Ideas to find a niche for self-publishing
I'm looking around at self-publishing strategies: how to find topics for books that are in demand but aren't too crowded.
There are some very pragmatic approaches, such as Steve Scott's. There are also self-publishers who invest a great deal of effort and money in their book projects.
Surely you too have a lot of ideas on how to approach finding a niche. Please enlighten me. 🙂
1. Pick a subject you are expert in
2. Pick a niche within your expertise
3. Find the intersection between books that were bestsellers and your topic.
"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell (which was also made into a TV show) deals with marketing. But Gladwell uses the example of "The Beatles" as a group who had no musical talent but still became huge because they knew how to market themselves (they dressed weirdly so they got attention). If you want to be a self-publisher then I would suggest reading this book and others like it in order to figure out how to market yourself and your books better.
Another example is "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent". This book describes how real estate agents make money by getting multiple offers on properties they list and what strategies they use to get those multiple offers. It became a bestseller even though everyone knows real estate agents make money this way (it doesn't take much research or knowledge to write about something everyone already knows). But here's the thing...this book tells you exactly WHAT TO DO TO GET MULTIPLE OFFERS ON A PROPERTY YOU LIST SO YOU CAN MAKE MORE MONEY AS A REAL ESTATE AGENT THAN OTHER REAL ESTATE AGENTS LISTING THE SAME PROPERTIES AS YOU. The author of this book was able to make millions off this one idea because he wrote about something everyone already knew but few people actually did anything about it (i.e., get multiple offers on properties you list).
If you combine ideas from books like these with your own expertise then maybe you can come up with some unique ideas for books that would be good candidates for self-publishing.
Also, look at what has been done before so that you can do it better or different or more useful than what is currently available on Amazon or elsewhere. For instance, someone recently told me they were writing a book called "How To Get Your Book Published". Which is basically just summarizing all the advice given in Tim Ferris' book "Tools of Titans". Well, why not? People will always be interested in how other people got their books published so why not cash in on that interest?
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