Those who typically buy nonfiction eBooks are those who have an interest in a hobby. Hobbyists are always looking to spend their money on their passion. The best eBook material can always be derived from the wants, not the needs, of serious hobbyists. While you may have formed your own opinions about what you think these people need, your opinions don’t always make up the best topics that will result in a profitable eBook. Your goal is to be profitable and find that niche market for your ebook.
You can explore niche markets for hobbyists by doing web searches on keywords like “what’s America buying,” “hottest hobbies,” and “hobbyists.” If you can search and find discussion groups and forums with hobbyist memberships, this is also helpful, as members exchange news, books, and product reviews.
Yahoo.com is a popular website where fans like to chat with each other. You will find these discussions on their website under the “groups” link. You’ll find many categories ranging from business to religion, but we’ll use “Games” as an example.
The subcategories are numbered within the game categories. What these numbers indicate is the total number of active discussion forums in the particular subcategory. Obviously, you’ll see that subcategories like “video and computer games” and “role playing games” are quite popular due to the number of forums open there. Subcategories like “wargames” and “paintball” rank lower, but are still more popular than “horseshoe toss.”
To read what the popular discussion topics are, you can join the forums that are open to new subscribers. Take a look at the current day’s discussion threads once in the forum. You can also view historical discussions, but stay as recent as possible because older topics may not be as popular. If you want, you can contribute to the forums.
You’ll quickly discover who your target market group is when you start reading the group’s posts or contributing to the forum. If you quickly scan the posts, you can see the type of questions people are asking. You can see what are the demands and interests of the consumers. This forum will be a wealth of information for you because you are getting feedback from the serious buyers in the market, the ones who love to research products.
Just think of how many diverse interests you’ll find in the general fan population. These people have passions for collecting vintage baseball cards, tasting fine wines, vacationing the world, gaming, raising their kids, music lessons for their kids, how to find a private tutor, and so on. Hobbyists can be found in things like soccer, restoring classic cars, listening to tunes. There are also trendy hobbies like snowboarding, line dancing, and Red Hat Societies. For trendy hobbies, you’ll have to search the forums for current interests (don’t pick old fashions). The other hobbies have established themselves well over the years.
A group with an important part of the Internet target market is the group between 20 and 30 years of age. According to surveys conducted, these people enjoy photography, camping, snowboarding, traveling, music, and wakeboarding. They also enjoy playing the guitar, dancing, online dating, shopping for computers and electronics, rock climbing, job hunting, Bible research, exercising, watching sporting events, and drinking good coffee. All of these topics can have an eBook written on it.
The possibilities are endless when you look at the instruction book market. People look for advice, encouragement, and instructional books. Many love to do things on their own and always want to learn how to do it. They are also looking to learn new things or just read something that helps them pick them up.
Hobbyists like how-to books and help them get the most out of their passion. Hobbyist books can range from using hay bales to playing Texas Hold ’em Poker. However, they may be for the culture buff like the Shakespeare fan.
Just look at the publisher who saw how knowledge seekers are for information on how to do it and started the “Dummies” books that are very popular today. Other book series have appeared on the how-to market, such as the “Idiot’s Guide” series and “The Everything.” Instruction books are certainly doing quite well.
One way to get ideas for eBook topics is to visit the “Dummies” book series website (www.dummies.com) and simply take a look at the many topics there. Pick one and write your own book. Don’t be fooled by the “dummies” in the series titles. Readers are never treated like fools and the style is very popular because authors explain things in a way that the reader can accomplish the task at hand without peripheral “rabbit chasing” or arguing over non-critical details. Likewise, assume your readers have normal reading comprehension skills, and never insult their intelligence. In other words, terminology using words like dumb, stupid, idiot, or helpless never adds anything good to a book and risks insulting many readers.
E-books are short works for the most part because they are sold on the Internet, and if they are too large, they will take too long to download. Also, if you write long books like a beginner’s guide on how to use a computer, you are likely to bore your readers and the book may not sell well. E-books should stick to details. An eBook is likely to work well if it focuses on a specialized topic. So with this in mind, eBooks should be targeted at a niche market and the topics should be those of a larger one. In other words, don’t try to cover everything in an ebook.
Take, for example, the issue of fishing. This is a sport or hobby where enthusiasts spend a lot of money. His book topics could be “How to Deep Sea Fish,” “How to Fly Fish,” or “How to Fish for Freshwater Trout.” Every detail on the subject of fishing can be expanded into an ebook of its own. Don’t write so much about putting on your boots, focus on the art of fishing and the sub-topics that go with it. It would be very difficult to write an e-book with any substance to fill 50-100 pages on a simple topic like putting on wellington boots. An important part of choosing the topic you want to write an eBook about is making sure it can actually fill a significant number of pages.