PUBLISHING TO NICHE
MARKETS
Gordon Burgett
[See 2 sample chapters below]
(see Table of Contents)
Would a cool $50,000 profit from your
first book come in handy? Then double that again? Read on...
Niche publishing is the future of
self-publishing. It is the INTERNET of the book world. It opens the markets,
profits, and accessibility of readers to anybody with vital information, a
computer, an editor, some starter cash, and knowledge of the process this book
explains.
Publishing to Niche Markets shows how to
* find eager buyers before you write a
word
* gather information and write your book
* find a need those buyers will pay to
meet
* produce your book....or have it
produced
* customize your book to meet that need
* promote and sell your book
* test potential profits before investing
* expand your book's contents into more
books and more profits
A publishing revolution is afoot. Until
now,
The difference is the computer and sale
by mail (regular and e-). There are 100,000 publishers now. That will reach
200,000 by 2010. Almost all of them will be niche publishers, working out of
their homes, selling specific need-meeting information to recipients known
before the word is passed.
PUBLISHING TO NICHE MARKETS contains the password and codes for joining the
revolution. It defines TCE and the three "Ps" of publishing through a
straightforward 14-step process and an example. It shows why no form of
publishing entails less risk or reaps more profit.
Originally released as Self-Publishing to Tightly-Targeted Markets, this updated and revised edition keeps pace with
the lightening changes in the information dissemination world.
It's simple. If your book contains how-to
information that meets the need of a specific market, you want to earn many
times more than a standard publisher would pay by royalty, and you want a fat
profit plus equity, buy this book, read it, and get going!
TESTIMONIALS
"Gordon Burgett is publishing's newest guru, joining Poynter, Kremer, and the Rosses. Publishing to Niche Markets is more than the
road map of the future, it's mandatory reading for
anybody eager to write or publish a nonfiction book."
.....Suzanne Hogsett, author of Bargain Travel
Resource Book
" Gordon's book is about focusing: on your subject, on your
reader, and on the reward for your efforts. Highly recommended to anyone
serious about breaking into print."
.....Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing
Manual
"My only regret: I didn't have this
book fifteen years ago. It's must reading for anyone
planning to publish their own book."
.....Gary Moselle, owner of the Craftsman Book
Company and past-president of the Publisher's Marketing Association
ISBN: 910167-27-3
200 pages/paper
* * $14.95 shipping (and, if applicable, CA
tax)
SAMPLE CHAPTERS
INTRODUCTION
The title of this
book sounds like the true path to penury. Publishing is hard enough, but to
niche markets? More work and greater risk to sell to fewer
people?
You're in for a
real surprise!
It may be the best kept secret in the book
publishers' trove that true fortunes and sweet futures can come from
pinpointing and helping meet specific needs of reachable markets. Best yet, in
this arena the small publisher can beat the giant at his own game every time!
The title of this book describes its
contents precisely: how one publishes to niche markets, even better than the
title of its earlier edition, Self-Publishing to Tightly-Targeted Markets.
Yet the book does
much more.
Beyond explaining
the concept, it presents a system that will take you step-by-step through the
process, and shows as it tells with examples that you can follow or from which
you can extrapolate to publish your own book and cull your own rewards.
Moreover, this
process greatly reduces the risks and costs of publishing while increasing your
profits, and the certainty of them.
And the book talks
about a philosophy, a way of sharing information.
It shows how, as a
publisher, you can use your book as the core of a larger market penetration
through which you can sell the same or related information more often and more
widely.
That is, it
suggests that as important as your book is, the expertise that you display
about its subject is more important still. That by sharing that expertise,
through additional books or other information dissemination means, you can
create an empire that could multiply your income mightily as you help others
meet their needs.
But I'm getting
ahead of myself. The next chapter begins the fleshing out of these promises.
Publishing to Niche Markets mostly talks about marketing,
then writing, then expanding the marketing again, which is what all publishers
do. And while the process focuses on books, the concept and many of the steps
can usually be applied to any other means of information dissemination, such as
articles, speeches, seminars, audio or video tapes, newsletters, or consulting.
I call it the
"TCE process" because the three key elements are Targeting,
Customizing, and Expanding. A section of the book is devoted to each element.
But first I explain the concept in greater detail, show how standard publishing
is inappropriate for almost all niche publishing, and how the alternate, the
self-publishing path, is ideal for this purpose. Finally, a list of "other
sources and guides" is included to lead you to specific, applicable
information about the steps you must follow to publish and successfully market.
This book is about
book writing and publishing because, of the many means, I know it best and I
most want to share a new process about it with you. It is my twelfth book. The
first was sought by the major publisher in my field but I decided to publish it
myself. (They later included the second edition of that book, plus subsequent
writing books, as top choices for their book club.) The decision to
self-publish was the brightest thing I have done in years. It gave me an
opportunity to learn about the full spectrum of publishing from an independent
yet involved perspective. Which, in turn, led to the TCE
process and this book. The TCE process is neither a panacea nor publishing
salvation. It simply will not work for some books, as I will explain. Yet it
will work for many more, most of which would never be published by the standard
houses and therefore would probably never be written and see print.
That is my
greatest motivation for writing these pages. I am naive enough to believe that
we can have a far better world on this earth and that one of the keys to its
creation is knowledge shared as fully and widely as possible. Thought needs to
be preserved; books are vital elements of that preservation. Our society puts a
premium less on knowledge for its own sake than the sales value of that
knowledge. Therefore elements of information, particularly when its
availability would be paid for by few, either remain unknown or never reach the
book page. Wewriters and potential readersare the poorer for
it.
