Step #3
Analyze How Many People Really Might Buy Your Book

I’ve often heard this advice: Write the book you want to read. It’s good advice if you want to read a book many people want or need. However, if you are the only one, or one of just a few people interested in reading such a book, its not advice you want to follow.

Maybe you are one of those writers who doesn’t care if your book has a market or any prospective readers. You simply have an idea for a book and want to write it. You feel passionate about your topic. You feel you must write your book no matter what—even if only a few people end up reading (buying) it. I call this writing “the book of your heart.” In this case, it may not matter to you if you sell one copy or one hundred because you probably define success as writing and publishing the book you want to write.

I pass no judgment on you or any other aspiring author with this goal. Everyone has his or her own idea of success. You should write the book you feel passionate about writing. However, I believe that if you explore your motivations further, you’ll probably find you write because you want to be read and to impact readers’ lives. It’s fine to express yourself with no thought of who will read your work or if anyone will ever read your work, if you want to keep a journal. However, writers who author books typically do so to have someone read what they write—the more people, the better. That’s why you must be concerned with more than self-expression if you want to produce a successful book.

Assuming you want to achieve the goal of successful authorship, at this point you must train yourself to see your idea with your book’s target market in mind and consider the impact market size will have on your potential book sales.

What’s a Market and Why Do You Need One?

As a writer who wants someone in addition to yourself to read your work, you need an audience for your book. You can’t write “the book you want to read” and make it successful unless lots of other people are just like you or have the same interests as you. This means that before you write your book you have to discover if, indeed, it will have an audience.

In the publishing industry, your audience—these “other people” who might be interested in reading (or buying) your book—are called your book’s “market” or “target market.” In Step #3 of the Author Training Process, Analyze How Many People Really Might Buy Your Book, you will train yourself to see if your book idea has the kind of market that makes it a viable publishing project. As you do so, you find your readers and get to know them. This requires:

• Identifying your audience
• Profiling your readers
• Familiarizing yourself with your readers
• Identifying how many potential readers exist for your book
• Determining where your readers “hang out” both virtually and in the “real” world

If you want to publish a successful book, you must have a market that produces enough book sales to reach your own sales goals or those of a publisher. Many aspiring authors write their books without first evaluating markets to determine if enough interest exists to support sales of their books and, thereby, publication. Or they propose books to publishers without doing so only to be rejected because no market exists for their books or the market is too small.

Training yourself to look at your book’s market critically accomplishes five things:

1. You discover if enough potential readers exist for your book; if so, you can move forward with the project.
2. You get the chance to consider new potential markets to target.
3. You can re-evaluate the angle of your book to target larger, more profitable markets with your content.
4. You can identify how to adjust your promotion plan in order to target larger markets.
5. You can write for your reader.

From a publisher’s perspective, the bigger the market for your book, the better. The reason is simple: The more potential readers for your book, the more potential buyers for your book; the more potential buyers for your book, the more potential money your book might earn over time. Your venture capital partner, the publisher, might earn back his investment and make money—and so might you. If you self-publish, you might earn back the money you invest in your own project. Low risk is a good thing for a potential book project.

Can You Describe Your Market?

I edited a proposal for an aspiring author who had written a memoir about her escape from Egypt to America. The original document simply said the book would be of interest to Muslims as well as to Americans interested in the news about the Arab Spring. Additionally, since a woman had written the book and the book was about a woman, she felt it would have appeal to female readers. That’s all the information she offered about markets.

All of that was true, but the information was not specific enough to really determine whether her book had the potential to sell well. She needed to do more research to find out how many people might actually purchase her book—how many people comprised the markets she mentioned.

We did that research and discovered the following statistics based on a study conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life and released in 2011:

• The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35 percent in the next twenty years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030.
• If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4 percent of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030.
• In the United States, the population projections show the number of Muslims more than doubling over the next two decades, rising from 2.6 million in 2010 to 6.2 million in 2030.

Those statistics prove a market exists for the book—a large market any publisher should find propitious. We also found market statistics on the secondary women’s market the author planned to target:

• Women buy 72 percent of all books given as gifts, according to a 1991 Gallup survey, and considering the fact below, this likely hasn’t changed much.
• Women bought 64 percent of all books sold in 2009, according to a study conducted by the publishing research firm Bowker.
• Women make up 55 percent of the U.S. population.

Again, the market for her book is more clearly defined by these figures.

Carla King wrote about her adventures riding motorcycles in her self-published book American Borders: A Solo Circumnavigation of the United States on a Russian Sidecar Motorcycle. This might seem like a memoir that wouldn’t interest too many people. In fact, her audience includes some six million people who have motorcycles registered in the United States. The exact number of motorcycle riders could be larger since some riders are passengers and not owners. Many people also ride off-road bikes, and these do not require a license. Some estimates put the number of people in the United States who ride motorcycles at least once a year at seven million.

Surprisingly, a good portion of those people are female—a good thing for King. The Motorcycle Industry Council reported in 2009 that the number of female motorcycle operators in the United States increased to about 7.2 million out of 27 million overall riders. About one in ten owners at that time were women. The American Motorcyclist Association has about 225,000 members as of this printing. While the number of female members is under 10 percent, the number of new female members is increasing.

According to King, American Borders enjoys a significant number of nonmotorcycling readers, as will her upcoming China Road Motorcycle Diaries, such as those who like adventure, travel, and women’s issues. “One woman who read it recommended it as being ‘part Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and part Harlequin Romance,’” she says.

Yet, many men purchase American Borders, especially around the holidays. “I make the most money at motorcycle shows that take place around Christmas, when lots of gift buying is happening. A book about a woman adventure motorcycling is very popular with guys who are trying to get their gals on a bike. It’s better than buying lingerie!” she claims. Her online holiday sales correspond with that holiday trend as well.

A book does not have to have a huge market, though. It’s possible to sell a lot of books by targeting your work to a niche market. Self-publishing expert and author Dan Poynter provides a good example of an author who has written books for small niche markets. He self-published The Parachute Manual: A Technical Treatise on the Parachute. About 350,000 people complete more than three million jumps in a typical year. There are about four hundred skydiving centers scattered across the United States. Most are located on smaller outlying airports. That’s not a huge market by any means, but it’s an engaged market that spends a fair amount of money on its hobby, he says. And, more important to the author, these people are easy to find and reach.

A book that might seem to have a small audience might still be a viable project. A small hobby or interest could have hundreds of thousands of potential readers—and that’s just in the United States. If you also consider the potential of selling your book internationally, the audience grows larger.

A novelist can and should consider target markets as well. The rise of the chick-lit category, for instance, came out of the market for those books, which can be described as smart, fun fiction for and/or about women of all ages. Knowing how many women purchase books, it’s obvious why mom lit has grown into a category of its own, too. There are novels targeted at those who enjoy reading about female detectives, time travel, particular time periods, and even knitting.

Recently, paranormal fiction has sold well because so many people are interested in things like telekinesis and clairvoyance. Such people—young and old—represent a target market. Novelists can choose almost any target market—Generation X, people who love to travel, adults or children who love to cook, those who have elderly parents living at home, individuals touched by suicide, parents with gay children, or singles who adopt pets—and write novels to target these markets. You need only craft stories that include characters, themes, and details that relate to those readers’ interests and experiences.

Traditionally, novelists have not done much market analysis, but such research will help you write a better book and sell more books—to both publishers and readers. Novelist C.S. Lakin lets a publisher know what market she plans to target when she writes a book proposal. For example, here is a market statement describing her Sacred Sites series:

Keep in mind that market interests change quickly and what seems like a hot topic right now probably has already turned cold for most publishers. As agent Verna Dreisbach points out, “Take, for example, the DaVinci and vampire type books. Once they are out, the market has probably already changed. That’s when a lot of novice writers start writing a vampire book. By the time agents get that manuscript, that market has come and gone, and publishers are way over it—considering time spent writing, pitching, acquiring, editing, marketing, and getting the book to print. By then publishers have moved on to zombies. Writers can’t necessarily write to the current market. They have to be ahead of the game, finding new markets and interests, too.”

