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 a market 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, other people like you exist. Or else you have to write a book that lots of other people who aren’t necessarily like you want to read (and hopefully that you want to read, too—although some writers write books they have no interest in reading but that lots of other people do want to read).

In the publishing industry 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, Determine How Many People Really Might Buy Your Book, you train yourself to see if your book idea has a large enough market to make it a viable publishing project.  As you do so, you find your readers and get to know them. This requires:

• Identifying your readers
• Profiling your readers
• Familiarizing yourself with your readers
• Identifying how many potential readers exist for your book
• Determining where your readers “hang out”

If you want to publish a successful book, you must have a market that produces enough book sales to reach your 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.

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 bigger or more profitable markets with your content.
4. You can identify how to target bigger or more profitable markets with your promotion plan.
5. You can write for your reader.

From a publisher’s perspective, the bigger the market for your book, the better. The reason why 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. That means if your book targets a big market, it could turn into a money maker for the publisher and for you. Your venture capital partner—the publisher—might earn back his investment and make money—and so might you. If you self-publish, you will earn back the money you invest in your own project.

Note: You can read additional blogged draft excerpts from my new book, The Author Training Manual (Writer’s Digest Books, March 2014) here. Only select pieces from the manuscript, a “working draft,” were posted—not the complete manuscript. Read the next post in the The Author Training Manual blogged-book series by clicking here. Purchase the book on Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or at Writersdigestshop.com.

© Robertds | Dreamstime.com