Writing to Market
Writing to Market

Writing to Market

Writing to Market — Keyword Interest and Bestseller Lists

In Writing to Market — Where to Begin, I talked about how I use Publisher Rocket’s category search function to identify potential categories to write in. We’re going to leave that program for now, and go to Amazon to look at the bestseller lists. Because nothing can kill a category quicker for you than a bad-looking bestseller list. As an example, let’s say you liked horror as a top tier category. And why wouldn’t you? It’s got a 41% pub percentage for a steady 12.5k in sales. The top books move big numbers. But let’s take a look at the...

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Writing to Market — Tropes, Tropes, Tropes

The theory of writing to market is that most people don’t want to read something completely new. They want to read something like the last book they enjoyed. A new story, but one that makes them feel the same way as they did the last time. Essentially, they want to read the same thing, but different. Strangely, this is not contradictory, and is fairly easy to accomplish. The way to do it is through tropes. Tropes Tropes are not quite cliches, but they are in the same ballpark. They are certain characters or situations that people are familiar with and...

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Writing to Market — Where to Begin

There’s a lot of confusion about what writing to market actually is. Let’s clear that up. Writing to market is actually a simple two-step process: you identify a good market, then you write a book that fits that market. Obviously, there is far more to it than that, but that is the basis of it. Find a market. Write a book for that market. And one must do both to successfully write to market. I have seen people find a great genre, then write a book no readers of that genre would enjoy. I have seen people write wonderful books...

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Why All the Genres?

I have run into a form of this question several times now since we have opened the site. People understand, of course, why we do all the genres, but they don’t understand why that is a good thing for them, in particular. “I write cozy mystery. Why do I care about a dark fantasy guide?” It’s actually a good question, with two answers. First of all, there is something to be learned from every genre. No matter what genre you write, you can write it better by borrowing aspects of other genres. I write primarily fantasy, but I studied thrillers...

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What Does ‘Write To Market’ Mean?

You will often hear the phrase “write to market” from independent authors. But what does it really mean? Everyone has different ideas about how exactly to do it, but one thing is clear: writing to market is absolutely essential if you are going to have success publishing your own work.  The Two Pieces Of Writing To Market In order to make money as an independent author, you must sell a significant quantity of books. That means you need two things. A big enough market, meaning enough people who want to read that type of book, and market penetration, meaning that...

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