- I just finished reading
Ryan Holiday's, "Perennial Seller,"
and he says, "You can't afford to wait
"until after it's finished
"to figure out who what you're making is for."
Why? Because too often, the answer turns out to be no one.
Well, he's a man after my own heart
as we constantly talk about how you need to figure out
who your reader is and how you're going to help them,
but maybe you're struggling to figure out,
how do you get to know your reader?
And you want to do some research to learn about them.
Well, if you wanna uncover some research tools
that will help you find out more about your reader,
then this video is for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad,
founder of Book Launchers,
a full service self-publishing services firm,
and we also have a couple of courses to help you.
One is our Self-Publish and Succeed live,
which is a 12 week course
to help you write a book that will sell.
And one of the big pieces of writing a book that will sell
is knowing who your reader is,
and your reader is not everyone.
It's not people who need hope
and it's not people who need inspiration.
So, who is your reader?
Well, if you're struggling to know your reader intimately,
then there are some really great tools
that I'm about to share with you.
The first one is called Soovle.
What is Soovle?
Well, it's a customizable engine
that provides the suggestions services
from all the major search providers in one place.
So let's say you're Rachael Brown
and you're working on your book,
"For Fork's Sake: A Quick Guide to Healing Yourself
and the Planet Through a Plant-Based Diet."
Can we just take a moment to admire this cover, by the way?
High five to my team at Book Launchers,
and to Rachael for her great choices.
But anyway, let's say you're much earlier in the process
than she is, and you don't yet know who your reader is.
Well, you might head to Soovle
and type in plant-based eating
to see what is getting searched
and what the results are at a bunch of different places.
See how cool this is?
You're seeing results from Answers, YouTube, Bing, Amazon,
Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia all on one page.
You can see what is being searched,
which tells you a lot,
and gives you considerations
for what you must address regarding your subject.
But also, when you click through,
you can see headlines and common threads.
This is where you can start to understand the challenges,
the opportunities, and the ideas
that are already on your reader's mind.
If you are early in the process,
this can be a great way to brainstorm chapter topics
or ideas that you need to cover.
You might even uncover a hook idea
for marketing or your entire book
when you look at what people are saying and searching for.
So Soovle is a good broad-reach tool to start
to get more connected to the topic
from a potential reader's perspective.
You can also make a note of the books
that show up in the searches as well,
because knowing these books will help you later on
when you use another tool I like to use.
Next tool, QuestionsDB.
Okay, so I like this one for video ideas, personally.
If you want videos on some of the topics
you're about to see,
well, make sure you've subscribed to the channel
and turn notifications on
so you get notified when I post the new videos,
because I got two video ideas from this search right here.
But head in here and type some topics.
I started with book writing,
but what came up was too general,
so I refined it and put in nonfiction book writing,
and it got closer to home.
You can play with this and come up with, again,
chapters, articles, videos,
and ultimately use the wording
to get in the head of your reader.
Now, this isn't as granular
as what we will do when we hit up tool four and five,
but it's a nice place to do some general research.
Next up, Answer the Public.
Hat tip to the team at IngramSpark
for sharing this one with me and our clients
in a client-only training.
I didn't know about this one,
and it's super cool and can be tailored by country.
Answer the Public is a key word tool
that visualizes search questions
and suggested auto complete searches
in an image called a search cloud.
It has paid tools, but you can get some cool info
from the free version, as you can see here.
So let's say you're Michael Currie,
author of "Landlord by Design,"
and you want to get some ideas
on what people are looking for answers to
as you're doing your book marketing.
You already know who your reader is,
but you want to meet them where they are right now
to get them to see your book as the solution.
So type in real estate investing into the box here
with Canada selected for your country,
'cause that's where he lives.
Now, you can see things like
why real estate investing is a bad idea,
or real estate investing is hard,
and there might be other topics that immediately sound
like a great article, video, or media topic.
And there's this handy little feature here,
Download CSV, so you can download these ideas
and create a plan for yourself.
Of course, I'm saying this works great
for marketing ideas post-launch for Michael,
but if you're early on,
that's the best time to be thinking about marketing
and building that into your book.
Nothing like a chapter title
that addresses something your reader is thinking
or asking right now.
Okay, next tool, Quora.
I've shared this one before,
but it's one that I use quite often,
especially when I need new ideas
or I just wanna see what people are thinking
about certain topics.
So let's say you're Jen Worthen,
and you're in the early days of working on your book
that will eventually launch as
"Mom Who Works: The Tools to Redefine What It Means
to be a Working Mom In a World Without Working Dads."
Anyway, let's say you're Jenna,
but you're early in the process
and you want to make sure you're connecting
with all the feelings and struggles of your reader.
You can go into Quora and search for mom who works
or working mom, and see what comes up.
When you do that,
you start to see themes and questions people are asking.
What I love to do is dive into the answers of the questions
and see what resources are mentioned,
what books, influencers, and other ideas that are mentioned,
and use those things to guide my writing and ideas.
Last but not least,
my tool for getting to know readers
is to read book reviews on Goodreads or Amazon
for the books that I think my book
is going to compete with,
or that my book is similar to,
but I wanna be positioned differently.
That's where that first search
with all the books listed might be really handy.
I like to read reviews of books to find those nuggets of,
I wish this book addressed this,
or, this book was really for the person who,
I'm not at that point, so this book didn't address my needs,
but here's what it said.
If there's multiple reviews saying the same thing,
there might be a real opportunity
for you to find a little gap that you can fill.
It might feel like you've struck gold
when you find a lot of reviews that say,
"This was practical,
but it didn't address the fact that it's really emotional
to go through this,"
or, "They didn't talk about how the family will react
"when you do this."
Those are nuggets of opportunity for your book
and an area where your reader will go,
"Yes! someone who finally is addressing this piece."
Ultimately, that's what you want.
You want to know the language your reader is using,
so you can use it too.
You want to know what your reader is thinking,
so they feel like you just made this book just for them,
and you absolutely need to know where the gaps are
in the content that is out there,
so you can wedge a place for you and your book in that gap,
and dominate that space for your success
and readers' impact.
What's your favorite research tool?
Let's chat about it in the comments below.
And when you comment the day a video is released,
you get entered to win some sweet #noboringbookswag.
Now that you know how to connect a little more
to your reader,
maybe you need a little kick to get that book finished.
This video on the five tips to finish writing your book
might be just the thing you need.
If not, YouTube believes this video right here
is what you need.
Either way, click on over,
because I'm waiting for you,
and I don't want you to leave me hanging there, do you?