Let us take a closer look at the possibility of book sales drying up. Will book sales dry up by the end of the year? Here’s what major publishing houses don’t want you to know.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around because the third point is a secret as to the best way to make sure your books don't drop in sales. So, the topic we're talking about today is Will Book Sales Dry Up By The End Of The Year? - What Major Publishing Houses don't want you to know.
So, by the end of this article, you're going to know what is the most important thing when it comes to sustained sales. That is not just these huge bumps and spikes you're going to have, the steps necessary to avoid falling into some of these little grooves on either side.
You're going to feel great knowing that you're not wasting time writing and putting books onto the market that are never going to sell or just going to sell a little bit. The thing is after having sold around 40,000 books; I began to understand some of the keys to what it is that gets books selling.
Some of my books have completely flopped and did not contribute that much to this. That's one of the reasons why I offer free Discovery sessions which you can check out if you would like to figure out better if your books are set to sell or not sell.
So, the thing is that Sarah was one of the early members of my coaching group. She was writing in a particular genre. It’s in the genre that she chose, it was political books dealing specifically with the different candidates running in the exact election.
But there was a huge problem with this, which is what happens after the election is complete. How many people are going to continue buying that book? That was a huge mistake on her part.
So, the thing is that she wasn't paying attention to these key three issues. The first thing is that some niches will never sell any books ever. That is to say, your niche can be and that's one of the things we discussed in the discovery sessions.
Check out this related article: 3 Surprising Facts About Amazon
We take a closer look at that. It can be in one of these categories for which no sales are happening on Amazon for that particular niche. Now you could be the first person to put it out but I'll tell you I have seen this so many times.
Where you have an author who's just got an idea. Like you may have a background in something and you're thinking, “If I just put it onto the market, I'm sure they will buy it. Kind of like that old film.” Remember if you build it, they will come.
But in this case, if you write it, they will not necessarily come. What are you going to do when they don't come? When the book completely flops? Sometimes I've seen authors who decide, maybe if I just change the cover, that will make the difference.
But you're writing in a niche where no sales are being made. It's a completely new market. They don't know it, there's just not a list of readers there. Often, this can be a sign that maybe you're lucky and you hit the jackpot on this market.
But I can tell you one thing: if you do manage to get lucky on your very first book, other marketers are going to be watching what happens. Then, they will completely flood your market and out-compete you at your own game.
How many books do you have to come out within non-existent markets before you realize this is not a way to win the game? So that's the first key point and a very important point. The second thing is that some niches like I was saying with Sarah, come out in fads or things for which the trends spike up.
Getting Your Books To The Magic Zone
The classic example is we go to Google Trends and we type in fidget spinner in 2017. It goes to a hundred and then back to zero. And then in 2017, it spikes, and then it completely disappears. If you had put a book on the market in 2017, you may have seen some sales off of that fidget spinner book of yours.
But the second we cross over into 2018, nobody is doing any searches on fidget spinners. They're completely irrelevant, nobody cares. So, what's the point? The point is that this is a terrible idea, choosing a fad or something that is simply popular one day or popular right now.
Is it popular next week or the week after? This could be like video games or things like that. Maybe it's really popular at this moment but everybody's going to forget about it next week. It could be a popular social network and you're writing about that.
It could be a type of fiction that suddenly somebody came up with. I even remember it just in fads in general. I remember when I was in high school, there was a fad with certain types of pants that were like these weird striped plaid pants.
There was one guy I remember in high school who went out and bought like 10 of these pairs of pants. Now, these pants were popular for about a month or two. But after that, it completely died and there he was stuck with 10 pairs of pants.
The thing is that I want you to avoid finding yourself in that situation with 10 pairs of pants or books that you've written. I even saw it, just last month one of the comments on YouTube said it was somebody who had written something like 20 or 30 books in a genre that simply will never sell.
So, they'd use an awful lot of time. They had the expertise; their covers were even pretty good. Their descriptions were fine, the author's bio was fine, and all of the things were optimized.
Check out this related article: Optimize Your Amazon Book Page
But there was no market, all the books were ranked in a million or 900,000 rankings. We're looking for the top hundred thousand, not nine hundred thousand or one hundred million. We're looking in the top hundred thousand books on all of Amazon.
Those are the magic zones we're trying to get our books into. How would you even know if there's no book selling? But that brings us to our secret point, this is the thing that publishing companies or publishing houses don't want you to know either.
It is the fact that they do not put books on every topic out on the market. Just because you may know something about something, they're not putting it on the market if they don't see there's a market.
This is true with Walmart or any other store. They're not going to sell something unless they already know it's going to sell. They're not just going to take a chance on a product if it's going to cost them a lot. So, they're not going to do it.
This is something you can see if you look at the major publishing houses. How many books on random subjects are they coming out with? It looks a lot like they're investing their money in books that are similar to books that are already selling or to authors or people who are influencers.
Even then, sometimes, these amazing influencers will put books on the market and suddenly see them completely flop. Because they are putting them into a market that simply doesn't exist.
See To It There Is An Existing Market
Even though they're influencers, they try to call their audience and influence them to purchase the book. But the audience is not interested because that type of book is simply something people aren't used to buying.
In book format that is maybe in a magazine. Maybe they like to talk about it. Maybe some other format but not in book format. This is true with many niches. Don't think for a second that if you write a book on any subject, you're going to be able to get it to sell, because you won't.
Many people have tried to do this and often this is the number one reason my clients have books that aren't selling. This is the number one reason but the secret is you can combine the publish if you're using KDSpy in particular.
We can take a close look and we can take the books that are already ranked in particular categories. We can see we're looking for those books in the top hundred thousand. Then we look at the publication date for those specific books in your niche.
We want to see if those books were published not yesterday or last month or even this year per se. We want to see, what they published last year or in the last five or ten years. Some of these books just keep on pounding out sales.
That is a fantastic sign. So, if whatever niche you're considering going into, if you can find other books that were published years ago that are ranked in the top hundred thousand, now we're on to something.
There is an existing market that tells us that if you put a book into it and you write in a specific way, it can be evergreen and continue bringing in sales for years to come. I can tell you I look at some of my books, they're on fads and some of them just died out.
Check out this related article: How To Find Success In Self Publishing
A particular diet book or this or that dies out. And other books, the evergreen books that are focusing on human problems or fantastic stories that people are going to want to read far out into the future. These books continue to make sales.
I wake up in the morning and I look at a few more sales that are coming through audiobooks, paperbacks, and hardback books. They just keep on pounding on delivering the sales because there's an audience for those books.
These books are not fads they're evergreen books. This is something you can learn from the major publishers. They clearly wouldn't want you to do this because then you would be putting books that would directly compete with them.
I can tell you a lot of things. They don't optimize when it comes to the books that they put out. Whether their titles or their covers, sometimes they're terrible and you can out-compete for even major publishing houses.
That's one of the reasons they do not want you as a self-publisher or as an author to figure this out. It's not difficult. That's one of the reasons with the just free Discovery Session, we just sit down and take a look at your niche and we're able to use KDSpy.
You don't even have to buy KDSpy. We can use my KDSpy and take a closer look at exactly what is going on with your specific book. So that is one of the most important things to keep in mind.
But one of the other things is when you're getting started with self-publishing 101, it's like knowing exactly what are the basic steps. And that's the reason why I created Self-Publishing 101 - Everything You Need To Know.