This is Novel Marketing, the longest-running book marketing podcast in the world. This is the show for writers who want to build their platform, sell more books, and change the world with writing worth talking about.
I’m your host, Thomas Umstattd Jr., and today’s episode is from the listener helpline!
I am going to assume the caller is writing nonfiction. If you are writing fiction, we literally have a course that walks you through exactly how to do this with fiction. But that course is focused on fiction. So how do you build a readership around your topic? So this is a nonfiction warning. We will be focusing on nonfiction in this episode.
If you want to hear the fiction version of this episode, listen to episode 092 The Guaranteed Way to Become A Bestselling Novelist.
Congrats on getting to 10 readers!
The first ten readers are always the hardest.
Research the Total Potential Market Size
It could be, you have found a niche that only a handful of people care about. The most common way this happens is when someone writes about thier own life. The potential audience for a memoir is limited to people who already spend time asking questions about the life of the author. For most people this is a few dozen at most. For an American president or major celebrity, it can be millions.
The other kind of nonfiction book that can be hard to find a market for is ranting. Political rants, theological rants, philosophical rants. No one wants to read the rants of a stranger.
 
Success in Publishing Requires Resonance
I’ve talked about resonance on my other podcast but I haven’t talked about it here.
In physics, resonance is like pushing a child on a swing. If you are in resonance with the frequency of the swing, you are pushing the child as she swings away from you. You are encouraging the swing in the direction it is already wanting to go. If you get the frequency wrong, you miss your push or you push the child off the swing.
As nonfiction writers, you have resonance when someone says “Yes! This puts into words what I have been feeling recently!”
Example: Resonance is why my blog post went viral. People were already frustrated with courtship.

How to Find Your Resonance
I am going to give you four big picture answers, and then three practical tactics.
1) Resonance is about timing.

* Culture changes over time.
* Too early, and you are out of step with the Zeitgeist. You are pushing the girl off the swing.
* Too late, and you are cliche. You are pushing after the swing has already out of reach.
* This is why it is so important to read the books in your genre.

 
2) Resonance is about audience.

* Each community vibrates at its own frequency.

* Saying your book is “for everyone” is like standing at a bank of swings trying to push all the swings at the same time.
* You have to watch the motion of a specific swing in order to push at the right time.

* You can’t resonate with every community.

* Being in sync with one community will put you out of sync with others.
* Women in nursing homes and men on basketball teams don’t read the same books.
* You need to know who your book is not for. That way, you don’t need to worry if they are unhappy about your book.

* You need to join the community you want to reach.

* If they won’t accept you, you won’t be able to find resonance with them.
* If you hate science fiction and want to write a book to “fix” it, you will fail. This is what is wrong with The Last Jedi.