Laura with Dave Chesson, author and founder of Kindlepreneur about using key words to market your book and even choose to write on a topic for which there is a market. There are generally two ways to make money as an author. One is to have a large platform and the other is to have a discoverable book for which there is a good market. Two ways you can help ensure success: write about something the customer is looking for and if the books out there are something you can beat. As John Lee Dumas said, "Its' better to go a mile deep and an inch wide versus a mile wide and an inch deep." Look into Amazon Best Seller Rank or ABSR. Do some research on what is out there in terms of books on a topic and what their sales rank is. There are about 4.7 million books out there right now. Then look at the books out there, are the covers good, are there poor ratings? Ask yourself if you could write a better book. If their ABSR is good and the quality of what is out there is poor, you have a good chance of selling well. You can also search the Google Key Word Planner and google will tell you how many people a month are using those key words. It will also give you suggestions, synonyms, etc. You might find out there is a huge market or none.
Dave has written seven books via pen names and he has chosen to use pen names due to his work for the military. Each book makes between $700 and $2000 a month per book without building an author platform. Good for authors to know that while an author platform is good to build, there are alternatives to this approach. This approach is also good for those who write books that are not part of their public persona like erotica etc. This approach is also similar to what Tim Ferriss did with market testing his book title for "4 Hour Work Week." Basically doing market research for your book prior to releasing the book or even writing the book can really help you sell well and make more money. Dave is about to launch a service called KDP rocket - it is an amazon book idea validator and it will tell you how many people type a certain term into amazon and it will also tell you how books with those keywords make. The tool will help you figure out if there is a market and if you have a chance in that particular market. It will launch end of June. KDP was designed to provide book marketing tactics for writers and currently has 45,000 subscribers. Dave is also the one who answers the contact page questions himself directly. We also discussed the importance of marketing and writing your book simultaneously.
Most authors will wait to market until they are done writing or almost done writing. If you do it simultaneously, not only are you increasing your marketing but you will likely create a better product as well. Dave also is a big advocate of paying it forward so if his works helps you, he asks you to pay it forward for others. You can connect with Dave and Kindlepreneur at www.kindlepreneur.com. If you want more information on Laura Powers, you can go to her website www.laurapowers.net. You can also find updates on the podcast by following the Write Hot Podcast on Facebook.