This happened with books on yoga, for example. Booksellers were overstocked and had too many choices. “That meant publishers weren’t buying any, which meant if you wrote a yoga book, you were out of luck,” says Dreisbach.

To stay up on what types of books publishers are purchasing now, you must watch industry trends. Read Publishers Weekly (the free or paid subscription), read industry blogs and columns, and keep an eye on what bookstores carry. Then try to be a trendsetter rather than riding on the coattails of current bestsellers or trends.

You Need Actual Figures to Determine the Size of Your Market

An agent or acquisitions editor who receives a query or proposal for a book with no discernable market or a market that appears too small will send a rejection to that author even if the idea is a good one or the writer is skilled in his or her craft. A platform and promotion plan will not save the idea. To whom would the author promote the book? With no market, the author has no potential book buyers, no potential readers. Remember, the publishing industry revolves around selling books. No market means no one will buy the book.

As you create a market analysis for your book, be specific. Use numbers to describe your market size. In Lakin’s example above, she could add statistics on Christian and fantasy readers, as well as spiritual fantasy readers, to bolster her market description.

Imagine if you were an agent or acquisitions editor and received a proposal for a book about creating change in people’s lives, and the author described her book’s market this way:

What might you think? Would you be inclined to back this project? As an indie publisher, would this be enough information to make you feel secure that your book has potential buyers, confident enough to put your money into the project?

The author’s market sounds pretty large but also somewhat broad. It’s hard to really know if her market is large enough or targeted enough.

What if the same author sent you the following information instead?

If the author wanted to take this further—which she did—she could also tell an agent or publisher that her book targets women. And, as we know, women purchase the majority of books in the United States and make up more than half of the country’s population.

Brad Henderson could have described the market for his proposed book on grammar this way:

Or this way, as he actually did in his book proposal:

The second description offers specifics that a publisher—indie or traditional—will find useful.

Sometimes you may not know the exact number of people who make up a market—you may not have the statistics. Other available figures, however, can support a market for a book as well. This is where Google and other search engines “become your friends,” as the saying goes. Begin inputting short questions or keywords (search terms) into the search engine, and see what you discover. Play around with the keywords and keyword phrases you use in your searches, such as “Generation X,” “number of Muslims living in US,” or “How many motorcycle owners in US,” and see what comes up. (Just make sure the figures you use come from a reputable source.) No matter what genre describes your book, you can discover market statistics of some sort—how many people or large groups of people who would be interested in purchasing your book.

Consider paranormal fiction, like the books best-selling author Amanda Hocking writes. I did a Google search at the time of this writing for “paranormal forums” and found 116,000 to 10,200,000 results (depending on whether I put quotation marks around the words), and Facebook has pages of listings for paranormal groups. A Google search for “paranormal blogs” brought up 41,300,000 listings, and almost every state in America has a paranormal association of some sort, as do most European countries. You can find ghost conferences and UFO groups almost anywhere in the world. If you did some digging, you could come up with the number of people who attended those conferences or joined the associations.

With this information, you can avoid saying, “Hocking’s books sell well, so mine will, too.” Instead, you could say, “Here’s the reason there is a market for my novel, which, like Hocking’s books, is about vampires.” (You could also include the number of books that Hocking and other authors in that category have sold.)

If Catharine, the author with the self-help book, singled out a particular type of person who wants to create the specific personal change she wants to write about, she could make the book’s market appeal more apparent with specific figures like those mentioned above. This would involve pinpointing the book’s angle and how it targets the market or markets. In this case, the author has singled out readers who “want to control time, use time, manage time, or have time work for them.” No statistics are available to indicate the size of this market, but the Google Keyword Tool indicates that 823,000 global monthly searches and 246,000 local monthly searches are conducted for the phrase “time management.” A Google search on “time management” shows the popularity of the subject—1,980,000,000 results. The aspiring author could use these figures to demonstrate that her book addresses a common interest; it answers the WIIFM? question for both men and women.

