Marketing Books—Success & Failures—III

Looking for market niches—

Filled with hubris because of my past marketing experience, I surveyed all the marketing niches that my book, Kisses, might fit. I, like most authors, thought I was writing for a general audience but, as mentioned before, it’s a very crowded marketplace and every author should try to find a niche where a focused strategy will yield better results than a general marketing approach.

As an example, Kisses could be broadly classified as history, or more specifically Middle Eastern history. It also fit as a general immigration study, travel book, or even, as I accidentally discovered, the world of genealogy. The narrower the field you can identify, the more apt you are to find venues to the target market. You should always be on the lookout for markets that might not have been apparent at the outset.

One day, I received a call from the program chairman of the local genealogy society asking if I would be interested in speaking at one of their meetings. He’d heard about me at the library where I had given a talk (one where I sold three books). As a result, I ginned up a presentation, which was well received and sold eight books. I decided that this was a bona fide niche that I should explore.

I searched the Internet for genealogy societies in the state of Florida and sent off eMails to all of them. I soon began receiving replies, asking how much I charged, etc. The lead times were lengthy because most of these associations schedule talks a year in advance. Nonetheless, I have now appeared at six different genealogy associations and have not only sold 85 books, but also received several hundred dollars in speaking fees, plus travel. And I have several more such events on my calendar.

The bottom line here is that this was an unexpected marketing thrust that dropped into my lap—because of another event that I had considered a failure. So, the lesson I learned was that lemons can be turned into lemonade. You just have to be ready to squeeze them!

To be continued—