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Do You Really Know How to Write a Book That Sells?

October 4, 2018 by Dave Chesson

Do you want to write a book and make money from it?

That’s great!

However, it’s one thing to create a masterpiece of a book but another thing to write one that will become a bestseller.

So how do you come up with your own book idea that will sell?

Maybe if you’re someone famous such as Richard Branson, Tony Robbins or Oprah Winfrey, it’s easy to sell books.

But for us ordinary mortals who are not (not yet anyway) of their caliber, we need to have a unique strategy on how to create a book that will truly stand out despite tons of competition.

For this to work, you need to ask the following before writing that first word in your book.

  • Does your book idea have a pre-existing market with low competition?

Okay, granting that there’s a huge market looking for a similar topic of your book, but if you got heavy competition on that niche, then your book idea may not prosper. For example, you want to create a book on how to lose weight, and you know you have a market as many people want to be fit. But then again, you’ve also got massive competition and your book may become “invisible” against a horde of other books talking about the same subject.

  • Do you have proof that your market is willing to buy your book?

Just because people type something in Google search bar, it doesn’t mean that they’re willing to buy that. Yeah, sometimes they do, but others also know they can get it free with being resourceful. That’s why you need to validate that your book idea is saleable and you have the market that’s willing to pay for what you have to offer them.

To answer these questions, here is the guide to crafting a book idea that sells.

Check out how many people look for your book idea

First of all, you need to see if people are searching for your target phrase or topic of your book.

To do that, you could use a free tool showing you the number of people typing a certain phrase into Google per month. You have to see if there is online traffic or not for that term.

You can go to https://kwfinder.com/ to utilize the Google related tool. In the search bar, type your book subject. There it shows you the number of people per month who type that exact phrase you keyed in.

After that, check if you can make money with your idea.

Even if you saw that your Google keyword phrase had a high demand with low competition, still you need to find out if it’s the kind that people would pay for the information you’re offering.

a)    Key in your possible book idea phrase into Amazon for Kindle.

b)    Then choose the top 14 books (displayed on the 1st page of Amazon search results) and look for their ABSR (Amazon Best Seller Rank), number of views and price.

c)    You need to find out the number of books sold daily. You can have this data by getting the ASBR number and copy it in the free Amazon Best Seller Rank Calculator https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-kdp-sales-rank-calculator/

d)    After that, multiply the number of books sold daily by the book’s price and “30” so as to have a calculation of the amount of money the book is generating monthly.

e)    Do all these for the 14 books chosen. Total all the earnings daily and divide by 14 so that you can come up with the top 14 average earnings daily for that group. Formula: (total daily earnings)/14= average earnings for that search phrase.

f)    So, does it seem like a good number to you? With KDP Rocket, these data will be delivered to you with just one click—very easy, like calling your favorite food delivery service, guaranteed fresh, ready to be consumed, and saves you a lot of time. Not only that, but you can also access book reviews, covers etc.

3)    Find out about your competition.

What has already been published on your book topic? You need to check out how badass your competitors are. Most importantly, if you can position your book to outdo the others—or not.

a)    Key in the book phrase in Amazon and check the number of results being displayed.

b)    Get the ABSR of each of the top 3 books and average them together.

c)    Take the ABSR of the top 14 books and average them together also.

d)    Now, take a look at the book descriptions, covers, customer reviews, etc and give the book an honest grade from 1-100—1 being awful and 100 being perfect in almost everything. This will serve as your quality competition analysis.

By coming up with these 4 numbers, you would be able to gauge the competitiveness of the book’s phrase or idea.

Those are just the numbers side. There is also the qualitative side of measuring the competition and these main factors include:

–    Book titles and subtitles. Are they optimized well when they show up for that phrase?

–    Book cover appearance. Extremely horrible and therefore easy to defeat?

–    The number of monthly searches for that book phrase or idea. Is there enough space?

–    The author and their credibility. So, if your competitor is J.K Rowling, oh well…

Send advance copies to popular bloggers.

This is an effective way of easily maximizing your publicity especially if they have a large audience. If other authors also ask you to support their book on your network, accept it. When it’s time to promote your book, you need all the help you can get.

There you have it. The steps on how to come up with a book idea that will sell. If you don’t know how to rate it, no worries if you’re using the KDP Rocket. It takes care of that data– delivered fresh and generate a competitive score for you.

Just like training for the military, when it comes to strategizing your book idea, you need to arm yourself with stealth tactics, lots of practice and testing out. And before you know it, you’re battle-ready to put your books out there and eliminate your rivals— because KDP Rocket is your best all-out weapon for that.

Related Posts :

What Makes a Best Seller?
The “Spreadsheet Marketing” Lie
Tips to Succeed on Reality TV
The Novel Writer's Toolkit: From Idea to Best...

Filed Under: Research, Resources for Writers Tagged With: best seller, market research

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