How to Write to Market and Improve your Income

How to Write to Market and Improve your Income If you’re an indie author, it’s possible you have heard other authors talk about writing to market. It’s not a new concept, but within the last few years indie authors have been using it to sell more books and skyrocket their income. Here’s how to do it. 1.  Ã‚     Pick a genre you love.  It does no good to write in a genre you don’t read in and enjoy, so pick one you are quite familiar with. For example, let’s pick mystery. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Drill down to a popular sub-genre.  Take some time and look at the different sub-genres. Pick one you enjoy and look at the top selling books. Let’s pick culinary cozy mystery. If you look on Amazon, the top selling book in that category is #112 in the whole Kindle store. This is good, it means this is a hot category. Now look at the top twentieth book. It’s ranked #2,771. Anything above #10,000 is going to indicate it’s a hot market. The trick is to pick one that is hot, but not so crowded that you can’t break in. 3.  Ã‚     Study the tropes, themes, and similarities.  Now that you’ve picked your sub-genre, buy the top ten books and read them. Look at the story threads that run through all the books searching for tropes and themes that are the same. Ignore the outliers, the books that sell well but don’t have similar themes or tropes. You’re looking for the commonalities. Write them down. 4.  Ã‚     Write your book.  Now you should be able to incorporate these well-loved tropes and themes in your own book. This does not mean you are copying the stories. This means you are using common storytelling devices that have been around for years. With your own unique twists, you should be able to tell a story that will be both fresh and new, yet familiar and loved. 5.  Ã‚     Rapid release.  A popular trend to raising your income is to write three novels and then publish one every 30 days. This will acquire you more visibility and raise your ranks, especially if you’re writing in a series. 6.  Ã‚     Write a reader magnet.  Write a novella or short story and give it away as incentive to join your newsletter. 7.  Ã‚     Network.  Spend some time on social media getting to know other authors who write in your genre. For this example, this would be culinary cozy mystery. See if there are any Facebook groups where these authors hang out. If not, start your own and invite authors to join. 8.  Ã‚     Trade promotion.  Offer to promote another author’s book in your newsletter if they will promote yours. 9.  Ã‚     Slow release.  Instead of scheduling all your promotion on your release day, spread it out so your book slowly rises in rank on Amazon. This will make your book stay higher in rank longer. Michelle Pennington was averaging $33 income per month in the beginning of 2017. She began writing to market in the fall of 2017 and in the beginning of 2018 was averaging $3,600 income per month. This May she topped $7,000 for the month. Amy Meyer earned $63.50 in May of 2017. She began writing to market under the pen name of Anne-Marie Meyer shortly after that. Her income for Ma, 2018 was $7,353. Bree Livingston published her first to market book in March of this year. She made $2,283 in March. April brought in $6,402. May topped $8,000. Last year her total income was $281. These three examples happen to be sweet romance writers, but this isn’t a concept that only works for this genre. Craig Martelle, founder of the Facebook group 20Booksto50K writes to market science fiction. Susan Kaye Quinn brings in six figures writing YA dystopian. This method will work with any genre as long as it is commercial, and you pick a niche that is selling well.