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Understanding the Market

March 15, 2010 //  by Rachel Kent//  3 Comments

Blogger: Rachel Zurakowski

Location: Barnes & Noble, Santa Rosa, Calif.photo connelly

When I was in Denver at the Jerry B. Jenkins Writing for the Soul Conference, two questions I was asked frequently were, “What’s popular now?” and “What book trends do you see in the near future?” I want to walk you through ways to discover answers to these questions and to predict the market as best as we can. It’s impossible to know the future, of course, but we can make educated guesses. Today and tomorrow we’re going to talk about the bookstore and what it can teach us about the market.

Here we are! Let’s go in together. A bookstore is one my my happy places.

photo

All those books on the shelves represent an investment made by the bookstore as it tries to predict what customers are going to buy. So, what topics and themes do you see a lot of on those shelves? Be sure to check out the section that you imagine your book would be shelved in. What do you see?

Are there 100 copies of the latest vampire fantasy?

Are most of the novels contemporary or historical?

Which books are faced (on the shelf with the cover facing out)?

Do you see more evergreens (books that were published a while back that sell well) or are there more newly published books?

photo.obrienjpg

Are there other people browsing in your section? What are they looking at?

After we finish at this store, we might want to see if the things we noticed here are popular at the competing store as well. This fun exercise can give you a good idea of what’s hot.

If you’re writing a Christian book, be sure to check out the corresponding general market section. I’ve heard frequently at writers’ conferences that the Christian market is about 2 years behind the general market in the topics/concepts being published. That’s something to keep in mind as you try to predict the future interest in the market.

Another way to do this type of research is online at sites like amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. You can check out the top-selling books in any category.

Something to keep in mind is that it can take as long as two years from the signing of the book contract to publication. So many of those newly published books on the shelves were purchased by the publishing house about two years ago.

While at the bookstore snapping these pictures, I asked myself the questions I posed in this blog post for Christian historical romance. I’ll unveil my findings tomorrow. 🙂 I might even include more pictures.

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Category: Blog, Fiction, Marketing & Publicity, Nonfiction, Productivity, PublishersTag: ABA, book marketing, bookstores, CBA, contemorary, Historical, novel, Vampire fantasy, vampires, Writing for the Soul Conference

Previous Post: « The Abyss
Next Post: Bookstore Market Research: Historical Romance »

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  1. James Andrew Wilson

    March 15, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    Not only are there 100 copies of the latest vampire fantasy, there are 100 other vampire fantasy novels right by it!

    How can you tell when a trend is going away? IF it’s going away? WILL IT EVER STOP???

    Reply
  2. Christi Corbett

    March 15, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    Rachel,
    Thanks for the “behind the scenes” tour. Very informative!
    Christi Corbett

    Reply
  3. Cecelia Dowdy

    March 16, 2010 at 3:25 am

    Rachel,
    Thanks for this tour. I’ve noticed from visiting bookstores that some popular Christian novelists will have several books on the shelf – which would include their backlist. I was at Barnes And Noble and Books-A-Million a couple of weeks ago and noticed that Karen Kingsbury, Terri Blackstock, and Ted Dekker all had several titles on the shelf in the Christian fiction section.

    I didn’t realize that Christian fiction market is two years behind the general market. That’s interesting to know.

    Reply

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