NICHE PUBLISHING
Publish Profitably Every
Time!
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 big money, less
risk, and a long-term, dependable income come from
helping meet specific needs of reachable markets. In fact, within reason, the
smaller the market, the better. 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. 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 it 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.
The book also 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.
Niche Publishing 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 help you apply the
concept by creating your own book.
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 34th
book. The first was sought by the major publisher in my field, Writer’s
Digest Books, 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 decades. 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. We—writers and potential readers—are 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.
America—the
world—is 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
readers—and 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, clichés flapping. 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, any
errors, or folly it may contain.
My
gratitude to Dan Poynter is such that this book is
dedicated to him. Jim Comiskey has been a steady prod
to better work and clearer thought. To the many unsung enablers in the grove of
extended education who kept my debtors away and let me share this information
through seminars while I pruned it for print, years of thanks. To my
nephews—Doug Burgett, who keeps producing dandy
covers for my books and those published by my company, and Brandon Carr, for
technical assistance—love and pride. 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 kept 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 doer—the writer, producer, promoter,
and seller called collectively the self-publisher—with 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!
Would you like to read Chapter One?
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