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Marketing Tip
by Diane Eble
One of my subscribers wrote to me recently, "Are there any ways to test the idea(s) one would have for a book? No sense working hard on a manuscript if it wouldn't have market appeal."
I agree. Writing a book is a big project. Indeed, why do all that work unless you have some assurance of success?
So, how do you assess whether there's an audience for your book idea?
First, let me wax on just a bit about why we are so lucky to be living now if we want to become an author.
In the old days (say 10 years ago), if you had an idea for a book, you would have to look at Books In Print, the library, or a bookstore. You'd see what other books were out there, and you'd only be able to guess at which ones sold well (unless they made it to the bestseller lists, of course). You'd do a lot of guessing, in fact. Only when you actually secured a publishing contract, wrote the book, and tried to sell it, would you know if your idea was actually marketable.
This is still the way a lot of publishing works, by the way. Few authors or publishers actually test their ideas first. Which is really a shame, because now we have an amazing tool called the Internet that allows us to find out so much, and very quickly.
Now, it takes a whole course to show you all the ways to harness the Internet to find your audience. To make it easy, I'll give you one of the most powerful tools I've uncovered for using keywords to investigate your potential audience.
One of the great advantages the Internet Age affords us is search engines. We can now find out what actual people are searching for. No more guesswork!
However, here's an important note to keep in mind as you read on: People search for information that they want to know. That's what keyword research gives you. It does not necessarily give you accurate information about what people might actually buy.
However, it's a very good place to start, especially since a book is information. Thus, it makes sense to look for what kind of information people actually search for. Keyword research is a valuable first step in figuring out whether anyone might actually want to read what you think you want to write about.
So, the first step in assessing your audience is to think about what phrases people would use if they were looking for the book you're thinking of writing. Then, do a keyword search to see how many people actually searched for those phrases.
Here's a helpful place to go to. It's called SEO Book Keyword Research Tool. You type in your search phrase, click "submit" and it comes up with a whole list of searches that include your keyword or keyword phrase. It tells you how many people searched for those phrases in each of the major search engines.
There's also a whole lot of other cool links on this page. (See below for additional info on this amazing resource.) For now, just pay attention to the far left column, with the keywords, and the numbers in the "Overall search" column.
Example: When I do a search above for "book titles" (to see if people are searching for how to come up with a bestselling book title), I get a whole list of terms that people search for that include "book title."
Not all keyword phrases will apply to your topic. The most-searched keyword phrase here is "dr seuss and book titles. " (Who would have thought 134 people would search this every day!) But I can see that (as of this writing) some phrases are relevant to my topic:
Do you think that there would be a market for my "Choosing Your Bestselling Title" course? If 168 people per day are searching for these key phrases, what would happen if I had a great article (or several!)that led them to some great information, that then led them to a way to buy a course or book of mine?
Do the same with your topic. Plug it into that search tool, and see what you come up with.
Side note: Another cool thing about this tool is that you can find out what other phrases people are looking for related to these key words. Who would have thought that 58 people a day search for "famous book titles"? Hmm, maybe this would be a good topic for a blog post or article, that would lead people to my course….
Do you see the power of keyword searches to both test your idea and brainstorm specific directions for both your book topic, articles, blog post topics and other ways to get traffic to your site?
One more suggestion: As you find and hone your keywords, make a file of the top 25 or so. Print them out on a document that you review every day. This will begin to focus you on your topic and bring to mind ways you can write about it ... ways that will lead to your unique angle, which becomes your book and unique contribution that you know people will want to read!
1. Take some time to learn more about this amazing keyword search tool. There's a training program that explains all you would ever need to know about Search Engine Optimization and free articles that will help you understand some of the basics of using keywords effectively.
2. Google also provides some good tools and training for researching keywords. Learn more here.
3. I also mentioned several other ways to research your audience in the Sept. 11, 2008 Publishing Coach Weekly teleseminar.
Got a question? Ask it and get the next Publishing Coach Weekly teleseminar details here.