Hall - Write to Market: How I Write A Book That Will Sell Well In Its Genre (Self-Publishing Success 2)

My name is Kate, and Ive been a full time author since February of 2020, although Ive been publishing books since 2019.

My first book was a complete and utter failure. It sold twenty copies, and I couldnt give paperbacks away. It was a Young Adult Urban Fantasy novel with a cast of queer characters, and it took me five years from the time I started writing it until it was available for sale on Amazon.

I couldnt believe how badly it tanked. I knew this book was going to be what made me successful, and Id never have to worry about money again.

However, there were about a thousand problems with the book that made it impossible to market, and so I was left scrambling to find any sort of audience in the world of Amazon Self-Publishing.

This is a mistake that thousands of authors make every single year. They write a book that may be great, but it doesnt fit the market theyre going for. If youre finding that you have this issue, then dont despair! Theres plenty you can do to ensure that your future work reaches the audience you want and makes you some real money.

Disclaimer: This book is for people who want to use publishing to make money. If your goal is just to be able to say that youve published your book, then you might not like what I have to say. Because if youre trying to write for money, then you have to write your books to fit the market. Otherwise, youre cutting your potential sales off at the knees and hurting your chances to succeed.

Now that Ive gotten that out of the way, I want to tell you how I personally learned about the Write to Market'' method. I was browsing through the 20Booksto50K Facebook group, a hub of writers who want to make money from their books. (The goal is to make $50,000 a year from 20 published books).

An author posted about how they wrote their newest book to the market, and it did really well!

Later, I was invited to speak at a writers conference in Kansas City, Missouri about rapid releasing books. It was still 2019, and despite having several short YA books out at that point, I was still barely making any money. I could talk at length about how to write books quickly (after all, I was finishing a book every week!), but I had no idea how to succeed with said books. The two other panelists, however, announced that they were each making $20,000 per month or more! Meanwhile, Id barely cleared $50 in a month.

I took the microphone, simply said, Im switching genres, and passed it back to the others. The audience laughed, and I definitely said it with some humor. However, I was also serious. I knew that what I was doing wasnt working. People reading self-published young adult fiction werent picking up what I was writing down.

A month later, I had a cover and an outline for my first Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance novel. Had I written any sort of adult Paranormal Romance to that point? No. Had I been reading it? Also no. However, that didnt matter to me. I knew from other authors that it was entirely possible to succeed with the hungry audience of RH, and I also knew that I was living with my husband at my moms house.

Once I had a basic outline done, I started my research. I read as much as I could find, and I looked for blog posts and eBooks on the traditional Reverse Harem tropes. I had to succeed, because my life wasnt sustainable.

When I released that book in January, it made $100 in four days. My best month, to that point, had been $88. That was with four YA books and two more adult contemporary books (dont get me started on how badly I messed THOSE up! Just kidding, Ill discuss those more in Chapter X).

In February, I made nearly $700, still from that single book. I was dumbstruck. When book two came out, we were unknowingly about to hit the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and my husband would soon lose his job, the only thing keeping us afloat. (And even that was barely doing it. Our car was repossessed in March). I was terrified, but March showed me that I wasnt just getting lucky. That month, I made $1750, and then in April, as book 3 came out, nearly $6,000!

I knew that I did my research, and I knew that I was hitting the tropes. I knew that my covers were on point, and I knew that my success was because of all the hard work I put into making my books hit the market tropes. We were able to move out of my mothers house and get a townhouse, and we even bought a car in cash at the end of August!

You may be wondering how you can possibly keep up with market trends, but Id like to point out right now that trends arent the point of Writing to Market, and they can change in the blink of an eye. What doesnt change, though, is the expectation that readers build up throughout the genre, no matter what the current trends are.

For example, as Im writing this, Reverse Harem is having a massive Rejected Mate werewolf boom. If I were to write one of those, it would surely be too late to hit that particular trend. However, if I were to write a werewolf series with the traditional werewolf tropes, then I could succeed at any given time. (Note: Werewolves are a bit of an evergreen creature in paranormal romance. 10/10, would recommend it if you arent sure where to start).

Now that Ive gotten all the introductions and basic definitions out of the way, lets move on to the difference between the unfortunate Write to Market stigmas versus reality.