One of my favourite tools to bust yourself out of blank page staring (writer’s block) is research. In particular, keyword and audience research for creating a book. This is about how research can help you start writing a topic-based book.
A Walk Through Audience Research from Keywords
First, you will want to do audience research along with keyword research. One without the other will be giving you herrings, red ones.
The tool for this is SparkToro, made by Rand Fishkin, an SEO expert leader. What he doesn’t know about finding an audience isn’t worth knowing.
Under SparkToro: Demographics you will find ‘Bio/profile terms’, and you see whether the relevant word appears in people’s bio. Are you onto the right target market?
Creation, marketing, development were top 3 bio words of the keyword ‘Book Creation’. I could launch a LinkedIn search for one of these terms to find people with that in their title, but that is a rabbit hole.
Learning What these Targeted People Want to Know
Under the tab ‘social accounts’, there are many writers I can follow on X to learn more about what they like.
Under ‘published’ (bio words) I clicked on the link over to Reddit. Reddit is a top place to get real people’s opinions on niche topics that know no bounds. You can interact and ask questions in a niche (with zero promotion allowed) and get a variety of answers. (Started r/AusSelfPublishing)
‘How difficult is it to get traditionally published’ seems a particularly recurring theme – something that could inform writing of an eBook. ‘How I got a book deal and what I learned’ was more resonant still, with over 130 comments. Do we want to learn from those who have done it? Definitely, and it’s something to consider when titling your book.
‘Related questions’ is another tab which is a spark for any audience-aware writing. Only two were relevant to my needs.
You can get 5 FREE keyword searches at SparkToro per month – and enough data to get inside the head of your tribe – but without demographic details.
A Sideways Glance at What was Found
For the topic ‘Book Creation’, Sparktoro lists websites visited ‘bookcreator.com, blurb.com, pixton’ – so I know that it is associating tools for physical creation rather than the ideation of books.
Therefore, the numbers of 27-39,000 searches for that term is meaningless for me. ‘Comic make’ and ‘Make flipping book’ are two related keyword searches – even less relevant. Under ‘here are a few hidden gems’, there were relevant self-publishing schools and an art school.
The audience used YouTube as their favourite social media. Makes sense, as making is their jam.
A better keyword search was: ‘book writing tips’. It was more targeted for book writing only – US based, 1,000 people search for this term monthly. Particularly, “how to get started in writing” has 229 searches and 61% affinity with the search term. My latest Substack was on this very topic: How to Begin Writing a Book.
Under Keywords—Trending Keywords was the words related to tips and giving clues to our audience’s interests. With the top one of ‘dynamic characters examples’ it appears character writing and fiction backstory writing is topmost. ‘How to write a nonfiction book’ only gets 480 searches, dwarfed by 3,600 for ‘How to write a review for a book’.
Under ‘podcasts’ I can see which podcasts these people prefer. #4: ‘The Creative Penn Podcast for Writers’ looks of interest.
Under ‘YouTube’, Writer’s Digest is speaking my language. Evoking emotion in writing is a good interview for self-help writers.
It’s about being selective and noting ideas down.
Finding Popular Book Categories on Amazon
For keyword popularity research, I have used research tool ‘Keywords Everywhere’ for US $10 for a year. It shows numbers inside Amazon’s search bar, although the source is Google. Bloggers would prefer this tool.
For true Amazon eBook search numbers per category, there is Kindlepreneur’s tool called Publisher Rocket. It’s US$90 once off. (This site JenniferLancaster is an affiliate and if you click on this link, it will pay a commission to Jennifer… but you get the same price!)
Are we friends? Then may I mention my Book Creation & Self-Publish course. It’s all my creating books and publishing them, put into videos and guides.
