Hello beautiful Substackers! 💞
Welcome to Chapter Three of Write a Book, Change Your Life.
This chapter is all about Market Research—a crucial step you simply can’t afford to skip.
When I wrote my book, You Were Meant For More…, I struggled to make more than 1-2 sales a month. It wasn’t until I took a closer look at why my book wasn’t selling that I realized the problem: I was promoting it on the wrong platform. The audience there wasn’t interested in ‘self-help’ books. Once I switched to a different platform, rewrote the sales copy, and tailored my approach, my sales increased dramatically.
I went from selling just a couple of books a month to 2-5 books a day. As reviews started to accumulate, my sales continued to rise.
This experience taught me the power of researching the market, targeting the right audience and refining your strategy. Now, I’m excited to share these insights with you so you can avoid the same pitfalls and maximize your book’s potential.
This chapter is all about analyzing the market and leveraging available information to transform your idea into a dream outcome.
Get ready to see sales, sales, sales! 🥳
I look forward to welcoming your feedback!
Enjoy! :)
P.S: In case you missed the previous two chapters: ⬇️
Chapter 3
Market Research: From Idea to Dream Outcome
I will never forget writing my first book. I felt an intense pull to write about self-development, which made perfect sense—I had just gone through a major life change that shattered everything I knew. Divorce, lost dreams, moving away from my "forever" home, total burnout, leaving everything behind, and starting over.
I wasn’t an expert on the topic, but I thought writing about it might bring me some clarity—and who knows, maybe it could help someone else too. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
The inspiration was flowing like something I had never experienced before. I sat in front of my keyboard, watching my fingers tap away at a lightning speed. I never knew I had a hidden talent. It wasn’t long before the blank pages started to make sense. I kept up this habit for 98 days straight—spending 6 to 8 hours a day in awe of how a simple, once-meaningless idea could manifest so easily right in front of my eyes. And when it finally did, voila—a finished product was born into the world, ready to be celebrated by many and, hopefully, start bringing in some much-needed cash.
Except that almost six dry months went by, and my once-heavenly inspired book turned into an utter failure. I didn’t just fail to sell a copy—I couldn’t even give a copy away for free. Can you imagine?! As a writer, I challenge you to give me other ways you could get any lower than that.
I’m telling you this story because I meet a lot of creative souls every day who go through a very similar, painful process. They tell me how they were hit with inspiration, the urge was unbearable, the Muse would simply not budge. There is something that wants to be born through you, and you have to take action. Like, NOW! Except that action takes time, and time is money. So what a lot of writers do is either quit their jobs to go all in with their passion because, you know, the feeling is so strong, and because XYZ person who also wrote a similar book just hit the $100K mark in like three days after self-publishing their story on XYZ platform, or simply because they have total blind faith in their abilities to write an earth-shattering book that will either entertain, educate, or motivate the hell out of someone who is already standing in the imaginary queue waiting for their masterpiece to drop.
Sounds familiar?
If you completed the easy tasks I showered you with in Chapter One, you should now have more clarity about whether anyone would even be interested in your book. I missed this crucial step, and it cost me two months of unpaid bills, many nights eating beans out of a can, and countless days pacing back and forth in my living room, pulling my hair out, wondering, “How could I be so stupid?” Don’t be like me.
If, however, you were a good student and found answers to your questions, chances are there’s a market for your book. But before you open up your laptop and devote even a second to typing out your words, it’s wise to look at some real-time data.
Why bother?
There are several reasons:
This step can save you a lot of time, heartache, and money.
It will show if your idea is still valid now, was valid a month or three months ago, and what the chances are that it will be valid in three months’ time.
It will help you turn your inspiration from an epic fail into a ginormous success. I kinda wish I’d dedicated some time to this short process.
This part can also help you estimate how much your e-book is likely to make—a wise move, if you ask me.
Let me share a secret: marketers use a variety of easily accessible data to predict how sales of products and services will perform. Many of these data points can also help forecast how your e-book might perform in sales. Let’s break down the key types of information these clever folks typically use, and how they could be applied to predicting your e-book sales: