Tag: finding your voice

Pleasing The Niche Market

My target market
for my Romance Novels
is fairly small.

The readers in this niche
know what they want.
They have certain expectations
for the stories in it.

I HAVE to meet those expectations
if I want to sell to them.
I have to make them happy.
I have to craft books
they find great.

If I don’t,
I won’t sell very many books.

Because my books aren’t for everyone.
The random reader
won’t like them.
My books are designed for this niche.

Seth Godin
shares

“The strategy of
the smallest viable audience
doesn’t let you off the hook
–it does the opposite.

You don’t get to say,
“well, we’ll just wait
for the next random person
to find us.”

Instead, you have to choose
your customers
–who’s it for
and what’s it for.
And when you’ve identified them,
the opportunity/requirement
is to create
so much delight and connection
that they choose
to spread the word
to like-minded peers.”

Creating products/services
for a niche market
can be more challenging
than creating products/services
for everyone.

Know the niche market’s expectations
and deliver the products/services
they desire.

Limiting Your Effort

When I started writing romance,
I wrote short stories
for a small press publisher.

I was working the business gigs
and didn’t have a lot of time
to spend on writing
and publishing stories.

I also didn’t know
what would sell,
what I was good at,
or
what I was doing.

I used what I call
the spaghetti method.
I threw a bunch of
short, quickly written stories
at the wall (the market)
and saw what stuck
(what was successful).

I used partners
(like the publisher)
so I had time to write
more stories
to throw at that wall.

Then I developed
that best selling ideas.

Daniel Vassallo
shares
(this entire thread
is gold)

“Aggressively capping
your inputs
is important
for many reasons.
The most obvious is that
it gives you space
for more bets.
But it also helps
tremendously
with motivation.
It’s a lot easier to do
small things,
and the failures hurt
a lot less
when you haven’t put in
a big effort.”

If you don’t know
what will be successful,
consider
limiting your inputs
as much as possible
and trying more things.