If you wanted to write a book about how to grow a particular type of orchid, you could use a search engine to discover how many people purchase that particular orchid or how many people purchase orchids each year. I did just that on Google with the keyword phrase “how many people purchase orchids,” and here’s what I discovered, thanks to the University of Michigan Department of Horticulture Orchid Research Program.

Now, not all of those were sold in the United States, and the information was not current. Yet, given that I purchase orchids and know other people who purchase orchids, I realize that orchid lovers are extremely engaged in orchid growing and buying and that they spend a lot of money per year on products related to orchids. They also attend orchid shows. Even if you don’t know much about specialty orchids, you need only visit a grocery store to see that orchids are a popular plant to purchase. If you were writing a nonfiction book on orchids (or on one particular orchid), you could make some phone calls—to the University of Michigan or to the American Orchid Society or to any one of the many orchid shows across America, for instance—and get current sales figures as well as additional statistics that would help you create a picture of your market size (the number of people who attend orchid shows each year). This is how you determine or indicate the size of your market.

Let’s apply this orchid example to a novel. Imagine you are writing a thriller in which the killer leaves an orchid bloom at the scene of every crime. Each bloom is from a different type of exotic orchid plant. Now you can tell an acquisitions editor that your book will appeal to the many readers interested in thrillers and also to the 18 million people who purchased orchids in the United States in 2005 alone.

If you write a novel about a dancer, your target market could include the millions of people who watch Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and Dance Moms. You could research the number of people who actually call in to vote for contests on certain shows that allow voting. Or Google each television show’s ratings. I easily discovered that in 2010, Dancing with the Stars had 21.3 million viewers, causing it to rise above NBC’s Sunday Night Football, according to Nielsen ratings, which estimate what people are watching based on a group of paid viewers. I also found out that in 2012, Dancing with the Stars aired to 18.5 million viewers.

If you were to write a detective series in which the main character has a sidekick who is a dog, you could target dog owners and veterinarians. A Google search for “how many dog owners in the US” led me to this data: According to the 2011–2012 APPA National Pet Owners Survey, 46.3 million U.S. households own a dog. When I did a similar search for the number of veterinarians in the United States, a New York Times article reported roughly 91,000 working vets in the country.

Re-Angle Your Market for Success

Once you know the market size—whether it’s big or niche—it’s time to evaluate your idea with that market in mind. Determine if your book idea seems viable or how to make it viable based on the information you have accumulated. Should you:

• continue forward with your project?
• go back to square one and conceive a new idea with a bigger market or a more viable niche market?
• rework or re-angle your current book idea to fit a market, thus making it a salable project?

Those book ideas that have no market at all or are indefinable as far as specific figures go are best abandoned—that is, if you want to produce a successful book by publishing industry standards. If not, you can pursue ideas as indie projects—and books of your heart. However, an agent or publisher will not take on a project unless it has a promising market. As part of your training, you need to learn to evaluate your project objectively with this in mind. Know that you are taking a risk if you choose to proceed with a book that has no market—a risk a seasoned publishing professional most likely would not take.

Small publishing houses might be willing to take a risk on a book with a small or niche market—if some other factors are in place as well, such as a strong author platform and promotion plan. Additionally, an analysis of competing books must indicate that your proposed book might meet or exceed their sales figures. (We will go over such analyses in forthcoming steps.) Knowing this, if you want to have your book traditionally published, you will need to look at your market statistics and make an objective determination about what type of publisher to approach.

If you have a market with promising figures, moving forward may seem like a no-brainer. However, sometimes a large market isn’t necessarily the best thing. An agent or acquisitions editor might look at your book idea and think, “This book might not sell well because the market is too large. It’s not unique enough to gain traction there.” Saying “x number of millions of people are buying thrillers” isn’t specific enough and is a very broad statement. What kind of thrillers? By what kind of authors? Use your book’s angles and themes to narrow it down for publishers. In such a case, a smaller market serves your book better. This could also lead you to change the angle of your book to target a more unique market.

I was asked to do this with a book I wanted to sell about making Jewish Sabbath observance meaningful and spiritual. My agent told me I would have an easier time selling the book (to a publisher and to readers) if I angled it to the Jewish women’s market. This way I could target the real book buyers in the Jewish market. So before we submitted to acquisitions editors, I re-angled my book proposal.

