positioning and growth opportunities. Okay. So, with business benefits.

05:44

Another one of those things is if your book is really on topic and on niche, you could get a sponsor for your book. You could get. If you want to do something like that, you could get a sponsor for your book, especially if it's really niche, because that sponsor wants to talk to your niche crowd. That's another example of why it's really good to have a specific niche. All right, finding your niche.

06:04

So there's a few steps to finding the niche for your book or your podcast, whatever it is, but we're gonna just specifically talk about books on this podcast. First is a self-assessment what is your expertise? What are you really good at? What are you really good at reproducing over and over? What are your passion areas, your experience base, what are your knowledge gaps, okay and what are your unique perspectives? So figure those out and then you can figure out what you're like yourself as as a person that's delivering this content.

06:35

Okay, what niche do you would you like to be in? Then look at the current trends and do some market research. What is the competition that's out there? Okay, you don't want to get into a niche that's really saturated. So, for example, this is not books, but this is like a real life example of a saturated niche. So I live right outside of Portland Oregon and there's a lot of people here that own vineyards. There's actually over 600 vineyards in my county not the state in my county, right. So if you get into winemaking, you have to be super niche, because there's 600 other people that are competing with you and that is not something I would want to get into.

07:10

I need to look at your competition and the way to do that is, I just say go on Amazon and look up brand books in your brand and your vertical and see who's writing about what. There might be three other books in your vertical, but they're not the same niche. So, going back to branding, there might be three other books on branding, right, but they're not the same as Brandon Burke Myers book, okay. So you have to have a niche. Even if other people have the same topic, that's perfectly fine. Your niche wants to be different, okay. So look at reader demands, okay, what books are getting the most buys? And that also has to do with marketing their book too. But what is out there? What are people talking about online? Right, google it up and see if there's people talking about it, gap identification and price points. So these are all things. We'll talk about price points in another episode, but you can go on Amazon and see what other people are selling their book for. That's the best way to figure out what the good price point is for your book Validation process. Okay. So test some concepts.

08:08

Maybe you put out some articles on your blog or Substack or Medium, okay, see how much readership they get. That's one of the things I'm doing right now. I have a Substack unicorn publishing company, so you can go on Substack and find me there and subscribe. I've got a unicorn ghostwriter Substack article series that I'm posting on there to see what gets the most views, right? And it's funny because a lot of times I'll write an article and be like, wow, this is a great article, and then I'll post it and it won't get that many views. And then I'll write an article and be like, ah, whatever, throw it on there and it gets like 500 views. Like you just never know, right, and every platform is different, like LinkedIn is different from Substack. I mean, I could post the same article on Substack and LinkedIn and get two completely different responses.

08:50

It's really crazy, so don't? I mean, unless you are banking everything on one platform which I never recommend anybody to do, at least have two or three that you're working with. That work for your niche, right? So, for example, if you're in travel, instagram is a great niche because it's picture related, right? If you're in, say, you're into like anything that's picture related, instagram is really great. If you're into discussion things Threads is a really great platform to be on. If you're into anything that has timely topics on it that make good articles, substack is fabulous to be on. So it just depends on where you're at. If you're a B2B, linkedin is a really great platform to be on and be posting articles. Okay, so again, just go on those platforms and test out your articles and see what's working and what isn't, and you can use that content, that market research, to build your book.

09:39

All right, so we're going to take a quick break here. When we come back we're going to talk about common niche mistakes and leveraging your niche to maximizing your impact. Hi, friends and future authors, this is Lynn Lickety, smartgist, ghostwriter and Publisher at Unicorn Publishing Company. Back for the second half of episode 12, or, excuse me, episode 13,. And today we're talking about your book's niche. So the first half we talked about how to find a niche, how to identify it, how to figure out some market trends or you know, and data points. So the last half, we're going to talk about common niche mistakes and some pitfalls to avoid also leveraging your niche.

10:31

So, common mistakes right, too broad of a focus. So, like I said, with that travel example, right. So you can't just say travel, that's way too broad, right. Or even like traveling to Europe, that's still too broad, even though that is niche, right. So maybe it is cruising, how to cruise to Europe on your next vacation. That is very niche. Or maybe it's backpacking across Italy. That's very niche, right?

10:55

So you want to pick those really niche things, because that's what people are looking for. People don't want big, broad topics. People are like, oh, I'm going to go backpack across Italy, I'm going to go find a book that's backpacking across Italy right, they don't want the general travel book, that's not really going to help them backpack across Italy. They don't want the whole Europe guide. That's not going to help them. They may want a guide on Italy, right, they may want a guide on road tripping in Italy, because that might help them, but backpacking, and specifically backpacking in Italy, is what's really going to help them the most. So that's where that magic is right Finding that niche that people are going to really, really love and gravitate towards. That's why it's so important.

11:38

Okay, oversaturated markets, like I said before with the vineyard example, right, that's an example. Everywhere, in every type of content you have, you don't wanna get into an oversaturated market. So, for example, if there's 10 books on backpacking across Italy, you clearly don't wanna write a book on backpacking across Italy because that's a saturated market, right? Maybe you write a book on backpacking across the, not Golden Gate Bridge, what am I thinking Backpacking across the wall of China, right, and write a book around that. Or backpacking across something else, or maybe it's. You switch it all out altogether and you say, oh, I'm going to write a book on road tripping across Portugal, okay.

12:17

So whatever it is, just make sure you don't have a lot of competition in your section. And you can find out about competition in your niche by downloading the KDP Publisher Rocket by Dave Chesney. That's a fabulous tool because when you open up Publisher Rocket, it actually gives you all the data on there about how saturated certain things are, because you can tell by how many books there are in that niche. And Publisher Rocket is a fabulous tool. I recommend anybody who's self-publishing to get a copy of Publisher Rocket. It's really great and a really fabulous tool to use for figuring out what niche is good to write your book about. Right, you can even backward design it and start out with Publisher Rocket.

12:58

And, of course, you want to write about a topic that you know right like. You can't just write about a random topic, but type in some keywords that you want to write about and see what comes up in publisher rocket what is really very, um, saturated and what's not saturated. Now if there's one or two books in there in that, in your niche as long as it's not super niche then you should be okay writing a book. But usually there's not so much niche topics out there that you can't find one that you're in, unless it's really oversaturated. So just keep that in mind.

13:26

Insufficient research Okay, so if you don't do enough research to find out what's out there and what people are talking about, then you may write a book that doesn't do well in marketing because you haven't done enough research on your niche. So make sure that you're really researching it. I would say also, cross over into podcasts and see what people are talking about in podcasting too, because a lot of times the trend is you'll see a lot of podcasts about it before there's a book about it. So, like in podcasting, in the actual world of podcasting, there was a bunch of podcasts about podcasting and then you started seeing books about podcasting. So same thing with any other trend check out podcasts to see what the trends are in podcasting, because a lot of times they start to translate over into book writing as well and book topics.

14:11

All right, make sure you have a passion for what you're doing. That's always a good idea, okay. So a lot of times, people don't have a passion and they just they say like, oh, I want to get into podcasting because I heard it makes a lot of money. Well, podcasting doesn't make a lot of money just podcasting in and of itself but it does if you are passionate about what you do and you're using it for a specific purpose, okay. So, for example, okay, obviously, this podcast is to promote my business, unicorn Publishing Company. As a ghostwriter, he said that's the purpose of this podcast. So then it has a purpose and I have a passion for it because I love writing and I love teaching other people how to write their books.

14:49

Ignoring competition is another mistake people make. People are like oh, there's, like you know, 10 books on this topic, but mine's gonna be better than everybody else's. Okay, but everybody else may not think that and or may not know who you are. So if you're getting into a saturated space and you're ignoring your competition, that's not a good idea either. So you see who's out there, what they're talking about and what's really popular, all right.

15:10

Next part leveraging your niche. Maximize your niche impact. You want to build authority? Okay, so make sure that your chapters and when you're writing content about your book is very focused and very specific. Don't write big general things, right. Write really small, focused topics, especially on your social media.

15:27

You can create supplementary content like a checklist, or you can create a oh my gosh, what else can you create? There's lots of different supplementary things you can create besides a checklist. You can do a checklist, you can do a calendar, you can do whatever it is, and I always recommend people to offer this freebie in the front of their book. Maybe it's a little audio course, right, and it doesn't have to be something super difficult and really lengthy, just really easy to drop people once they buy your book and what you can do is say, hey, if you buy my book, send me a receipt through my website and I will send you this free, complimentary, whatever it is right. Or you can make a landing page that says, hey, attach your receipt here, and if you attach your receipt that shows that you bought this book, then I will send you my free, you know, whatever it is okay. And then you also collect their email address, which is great for email marketing. Okay, developing community. That's one of the things that I'm going to be doing, which I'm going to be mentioning at the end of this episode to help build buzz around your books too.

16:22

Expand strategically, okay, and monitor the trend. So one of the things I often get myself into is I like to take on too much at once, so think about what's my next step? Okay, and how do I implement that? Implement that next step. Try it for three to six months. See if it works. If it doesn't, then you can drop it and try another thing. Right, but don't overload yourself with too many things. Think strategically, like think backward design. Okay, where are my people? What are my people going to like? Okay, what is my next step to do to make that happen? All right, okay, my friends, I hope this has been really helpful in helping you with understanding your book's niche. This is part one, and next week we're going to have part two. We're going to talk about understanding market research basics and online research methods. Okay, so this oh sorry, this is understanding your book's niche. Next week is understanding how to research your niche market effectively. All right, so I hope you had an enjoyable episode.

17:23

Listen today, whether you're on YouTube or you're on audio, and remember, before we wrap up today's episode, I want to invite you to join our magical circle of writers in our publishing for professionals community.

17:34

This is coming up. It's not published just yet. It's not up, but if you're a professional and you're on the journey to becoming a published author which you most likely are if you're listening to this podcast this is a free community and is your creative sanctuary to connect with fellow writers who understand your publishing dreams, to get invaluable self-publishing support and access to our treasure trove of self-publishing videos. It's like having a supportive writing family right at your fingertips. So make sure to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening or watching into my podcast. So make sure to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening or watching to my podcast so you'll be the first to find out when my new community opens. The first 100 community members are going to get a special gift. So make sure you are following or subscribing this to get that special gift and sign up for the community Until next week. This is Lynn Elikqitie, reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.