The TCE process
does not attempt to change the social norm but rather to expand the way that
information can be made available and, yes, profitable, so it will be published
in book form to far more people by many more writers. It simply makes books
possible for more readers and for smaller readerships. That delights me
immensely.
Americathe worldis
full of bright, articulate, insightful people who either have something to share
or could have if they just knew that there is an easy-to-follow, self-directed
path by which their words can reach readersand
for which they could be, at the same time, rewarded for having dared and worked
to put them on paper.
Do I think that a
real difference can be made by encouraging even more books in a world where too
many books already go unread? You bet. Every new book writer is different and
better for the act. And, yes, some of those books will contain bucketsful of
trash. Many will follow well-trod paths, clichιs blazing. But one or a dozen
might change the world in a way never thought possible before its words were
read. That book, or that dozen, might never have existed had a process like TCE
not been suggested. So that too delights and motivates
me. Finally, an introduction is an opportunity to thank others who have made
this book, and its thoughts, possible, though they aren't responsible for its
contents or any errors or folly it may contain.
My first guide to
self-publishing was Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing
Manual, and from that came a valued personal friendship and much help.
Jim Comiskey has been a steady prod to better work
and clearer thought. Virgil Cooper keeps me honest in a delightful way while he
keeps my computers alive, while the Marci Manderscheids,
Fran Vogels, Jan Wahls,
Dick Hennings, and Roberta Dunhams,
plus a dozen other unsung enablers in the grove of extended education, kept my
debtors away and let me share this information through seminars while I pruned
it for print. Finally, my gratitude to the many chapters of the National
Speakers Association who heard these words, mercifully condensed, and made the
kind comments that both keep a new idea afloat and convinced its aging skipper
that it should be shared even more widely.
Actually, I'd have
published this book even if nobody liked it because I think it offers a
perspective and process that's needed, is perfectly in tune with today's
technological state, and rewards the doerthe
writer, producer, promoter, and seller called collectively the self-publisherwith the money, prestige, and promise he or she deserves.
But I have delayed
you too long from seeing what TCE means and how it works if you do. So end the
introduction, start the book!
Chapter 1. The Premise
The premise is
straightforward:
"If you know something
that others will pay to know,
they will pay to know it many
ways and by many means."
Of course premises
are open to debate. But rather than debate, let's put our energy to more
lucrative action. The purpose of these pages is to show you how, and why,
to publish to niche markets. If you are clever enough to do that, this
book will also help you find areas of knowledge sufficiently compelling to make
the premise come true.
The premise is
straightforward: Again, "If you know something that others will pay to
know, they will pay to know it many ways and by many means."
In other words, if
you wish to share information (which is what books do) and you want to be
well-rewarded (in spendable tender, lots of it), that
something you know that others will pay to know can make your wish come true.
For example, if
you are the expert on widget burnishing but the process defies written
explanation and your entire worldwide audience consists of seven scattered aficionados
somewhere on the planet Earth, this book isn't for you.
But if you can
tell others, say, how to sell widgets, there are many thousands eager to
increase (better, double) their widget-selling commissions and they are
accessible, you're already on the path to profitable publishing. And if
you can expand the selling information and it would interest other widget
hawkers to learn more by other means (such as articles, audio cassettes,
videos, newsletters, or consulting), get reading!
Why am I talking
about those other thingsarticles, tapes, newsletters, consultingwhen what you really want to do is publish a book?
Because what you are selling is none of those. You are selling
information packaged as expertise, and those are simply the ways that
information is sold. If you can sell your information one way, you can
usually sell it, with modifications, most of the other ways.
I will focus on
one of those ways here: a book. But if I totally isolated the book from
the other means, a couple of things would happen. I would give you an
incomplete, diluted view of the dynamics of information sharing akin to
describing how to play baseball by focusing solely on bunting and
running. And I'd be grossly derelict in showing you how, with only a
fraction of additional effort, you could easily double
your effectiveness and income.
Thus you will read
about other means as well on these pages. Still, the overwhelming thrust
of this text and its purpose is book-related, and with the exception of Chapter
Seven, "Meeting That Need Through Other
Information Dissemination Means," and half of the third section,
EXPANDING, books and publishing to niche markets are the core and substance of
these pages. By understanding the book publication process you will be
able to follow parallel steps for the other means, if they are applicable and
you are interested.
Two
more thoughts about the premise.
One, it's not
enough just to have knowledge stored in your head. Even consultants have
to share and adapt what they know for it to be profitable. They must
convert what they know into applicable information upon which they or others
can act.
The
same for you. What makes information valuable to others is more than its
existence. It must be available, understandable, and usable. How is
that best done? By a means of information
dissemination. Like a book.
The second point:
you needn't be the foremost expert in the world to share information. In
fact, you don't have to know much about your topic at all when you begin.
The critical point is that the information you finally share is accurate,
complete, and applicable. Not whether you spent a lifetime gathering it
or a couple of no-nonsense months. The quality of your information will
be judged by those who buy it. If it's good, they will want more of that
good thing in other ways. If it's not, you've wasted a lot of time,
money, and energy violating the premise. You simply don't know something
that others will pay to know.
So far we've
flirted with theory and fiddled with philosophy. Let's get to your
book. Like, why not let some big-bucks publisher take it off your hands,
send you fat royalty checks, and forget all this foolishness about doing it
yourself? Stayed tuned.
|
Gordon Burgett |
(800) 563-1454 |