Gordon Burgett's Blog

Why niche publishing is a much better deal…

When we niche publishers claim that the smaller our market, the higher our profits (and it’s all virtually risk free after a quick pre-test), we suspect that other publishers think we are either spouting or smoking hocus-pocus. Selling to the same eager buyers for a lifetime also probably strikes them as utterly incomprehensible—or blindly short-sighted. (I won’t even mention empire-building.)

We can only suspect that they don’t know what we do, or why. So we understand the puff of collegial misunderstanding. That’s fine. We’d as soon they remain general publishers anyway. Our claims are honest enough, for publishers, but we aren’t so foolish as to want to divvy up our gold.

Some of the confusion comes because niche publishing and conventional publishing differ hardly at all in the writing, editing, and production phases. The end result also looks pretty much the same: books, with covers, tables of contents, guts, and indexes. It’s the marketing that could hardly be more different, especially when it comes to the when and the how. Conventional publishers seriously warm up their selling machine when a book is in the editing stage. Niche publishers have finished their most important marketing before the book is even written.

In fact, niche publishers won’t research or write the book at all unless a big enough testing slice of their market has agreed beforehand that they want to buy that exact book by that title at a specific (very profitable) price.

So let me expand on that, to tell why for us the marketing cart gleefully goes before the horse, discuss advantages and disadvantages of niche publishing, how we think pre-test, and how we can make our authors very rich—some of which sticks in our coffers.

My qualifications to discuss both kinds of publishing? My wee publishing venture has made about two thirds of its money producing products (mostly books) for dentists and K-12 school administrators—my niches, although I have never been either. I did have my teeth fixed and cleaned (when the receptionist could catch me) and I’m certain there were administrators somewhere in the schools I attended. (I know there were principals in two of them, and they had their own offices.) Most of the rest of my publishing income comes from writing and publishing books for freelance (mostly travel) writers, speaking about the book topics, and consulting (mostly) with niche publishers. (I also wrote Niche Publishing: Publish Profitably Every Time.)

Niche publishers stay well away from handling fiction or books written for “everybody,” kids, or genders. But when we see that there is a hot body of like souls who love or live by something they willingly share, that there are enough of them to form an association, that they want to be on the group mailing list, and that they aren’t unwilling (or, better, are eager) to read a book or attend a seminar to solve a common conundrum or flaming frustration, we recognize a niche waiting for us to devotedly service.

A niche is a group with a collective bond proudly shared, like bus drivers, Giants fans, urologists, and maybe hat blockers. Or like individuals in need of a tried and proven slant and solution to a problem they and their birds-of-feather buddies share, like closing the sale of garbage trucks or building tubas. Or they are twins, deaf at birth, or speak Flemish–but never all three because they are too hard to find and too few to test. Conventional publishers: enter, but at peril. We are territorial and are set up to service groups like chiropractors or Corvette (or Cubs) believers in ways you conventionally never could be.

Why do we niche publish? It’s much easier and faster to do; niche markets are usually much more profitable to sell to and serve, and done right, as I said, it’s an almost a risk-free shoe-in touchdown before we even run back the kickoff simply because we test first and only play when the odds are almost all our way. (Details in “Don’t Invest Until You Test” in the IBPA [Independent Book Publishers Association] Independent, January, 2012). Oh yes, our buyers are much easier to find. In fact, they are hunting for us.

If you care to explore niche publishing more fully, please see the next four blogs, appearing here, two a week. The titles are “Ten advantages to niche publishing,” “How niche authors and niche publishers share the gold,” “26 key questions to pre-testing your niche book,” and “Why you may not want to niche publish.”

If you’re really interested, here are some extremely inexpensive products ($1, $5, $10, or $15) that should make that venture much easier and quicker.

I’ll see you at the next post in a couple of days: “10 Advantages to Niche Publishing.”

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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Is your book almost finished but it needs a final, last-step professional review by a no-nonsense editor with 40 books in print and 30+ years in publishing? That's what I mostly do, plus run a publishing company. Email, call, or check this link for details. Other things: my website, a free monthly newsletter, bio, and my latest book, How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Published Worldwide in Days. Also, daily tweets as GLeeBurgett and other social networking links at about.me.

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