There are a lot of mistakes that can cost you so much money in self-publishing your book. Find out how to avoid this one mistake will cost you $1000s!
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around. Because the third point is a secret as to how you can avoid this one mistake when it comes to self-publishing.
Let's get into it. Today's topic is, this one mistake will cost you $1000s! When you're first getting started with self-publishing, you've written your manuscript and you're going to put your book onto the market.
There was a concern that maybe you're going to make one of the many mistakes that can be made. You're going to be making most likely a lot of mistakes. But to avoid this, you're going to need to know what those mistakes are.
That is a huge challenge because you don't know them. How can you fix something that you are not aware of? And that is what we're going to discuss in today's article.
But before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Checklist. Now, let's get into it. Not all mistakes are equal. I remember when I first moved to Norway in 2003 that we started going on hikes out in the beautiful Norwegian nature.
You have the fjords, you have the mountains, you have all sorts of stuff. But one of the problems that you'll quickly face when traveling around in this nature is that the weather can be quite harsh. So it's important to have the correct gear.
Well, which gear do you need? I had no idea. We started going out there and I would have just like a windbreaker on and no water-type gear. I would have a backpack with me that was too big.
Carrying a lot of equipment that I simply don't need. Thinking, "what if I do need this?" or what if I do need that?". And my back would start to get sore and then it would start to rain or snow.
I would get cold, wet, and hungry. The thing is I had no food inside the backpack. I had no way of starting a fire. Fire is going out in nature.
There is no protection from the rain and no quality maps. This combination of making all of these different mistakes resulted in having a less than positive experience. It left me feeling quite miserable and not quite sure what to do about it.
I was lost, cold, and hungry. The first step is getting control over the clothing issue. So not all of the mistakes are equal.
When wearing proper clothing, we ensure that we're going to stay warm, and being warm is more important than almost anything else. Once we get cold, we are going to be miserable throughout the entire hike. We could be hungry or thirsty during a hike.
But if we are cold and wet, it's going to be a miserable experience. I even remember some of the first times thinking we'll just bring 1 liter of water and we barely get into a hike before. Everyone had drunk up that total liter.
Prepare A Better Strategy
Later, we discover the importance of everybody having their own water. On another hike, we saw that not having food with us was a huge issue because what if somebody gets hungry? What if the kids getting are getting hungry?
We ended up just getting the pure sugar as a result of this one particular hike because we didn't have any other food. That worked as a temporary solution but then we understood that maybe it's good to have things like a little pack of noodles or maybe some crackers inside the backpack.
Just to make sure that we are covered in case the food that we pack is inadequate. Slowly, over time, we improve the things that we had, We created a checklist of the stuff that we would need to bring along with us.
From setting paths, warm clothing, wearing underwear underneath, to looking at the weather. We are using GPS and apps to ensure that we are having the best experience possible. Then also not overpacking our bags and spreading out the way of all different people.
But we didn't see that the cost of not having the correct clothing, boots, and jackets that alone would make the whole experience much more miserable than anything else. That was the one mistake that was the most painful. Sometimes, in a different environment, we see the one mistake can be quite costly.
But what is this how to do with self-publishing? This one mistake will cost you $1000s! Here is the one mistake is choosing the wrong niche.
When it comes to it just like within my hiking experience in the Norwegian wilderness, when we're talking about self-publishing, if you're in a wrong niche, you're not going to be able to make money. Because there is no market.
One of the things that you need to keep in mind is that when we are self-publishing or doing any business online, we first start with an existing market. We do not create demand, we do not create a market. It's like a river that's flowing and we simply want to align our business with that river.
Or just like a sailboat, some winds are blowing and we wanted to get our sales pointed in that direction of the existing winds. Whether or not to any other sailboat, taking advantage of that wind. We do not attempt to create a market but we find a market.
Check out this related article: What Are The Best Tips For Self-Publishing A Book?
And if we write a book in a market that doesn't exist, our chances are succeeding because there is an amount of failure necessary. The other thing is that some people think that for example, like for fidget spinners, you start with a market.
You got an idea, you'll do fidget spinners and you introduce the product to the market. You're like "wow, it gives thousands of products that failed if I find one product that does succeed". But what's interesting is people who understand marketing, they are good.
They are going to take your idea and start making money out of it. So a much better strategy is not tragic to create a market but a fine existing market. Then align ourselves with it.
But we want to find a market that we're interested in and something we can do in a long run. That brings us to our second point which is to make sure there are hungry buyers in your niche for this. That means that we want to see that this is a market and it should be evergreen.
That it is a market that is continuous to sell you over year. You can go to Google Trends and look up that market to see if over the year it continues to grow. Because if you're jumping in a market that is like a fidget spinner, I think that was 2017 and 2015 where it spikes in terms of its interest and then has drop-offs, it's a losing market.
Go For KDSpy Tool
For your books, we want to make sure they are aligned with them. Not some fad diet or whatever it might be that will not be popular in the future. Because we want these books to create that long-tail or each book we create continues to sell.
Not just because it was popular for one year, half a year, or even a month of a year where it's crazy popular and then it suddenly disappears. That brings us to our third and secret point of the day and that is you should use a called KDSpy. You can also find my affiliate link below in the description of my Youtube videos.
It is a tool I use to figure out the keywords behind the niche. Just because you have the keyword, we need to know the people in that niche or interested in that topic. And which keyword they are searching on.
Because that is the secret to making sure that as we move into that niche, there are titles and our books are going to be hitting on that. So it will show up and in fact, if it can be almost an exact match, so we are getting into the minds and heads of our readers.
They are looking for a book on this topic or this type of genre and it has this type of words and phrases. Just like the cover, it also matches what they are expecting for a cover. Like a Science fiction battle book, it should have these spaceships on that front.
If it's a romance novel, it would have some covers that will match the books that help us within on fiction area that we are highly focused on. What exactly our readers are going to be expecting and then we are prepared to deliver exactly in those areas to them on those exact type of books.
We want to know those keywords exactly match. So first of all, they are going to go to Amazon. They'll type-in those keywords which we've already researched with KDSpy. And then when our books show up, they see the title itself and the keywords that are being used in the description have those exact words and phrases they are looking for.
It is going to resonate as opposed to other books trying to get clever titles that simply aren't registering or showing up when they do searches on Amazon. Meaning, your books aren't found. This one mistake will cost you $1000s!
I was amazed to see when the books that I put out are highly targeting keywords, just how much better they did. Then the lower quality keywords that were not well-researched, just guessing what people might like or guessing what I thought was a funny name or an interesting title, nobody searches for it.
When they see the title, they don't know what the value proposition is, what exactly you're promising to deliver. That is going to cost you a lot of money or even $1000s, so please don't make that one mistake.
Do yourself a favor to make sure that you do not make this one mistake will cost you $1000s! Do you think you may be writing in a losing niche? If you think the niche you're writing is a bad niche you should write "Yes" below in the comments.
If not then write "No" below in the comments. To help me know if this is reaching. Check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.