Sometimes, however, it’s good to go broader with your market. Prior to landing an agent for my Sabbath book, I approached a few small independent publishers on my own. One of them asked me to broaden my market by including all religions that celebrate the Sabbath. In this way, they felt they could sell more books. In their eyes, the book was a less risky project if they could sell it in a more general religious category or to all religious faiths. As you can see: one book, many market options, many ways to write it.

Remember the aspiring author who intended to target his book to the single-mother market? When he discovered some of the mothers for whom he was writing were actually married but perceived themselves as parenting alone, he not only targeted a much broader market—mothers in general—he also had to change the language he used as he wrote the book.

Charlene originally wanted to write a self-help book for women. When she realized corporate readers, including men, might be interested in her work-life balance concepts, she changed her target market. She also changed the title of her book and some of the content. Her author platform also supported this change.

Market research conducted during her Author Training helped Rhonda determine the best audience for her memoir and narrow the time period and subject matter she would address. She began thinking her book’s market was people involved in adoption, but she later expanded it to people who have experienced grief and loss, as well as adoption. “When it comes to memoir, which is a slice of life focused on specific theme and plot, writing to my market helped me pare down my story to reach an intended audience,” Rhonda explains. “I was buried with too many thoughts and angles. Looking at my market helped me determine what needed to be included in this slice of life. I went from drowning in too much information to a framed idea that would reach my audience.”

Penney and Dawn, who were planning to co-author a book on social media, discovered that in 2009 there were 27.5 million small businesses in the United States, according to the Office of Advocacy. “This was the most current number we could find, so I’m sure that the number of small businesses that were started in 2012 is even larger. Once we saw this number, we knew we made the right choice to target small business owners,” says Penney. “Since both of us work as social media consultants, we realize that almost every small business owner can find a reason to use social media to help them grow their business. Seeing these numbers assured us that we have a large audience available to purchase our book.”

Write for Your Market

In these examples, after re-angling book ideas to meet a bigger (or different) market, the writers needed to write their books in a way that targeted their new or enlarged market. This is a key point. You need to ensure you write your book in such a way that you do, indeed, make it relevant to all the people in your market. More simply said, write for your market—or all of your markets.

This involves knowing not only the size of your market but also who makes up your market. At this point, you need to actually get to know individual readers. Instead of looking at the size of your market, break it down into the readers for whom you are writing so you can write with clarity and purpose.

Find ways to get to know your ideal reader by:

• listening to conversations in online groups
• asking questions in online forums
• having conversations on Twitter
• responding to queries on LinkedIn
• participating in Google Plus groups
• attending events
• joining organizations
• conducting online research

From your time spent on these activities, determine your readers’ demographics, spending habits, lifestyle, income, etc. Then describe your reader in detail—as if you were creating a character in a novel. When you can do this, you can write for your reader, and all the many people in your market will find your book relatable.

When Rhonda started networking online with potential readers of her memoir, she claims her writing changed—it relaxed, and she began to feel she was writing a letter to the reader. “Joining social networks, following blogs, and interacting with those in my audience deepened my focus and direction and allowed my writing to become interesting to others. Until I was able to focus on the reader, my writing was too vague,” she explains.

As you look at your markets, don’t be so wedded to your idea that you aren’t willing to consider a new angle for your book or new potential markets. Take a big-picture view—an objective view. Could you write your book so it hits the best market, the one that makes your book the most viable—the most attractive to publishers and to the most readers? Train yourself to see more than the initial readers and groups you thought you would target. Be willing to create a book idea and to write a book that targets the market or markets that will help you and your book become the most successful it can be. Once you have completed your research, be sure to write a target market paragraph that’s similar to the ones found earlier in this section (using specific figures and demographics), and place it in your journal. When you can do this clearly and effectively, you have completed Step #3 in the Author Training process. WOOT!

Suggested Reading:

Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
The Handbook of Online Marketing Research: Knowing Your Customer Using the Net by Joshua Grossnickle and Oliver Raskin
Marketing Research Kit for Dummies by Michael Hyman