There are a lot of reasons why a person can't decide where to start in self-publishing. Let me share with you the secret answer below that will help you start with your self-publishing journey right away.
Today's question has three answers and you're going to want to stick around for the third answer. Because it is a secret as to the one key to winning at the self-publishing game when you don't know and can't decide where to start.
So let's get into it. The question or problem that was sent to me today was, can't decide where to start in self-publishing? The reason a person is looking at this exact question is that there are stopping points for most people.
The first one is you want to write a book but you're not sure what you should write about. The second is you've written your book but you just don't know and can't decide where to start in self-publishing. This can be very painful because when you don't know what the next step is.
You don't know what you should do. You can't make your decision and you have this confusion that causes you to do absolutely nothing. It is the one thing that will prevent you from getting your book on to the market.
And that is something we're going to answer in today's article. But before we get into the answers, check out my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist. It will help you make sure that you are not skipping any of the secret essential steps to winning at the self-publishing game.
Now let's get into it. When I first started, I wrote several books on topics that I was interested in. I would say I was interested in goal achievement, habits, sleep, and all sorts of books on a number of different topics.
So I just writing different books. I wasn't really paying much attention to markets, keywords, or anything else. Just simply putting books onto the market on a subject which is perfectly fine except for a few little problems with this.
The answer is I saw very few sales coming in from these books. Some of them for me they did become a bestseller but then I would have a little bit and nothing particularly there. I was breaking a bunch of rules that I was not familiar with.
The first thing was I started running ads against these books. And when I did that, I did see that the sales start to go up. But then I learn something which was this idea of niche marketing.
If you're writing in a lot of niches, the problem is that your readers will not assume you have any expertise in any of those niches. Let's say I am doing cooking on one side, on the other side I'm doing it on taking care of your animals.
And on the third side, I'm doing woodworking, or a whole series of backyard chickens. By combining all of these it brings the opinion that you're just writing on a random subject. Whereas in reality, you may have spent an awful lot of time researching these different subjects and an expert in this subject.
But it's something not going to come out that way. Instead, it is much better to choose 1 niche. So that was a key thing that I discovered and the second is making sure that there is a market of people who want to buy the books in your niche.
Use Different Pen Names
I use a tool called KDSpy to figure out how many people are out there who are looking to buy the type of book that I'm looking to write. This tool gives you the ability to find out how many books are on a topic.
Let's say you were doing backyard chickens, you would type that into the Kindle store on Amazon. Then it would show you how many results you get. Let's just say there are 3,000 books on backyard chickens that you can get on this particular subject.
Then KDSpy will do a search on it and it will tell you of the top 20 results. You will know how many of those books that show up for the results have a basic sales rank of a hundred thousand or less that they're selling a book a day.
We simply take the total number of books on the market and divided them by the number of books that are the top hundred thousand. That will give us a ratio. I'd generally like to choose books that are 20 or lower.
That would say that there are not that many books on the market for that topic in the niche that you're writing for. But they're selling a lot of the ones that are on the market. And that ratio there tells us there is a hungry market and a shortage of supply.
That alone will mean that when you put a book out on that, assuming your book is well, your cover matches the general style and format, your description, and the quality of the book is high enough, what will happen is you will see sales.
And when we run ads against it, you can compete against those other books on that exact same genre. You'll see sales coming through, a lot of sales from that particular thing. Because that hungry market would just easily buy your book as well as the other ones.
So this was something I did not realize when I saw that. Then I started to see tons of sales coming through to some of my books on these keywords. I started targeting the markets and the revenue jumped.
Also the other thing was a single pen name per niche. Even if I am writing books on two or three different niches, I would use different pen names. You might use your personal name for one niche that you particularly wish to have your face associated with.
But then the other niches would just have to have another pen name. This is completely acceptable and authors have been doing that for a very long time. So that was a little bit and I started seeing the sales going up on that.
You just repeat and you get better each round of books that you're putting on to the market. So, can't decide where to start in self-publishing? The first is just to start by getting a manuscript written on the subject that you're interested in.
And for which as we said using KDSpy, you find a hungry market that's actually interested in. So you're writing for that niche and you're writing a book that you're also interested in it yourself. You could keep writing book after book in it without having too much of a problem.
The second is you're going to get out your Kindle version and run ads. So we're going to put our Kindle version now and I have so many students who were eager to talk about all of the different places. And you get this decision-fatigue where you get nothing done because you're so much talking.
Building Up Authority
So instead of doing that, we're going to get our book onto the market first. After that we can worry about the next step then we're going to put our ads against it. At that point, we can move on to the different formats for that particular book, your audio format, and your paperback.
But my first question to all of my students is, do you have your Kindle version out? If not, then let's do everything in our power to get that Kindle version of your book on to the market. Let's move on now to the secret answer of the day.
It is the key to winning at the self-publishing game and maximizing revenues. It is that the best way to maximize your earnings is by reproducing more books in the same niche. The more books you have, the more you establish yourself as an expert.
It keeps fueling and funneling more of your target audience at that particular thing. And this is building up authority. So when people look to you, they see that you have quite a bit of authority in your market and they're very eager to then buy your next book and your next book.
This is something that a lot of people don't understand. Each time you do this, you get better at each of those steps. We're continually targeting different keywords that are related to the same niche that are selling a lot with a hungry market.
Check out this related article: What If My Book Doesn't Sell?
Where people type in short terms and outcomes the keyword that is in your title or the keyword that you're using for your Amazon book. And by expanding the number format you have and the distribution channels, we're going to see that the profit starts to come in.
We can use this money to reinvest in more books and maybe reaching a point where you no longer can even make up at writing. And you will want to hire a ghostwriter to help you put more books out in the different niches.
That was the point that I reach. I simply cannot write books fast enough. So I wanted to be able to expand but at the same time, the more money that's coming in, you can hire additional people to increase the flow and speed up the whole process.
That is the key to completely dominating and winning at the game of self-publishing. If that's what you're interested in, those are the things that I would say for most of my students. If you're having difficulty getting started, these are just a few of the tips that would actually help with that.
Can't Decide Where To Start In Self-Publishing? If so, write "yes" below in the comments and if not, write "no" below in the comments. That will really help me out and check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.