How to conduct research for writing ebooks?

[thunder_god]

Hello everyone.

I'm just in the process of trying to get started on writing my first fiction ebook in either erotic romance or romance or maybe even erotica but I've been reading a lot of comments about people recommending you do research on what is selling instead of just writing something and throwing it out there hoping it will sell.

Right now I have a tonne of ideas in my head about writing stories but just don't want to waste my time writing something if there is no demand for it. I saw a guide about doing keyword research on amazon like typing in keywords and seeing how much books are published in that category and also checking to see how the reviews are for the titles. Is it really that simple or is there more to it?

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[nradam123]

http://startupbros.com/write-book-yes/

The link might help you. Its an amazing read.

 

[EricZ]

Check out this free category research tool, and while you are at it KdSpy:
http://www.zbooks.co/p/the-poor-mans-kdspy-niche-finder-and.html

You can easily see on the spreadsheet which categories are profitable.

With titling your book it's a little murkier, the technique you mentioned above works good for "how to" and non fiction books, but for romance and sci-fi it's basically useless.

Basically you go to your target categories in -zon and look at the first and last book on the page.
-- Look at their overall ranking in amazon (there's a video in that link above just watch it!)
--You want the 1st book on the page to be UNDER 10,000 overal in -zon i.e. a number smaller than 10,000. Basically that's saying this category is profitable (very "round-about" calculation!)
--You want the last book on the page (20th book) to have the highest number possible (=lowest ranking) preferably in the millions.
This is "barrier to entry". This tells you if you have a chance to get your book on that page.

After you have done your research and chosen a profitable category, you should study the books on the front page of chosen category (the top 20 results).
Study their covers - What can you do different to get noticed
Study their 1 star reviews - what are they lacking in- how can you make a better book.

Then make the book the readers want.

ACHTUNG - your chosen category is so frikken competitive you have no chance as a newbe to make it in "romance".
You must drill down into the sub-sub categories, and even then, in romance you're gonna need influencer/celebrity endorsements or facebook ads to rise above the others.

 

[Selfy]

Hello everyone.

Right now I have a tonne of ideas in my head about writing stories but just don't want to waste my time writing something if there is no demand for it. I saw a guide about doing keyword research on amazon like typing in keywords and seeing how much books are published in that category and also checking to see how the reviews are for the titles. Is it really that simple or is there more to it?

.

Don't confuse yourself with categorical numbers, as the only number you need is your target word count.

First make a distinction Romance vs. Erotica. These are two different markets, needs, skill sets, marketing-approaches.
Second, judge the niche as having 'ceilings' as in how fast does it saturate. The way to do this is to rely on your own data in KDP, outside tools will obfuscate any notion of profitability at this point post KDP 2.0.
Third, this is art, entertainment. So a well-crafted book will out-perform a well-placed crap book in the long-run.
Fourth, this isn't fast-cash central anymore, so you should be building a catalog of books, and honing your writing skill with each book.

 

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