A huge part of both books is about the market, the need for your product and the value skew to other products. Of course you need to do market research...

Edit: It would never hurt to have market insight. It can only help you do better.

 

I believe MJ says in Unscripted that he didn’t do any market research for his 1st book. He simply wrote it out of passion.

Because he didn’t care whether it sold or not he didn’t need it to sell a lot he had already made his money.

You see once you have autonomy you can do whatever the H you want. Whether the market wants it or not.

 

This forum was most of his research.

 

I'll be writing a book on weight loss and, unless they no longer sell it, I'll get Yoav Ezer's non-ficiton course on how to rank your book on Amazon.

As for market research, here's how it works for most famous non-fiction authors:

1) They research the hell out of a market, and create a book based on the pain and solutions of their ideal customers

2) They connect with their audience as much as possible (mainly via email, social media etc)

3) When they're famous, they've created their own niche and tribe. In this case, they can write almost anything and it will still sell like hotcakes.

A good example is Ben Settle.

He began as a copywriter and then specialized in email copywriting.

But, after being immersed in his market for years, he started writing books that, at first, there was no need for them. A good example is his Villains' book. he wrote it (and, more accurately, he collected it since it was just a bunch of articles he wrote for a now-extinct website) because he wanted and it became successful.

Now he's finishing his 7th novel, he wrote a book on his rules (which entail a ton of stuff) and he has a ton of stuff planned out as well, that don't require that much market research.

The same can apply to M.J. (heck, he could write a book on his dating adventures and I'd still buy it) and anyone else.

 

Yup. What I liked about UNSCRIPTED was that it had links to all the forum posts that brought about the info-something that TMF didn't have.

Nice to see that everyone got the chance to put in their coin in the hat.

But market research is never 100% perfect, even though it does mitigate risk of failure. There's always Type 1 and Type 2 errors lol, looming over our heads.