As an author, you'll always want the best for your book, and to do that, you must fix every single mistake with your book because if you don't fix this now, you'll hate yourself later! Check out this article to know more about self-publishing.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. It is a secret as to the one thing you're doing that's completely going to destroy all of the sales of your books.
The topic we're discussing today is If You Don't Fix This Now, You'll Hate Yourself Later! Now I know what you're thinking. For many of you, you first start putting books onto the market that you believe people are going to like to read.
You've spent a lot of time researching and you have interests of your own. That is varied from this issue or that issue, Puppy Training to other things. Then you put them onto the market but you did not understand just how devastatingly terrible an idea it is to shoot for so many niches so many markets at the same time.
Your genres are all over the place. Therefore, you're going to want to read this article. So that you will learn the things necessary to make sure you are not making these mistakes.
Check out and grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. To make sure that you're not skipping any of the important steps necessary to not only self-publish your books but also to market those same books.
From my own story, when I first started publishing, the question you might have asked me would be, well, make sure you choose the right market. And for me, it was what's a market? I don't even understand what you're talking about.
I thought the idea was you would just put books onto the market on whatever subjects are of interest to you. And the thing is that I started taking those people and I would get them onto an email list. Because I heard and it was true that it is a fantastic idea.
Because when it's time for reviews, you're going to want to build a connection with your audience of readers that are reading your books. But my books were all over the place. So if you had a book on Puppy Training or a book on Carpentry or a book on Survivalism or something like that, how exactly are you going to be writing to those same audiences in the same emails?
They all have different interests. So which one of those interests? Are you going to rotate between the interests? The problem is you start to lose people.
So what happens is I have no idea which of those markets I was doing. So when it came to running ads or doing content marketing or doing my email marketing and sending emails to these people, it would be very confusing for them.
It would be tempting for them just to unsubscribe since they were interested in How To Make Vegan Food and I'm sending them an email on How To Mow Your Yard. So you see how the mismatch would occur.
I was creating chaos within my group just by writing on subjects that I was interested in. So the question is that my audience was asking, are you an expert? Are you an expert on all of these things?
It's All About Choosing
Are these just hobbies? See, that's a little bit of a difference because an expert is somebody who you're going to know, like, and trust on something. As opposed to somebody who's just dabbling with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
As opposed to somebody who's spending the time and investing the hours to get really good at something. The second thing is blending the audiences and watering down the value of all my books. So when they would associate my name, what would they associate it with?
Well, a little of this a little of that, it was lots of different subjects. It was completely confusing for my target audience and so as a result, I was losing customers. I was losing readers.
If I came out with a new book, why would any of these people buy it? It was on different topics every time, it makes no sense at all. That was when I began to understand the importance that each niche that you're writing in gets its own pen name.
You're not going to be putting books onto the market under the same name if they're on different topics. Because we want to make sure that the names that we're choosing are associated with the one niche the one topic.
But let's get into the top points, if you don't fix this now, you'll hate yourself later! This is really all about choosing. I remember reading a book called Choose. The point of the entire book was choosing the wrong market is going to cost you in the long run big time.
So you're going to want to make sure about the market that you're choosing. And when we say market, it can be in your niche or your genre, the topic that you're writing on. The keywords that people are searching for that you're going to come up as the expert on. But how would they know you're an expert if you choose a niche for which nobody is searching?
There are no books on that topic on Amazon. We have no idea if anybody's even going to buy this thing. So there may not even be a market or maybe there are too many books in that market. And your book is going to get lost in the mix.
My second tip is I like to use KDSpy. It's the best tool that I've found when it comes to finding the right keywords. To figure out if the niche or genre that you're choosing to go into is already a profitable one.
That is there are already books but not too many that are selling like crazy on Amazon. When we find one of these magical unicorn markets, when we write books into it, we're going to discover the books sell about a thousand times more than just choosing a random market.
And hoping the best or choosing a fad that may be popular today. Like if in 2017 you had written a book on Fidget Spinners, you might have sold an awful lot of copies but in 2018 not so much. So this is the reason that it is so important to choose the right market for your books.
Stick With The Same Genre
We're not looking at throwing any book out on every subject we're interested in but within that one profitable niche and holding the focus there. Which is a little bit of cheating and showing you my secret answer of the day.
Which are you should choose and stick with the same niche, genre, or market for at least 10 years to get traction. It takes 3 to 5 years of continuous writing and doing ads and email marketing and pushing your books in addition to writing new books inside of the same niche and genre.
So that people will begin to see our name and associate it with the exact books that we've been writing. We're putting out books every single year and we're making sure that those books are things that our readers like. In addition, our audience is telling us what they like and don't like about our books.
So our future books are exactly aligned to make sure that our readers are going to want to read and pick up those books and buy our latest books. We are not writing on many genres, just one niche. We already said how to make sure it's the correct niche.
That it's a good keyword that we're targeting for that niche, fiction and especially non-fiction. We want to make sure that those readers begin to associate our name with this one thing. If they aren't doing that, you're making a huge mistake and it's going to cost you a lot in the future.
Many people give up after just a couple of months or a couple of years. And then right before they would have made their big break, they discover they're going to start a new niche. Which requires completely reinventing yourself and starting from the beginning again.
Then only to reach the same frustration. And to keep on switching if you had just stuck with the same niche and choose something you enjoy. Something you could be, imagine yourself writing about 10 years from now. Just keep on pumping out books on this exact same genre or niche that you're in.
And what's going to happen is you're going to become associated with that niche. People are going to like your books and they're going to tell their friends about them. But this only occurs if we're within a single niche.
We're targeting an issue where there already are readers. We're not trying to invent a bunch of readers, we're trying to find them. They are like currents in the ocean, we're simply aligning our ships with the winds, the direction they're going.
So it's going to take us in particularly winds like the gulf stream for example. The winds that pass over the top, the currents in the ocean that are pulling it northward here in Norway where we feel that going. We're not trying to create our currents and winds above that current.
Rather, we're trying to just align our sales with existing currents in areas where there aren't that many ships. And that is a very good analogy as to what we're trying to accomplish with our books.
But you have to pay attention and this is the reason it's going to cost you so much money if you ignore this single powerful tip here. But what I want to know from you is have you chosen a niche you can stick with for years? If you have chosen the right niche you're going to be able to stick with for like 10 years, then say "Yes" below in the comments.
If you haven't, write "No" below in the comments. Because I need to know where you're coming from so that I'm better able to produce articles and videos to help you. And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.