Writing to Market: The Pros, the Cons, and the Real Story About the Money
If you’ve been writing for awhile, or even if you haven’t written a word of your novel yet but you long for the day you can quit your day job and write books full time, you’ve probably heard the term “write to market”.
Sounds pretty simple, right? Figure out what the “market”, aka your audience, wants, and give it to them. There are a few ways you can do this:
If you have an existing blog or social media presence, reverse engineer your analytics. Find out what search terms are bringing people to you, and use that term to inspire your next book.
Do your own research, either by conducting a poll or consulting an expert in your field.
Copy/paste a formula in your genre that has worked for another author, and use that in your own writing.
We can feel some of you cringing right now, those of you who are attached to your voice, writing style, and creative process. We’re with you.
There’s something so… clinical about the term “write to market”. Like it sucks the joy out of writing.
And at the same time, we’ve worked with hundreds of authors who have put their heart and soul into their books, only to find that it’s not resonating or even finding the right readers.
Nothing sucks the joy out of writing like feeling like there’s no place for it.
So, if you are interested in making money as an author and don't want to sell your soul in the process, this post is for you.
First, let’s set one thing straight. There is nothing wrong with approaching your writing as a business.
It IS a business, if you are trying to make money off it. Understanding your readers is an essential part of making sure your book is successful.
But there is an art to this, one that many successful authors master by finding a balance between what the market wants and what THEY want to write.
For example, let’s say you’ve been blogging about homeschooling your children for the past five years. You’ve developed a modest following and feel ready to put all you know about homeschooling into a book.
You will start with your honest goals, as we say time and time and time again in our book, Portable Magic: How to Write and Publish a Great Book. Your hope is that this book provides you passive income to help fund your homeschooling efforts.
Portable Magic:
How to Write and Publish a Great Book
by Roseanne Cheng
Your thought had been to write a book called The Complete Guide to Homeschooling Your Child, a how-to book that covers all you know about the subject.
But when you look at your analytics, you notice something interesting.
Your most successful post by far is one called “Homeschooling Using Phonics”.
You dig a little deeper and find that most people are finding your blog by googling “phonics and homeschool”.
Suddenly, the focus of your book becomes a little clearer. You change your book from The Complete Guide to Homeschooling Your Child to Phonics Based Instruction for Homeschooling Families.
You don’t have to guess that this book will have an active audience—you already know that it does.
You are simply giving them exactly what they are asking for. That is writing to market, and an excellent choice to approach your writing.
This can be a bit trickier for fiction authors.
Even if you have an active presence, creative books are just that—creative. How can you use analytics to find your next story idea? And even if you could… should you?
We would argue that all research is good research, even if you choose not to use it.
For example, if you are a fiction author, here are a few articles you might want to consider before drafting your outline:
Post-COVID, the audiences are looking for an escape from reality.
Graphic novels continue to gain traction and popularity.
Less is more: short books are all the rage.
One word: ROMANTASY.
Are we saying that based on these articles you should ditch your idea for a 1000 page detective novel involving a COVID-19 mystery inspired by real events, and instead write a graphic novel romantasy series?
Of course not.
Write the book you want to write!
Just know that you might have a bit of a tougher sell with your book, at least as far as the trends go.
Tough does not mean impossible! And as we all know, there are never any guarantees of success. Ever!
Here’s the truth about the money:
If you want to make money off your book, you need to find a way to consistently get it in front of new eyes who are looking for your content.
We think the best and easiest way is through pay-per-click advertising, but still, that is an investment.
READ MORE: Does Amazon Advertising Work for Books?
The best part about employing a “write to market” strategy is that you are taking some of the guesswork out of those advertising strategies.
The homeschooling author knows the keywords will help her reach her audience because they already are doing just that.
The same goes for the fiction author who’s writing to match the trends in the market.
But as we always say, if this doesn’t bring you joy as a creative, skip it.
This business is hard enough—don’t make it harder on yourself by taking away the joy of writing for YOU!
