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White Papers from the Gold Coast Institute Fellows |
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Niche Publishing: The Path of the
Future for Small and Self-Publishers Gordon
Burgett There are three ways to get your
ink-on-paper book in print. One, let an established publisher put your
words on the bookstore shelves. Two, do it yourself through
self-publishing. Three, forget the bookstore shelves, self-publish, and
sell it to readers before you write the first word. The first is the toughest: convincing a
big-city editor that your manuscript, thirty-two submissions deep in the
“to-read” pile, is the answer to the company’s red-ink woes. The
second is a quick way to get the red ink off the publisher's books and
on yours. But the third—I like it so much I wrote Publishing to Niche
Markets to tell everybody precisely how it's done. When that book was still a workshop and
being delivered nationwide, I called it "How to Earn $50,000 Profit
from Your First Book—Then Double It!” Hype? You decide. The field is called niche publishing.
While self-publishing requires three elements—preparation, production,
and promotion,—in niche publishing, you do much of the third before
the first or second. In standard self-publishing you find an
idea so broad that anybody seeing a book on that topic in a bookstore
will, you hope, instantly buy it. Your biggest problem is getting the
bookstore to stock and display your finished tome while you attempt to
fan up secondary promotional fires. In niche publishing you think
“narrow” and forget the bookstore. Applying the TCE
Process There are three guiding steps that govern
the sensible flow of your niche book's creation and development.
I cal1 them the "TCE Process.” T is for targeting, C for
customizing, and E for expanding. First you find a target market: not
everybody, but very specific bodies. Probably 35,000 of them at a
minimum, better if it’s 65,000 plus. Let's use dentists as our
example: 125,000 are currently in practice. Your target must be qualified. The number
of people in your market and their accessibility via an affordable
mailing list are the two most important qualifications. No mailing list?
Find another market. (To see if a list exists, check the SRDS Direct
Mail book in your library.) Then find a problem that is critica1 to
that market, one for which its members would drop everything to buy a
book that solves the problem. Finally, write that book! Niche publishing
won't work for novels or poetry. It works great for nonfiction how-to
books to specific buyers in need. Let's say that you know a lot about
insurance and want to share that information profitably with dentists.
Ask yourself, what insurance problems do dentists have that they would
eagerly buy a book to solve? Malpractice insurance! How do you know? Ask dentists. What do
they want? Lower premiums; an unbiased, reliable guide on current
polices; less paperwork. But mostly lower premiums. So you do your
research and what title emerges? Dentists: How to Lower Your Malpractice
Insurance Premiums 50%! Then you put on your promotional hat.
Before writing a word, determine what flyer you must put in the
dentists’ hands that will get them to fill in the form, write out the
check, and put it in today’s mail, or, better yet, have the
receptionist call your 800 number, e-mail, or fax—with a credit card
in hand! What promises must you make? What must
your book do to get a fast-buying response? Draw up a rough flyer with
every promise clearly stated. The rest—its table of contents, your
photo and bio, some testimonials, and so on—can be added as the book
takes form. It's the promises you must know first so you can use them
for research, writing, and selling. Customizing the Book If the book is for dentists, they will
read it because it's for dentists—only dentists. They don't want a
general book simply called How to Lower Malpractice Insurance Premiums
because they will assume it's for doctors, who will think it's for
chiropractors, who will think it's for 1awyers, who will think it's for
dentists. Put the target market first in the title, then make the book
fit. Every example in the book will be a
dentist. So will every illustration. How many dentists are male? Female?
Research and make sure that your illustrations and quotation sources are
in the same ratio of men to women. The median age of a dentist? The
illustrations and quotation sources will feature dentists near the
median age, plus a few very young, and a few near retirement. What do the books that dentists buy look
like? Your book will look much the same. You're not out to change
dentists' taste but to satisfy it. How much do they pay for books? Yours
will cost somewhere in that range. A dentist should feel comfortable
with your book in hand. I haven't space here to dwell on the
book's preparation and production. Other resources can help you there,
in particular Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual. But the financing
and promotion is done so differently that it deserves more explanation. Financing and Promotion To self-publish a niche book may cost you
half of its retail price, if you include the promotional costs. So if
your book sells for $19.95 (let's call it $20), your profit would be $10
for each book sold. You usually sell 90% or more of your
books by direct mail. That can cost you, minimum, three fliers printed
and delivered for $1. If you're going to send out 125,000 flyers, you
are talking $41,667. If you expect 10 percent of the dentists to buy the
book, which is a safe estimate for the kind of tightly-targeted (niche)
marketing described here, you will need 12,500 books ready to send. At a
printing cost of $3 per book, that's another $37,500. You’re talking $
80,000 to get out of the chute. Before you faint, the potential return on
12,500 sales at $20 each (assuming they pay the tax and shipping) is
$250,000. Mail order follows a predictable return ratio: half that money
will be in your hands within four weeks, 98 percent in 13 weeks. Try
matching that from an established printer or even from the bookstore
selling your self-published gems! Best yet, you don't need $80,000 to play
the game. That's the "fat cat" approach. For big risk, a fat
and fast return. The "skinny cat" approach says to print 2,000
copies, send out 20,000 flyers, risk about $14,000, and put all the
profits into sending out more flyers and printing more books. You'll
make a bit less money but you'll sleep better not having your house in
hock. The "alley cat" approach says
print 2,000 books, sell them to easy markets that require no mailing,
and begin financing the flyers with that income, perhaps $7,000 up
front. It takes a lot more patience and hustle to hit six figures this
way. Test First! You'll want to test your book on live
potential buyers before you invest beyond the $250 or so for your test.
