Niche: Why are you publishing a book?

As expected, the author of the book I talked about in my Target Audience post did want to simply publish his sermons, as is, for other ministers. This brings up another important topic when it comes to book publishing: What need will your book fill?

In fiction, this becomes tricky-there are millions of Romeo and Juliet stories, why is yours unique? It uses vampires? Sorry, that's been done. You want to tell it from the nurses point of view? Yep, done. The question is "Can you do it better?"

In non-fiction, it is imperative that you not only do it better, but it also has to have some uniqueness to it. If you are publishing a book of sermons about marriage (which is not the real topic of the book on which I am working, but that is the topic I am going to use for this blog post), you are one of hundreds of other books on marriage that is available. Couple that with other things this author wants (publishing a series of sermons on the same topic makes it impossible for ministers to use one in a pinch, publishing a full sermon instead of an outline makes it difficult for a minister to adapt it to his congregation's needs, etc.) and again, he is hurting his ability to sell his book.

Marketing, in my opinion, is by far the most difficult part of being an author. If you think otherwise, I really suggest you consider a career in marketing instead of writing. (Marketers still get to write, by the way, they just do it to help sell something.) You need to make sure your book is marketable before you put it in print by not only making sure there is an audience for it, but also by making sure your book will fill a need of the audience.

In this ministers case, he has an audience that is already asking him for a book. People who have listened to his sermons have come up to him and told him they wish they could get their friends to hear the sermon but the friend was turned off to that because of other churches that approached the subject poorly. From these statements, the minister is trying to get his sermons to other ministers so they won't turn people off to religion. The problem is that if he published a book that directly spoke to the people, it would be easier for the friend to pass it along than it would be for them to bring the resistant person to church to hear any minister give a sermon.

The minister clearly saw a need and identified a niche, but his book is not targeting that niche. The niche is providing unchurched people with a guide to a healthy marriage based on Biblical principles. In order to reach that niche, he should publish a book directly for the target audience in that niche. Instead, he is publishing a book in that niche but has misidentified the target audience for that niche.The competition would, of course, be greater if he published a direct marriage book (there are millions of them), but he would have a better chance of marketing it because he already has people willing to buy it. Although there are fewer books (in general) published containing marriage sermons specifically, he has not done sermon outlines but instead chosen to publish full sermons, there is no additional material (such as workbooks) to hand out to audiences interested in this topic and make it worth the investment, and to the best of my knowledge, he does not have ministers asking him for a book on this topic.

In this case, the minister has recognized there is a need for his book. (It fills a niche.) However, he has not properly identified the target audience and the result is that he is not filling that niche with his book any longer.

When you have identified a niche, it is important you fill that niche. Many times authors write what they know instead of finding someone to help them write what they need to write. In this case, not getting advice will hurt this minister's sales.