By Carla Trueheart
You’ve spent a lot of time writing your book, editing the manuscript, and polishing the final draft. The next logical step is to jump right onto the publishing roller coaster, with all of its ups and downs. But before sending out those queries, it might be a good idea to do a quick Book Market Analysis. This type of market analysis will allow you to gauge the market for your genre, find the best agent for your work, target specific readers, and even decide your author platform. It’s an important part of the process and will put you in a better position when dealing with agents, publishers, and the reading public. Basically, you want to plan ahead for the best possible outcome for your book.
Some questions you might ask yourself are: How is the market for my current genre? How popular will my novel be out there on the bookshelves? What agents may be interested in this genre? How successful are those agents when selling my genre to publishers? Gauging the market, particularly in the publishing world, is tricky as trends always move around. One day wizards are in, the next day vampires are in, and it goes round and round. Of course the best advice for an author is to write what you’re passionate about and not worry about publishing trends, but it still helps to get a feel for the market by genre in order to place and sell your novel.
The outline below should help get you started, but you’re welcome to add or subtract any of these head topics for your analysis, depending on your personal genre and research methods. I hope these help you, and please let us know in the comments section how you make out, or if you have any other suggestions for our followers!
1. Book Research
A. Find 3-5 competitive titles (on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.)
a. How many copies were sold?
b. How many weeks was the book on the bestseller list?
c. Who is the publisher and agent for each book?
B. Research the history of the book’s genre
C. Compare all of your research
2. Profile (You)
A. How will you develop an author profile/platform using your specific genre?
B. What forms of technology will you use to promote and sell your book?
a. Website themes
b. Social media types
c. E-readers
3. Profile (Similar Author)
A. Revisit competitive titles and research the authors
B. What are their innovative marketing techniques? (example: J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore)
C. How did they break into publishing?
D. How are you similar? How are you different?
4. Target Audience
A. What demographic are you writing toward? (age, culture, reading level)
B. Where do these readers frequent? (blogs? social media sites? magazines?)
C. Describe your target audience
D. Compare all of your research
Analyze all of your research to make connections, then post your thoughts and questions in the comments section. Thanks for reading and good luck!