Find 210 names of dentists representationally spread across the United
States. Use phone books, Chambers of Commerce, or perhaps the dental
association membership list. Send groups of 70 dentists the same items:
an information sheet that describes the book and its contents, makes
promises, and tells a bit about you; a letter asking dentists to please
return the enclosed postcard and telling them why, and a self-addressed
postcard asking, “would you buy this book if you received a flyer
describing it, would you pay $___, and do you have comments about it?”
(See the resources below for examples of
the components a 2003 test mailing for a book to school superintendents
and principals.) What you mail must look good. The graphics and content
are worth extra investment of time and proofing. Each group of 70 gets a different price.
If $19.95 is the lowest price you can afford to offer the book, send
that to one group. Try $24.95 with the next, and $29.95 with the third.
From the responses, you can get a fair sampling of the percentage that
would buy and how much they would pay. Calculate your costs and potential income
and decide whether it's a go or the book needs more refinement. If it's
a winner, then as the book firms up, so must the sales flyer. Have that
composed by a professional. That can cost $1,000 for its design and
graphic preparation. Don't stint here. All that dentists know about your
book and you come from that flyer. Don't limit your promotion to the flyer,
though most of your profits will come that way. Get the book reviewed in
all the professional journals that dentists read. Run a display ad in
those journals and newsletters. Think about having a booth at the
convention. Read John Kremer's 1001 Ways to Market Your Book for 996
more suggestions. Expanding Your Book What you are really selling, beyond a
book, is expertise. That's where the spin-off profits are made. Give
speeches at regional and national dental conventions (and sell more
books); offer seminars to dentists in key cities across the nation. From first books come second books,
building on an expansion of your perceived expertise. Articles are
opportunities for biographical slugs that cite the book. Audio and
videocassettes are additional possibilities. Another big profit center here may be a
newsletter offering current information every three or four months about
insurance news that dentists need to know. Build on your perceived
objectivity and the honesty
in the book. To continue saving thousands of dollars on malpractice
insurance plus more on other kinds of insurance, wouldn't a dentist be a
fool (1) not to buy your book in the first place and (2) not to buy more
current information from that same reliable source? Who will buy your
newsletter? Your own mailing list of non-fools who bought your book. That's it: a thumbnail sketch of niche
publishing. Substitute your area of expertise for the dentists and
malpractice insurance used here. Niche publishing requires plenty of work,
promotion before preparation and production, and risk capital in
advance. But nowhere are you in such command of your product and your
profits. And every time there is a serious need or problem, a book is
begging to be written. As long as there are needs, mailing
lists, and book buyers, there will be niche publishing. In fact, with
computers at hand, laser printers affordable, digital downloads
beckoning, and short-run printers in abundance, it will soon be the
dominant method of publishing. Join in! Resources for Niche
Publishers Three invaluable books, all by Burgett,
about niche publishing and marketing: Publishing to Niche Markets
($14.95). Niche Marketing for Writers, Speakers,
and Entrepreneurs ($14.95)
Empire-Building by Writing and
Speaking ($12.95) Check two useful niche publishing
reports, one that cites the examples used to test mail a 2003 niche book
project. Gordon also has a good two-tape (120
min.) audio cassette series, with workbook, called "How to
Self-Publisher Your Own Book and Earn $50,000 Profit." Plus a
shorter (60-minute), more specific audiocassette single called
"Using Your Book to Penetrate Your Niche Market" See more at www.gordonburgett.com.
Gordon Burgett also consults in this field. For the self-publishing process,
particularly consult these books: The Self-Publishing Manual, by Dan
Poynter ($19.95) 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, by
John Kremer ($27.95) Gordon Burgett is the author of 1700+
printed articles and 27 books, including five selected as top choices by
the Writer’s Digest Book Club: Sell & Resell Your Magazine
Articles, Travel Writer’s Guide, Publishing to Niche Markets, How to
Sell 75% of Your Freelance Writing, and Query Letters/Cover Letters: How
They Sell Your Writing. Gordon has offered 2000+ keynote or workshop
presentations, and currently speaks most about his latest book, How to
Plan a Great Second Life: What are you going to do with your extra 30
years? He can be reached at (800) 563-1454 or at Gordon@super-second-life.com.
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