Ebook Authors, Here's A Question

I think it depends. I wrote an ebook with much higher competition. However, I also have a very large network of prior business associates and business networks both offline and online and I knew that most of them would promote the ebook to their lists once I had it done.

If you just want to get your message out, I'd say go for it. The added attribute of you being an author helps raise your credibility, too.

If you are just doing it to make a certain amount of money and don't have a way to market it to a large audience already determined and it will cost you more to do it, then the best advice would not to.

I would still go for it.

FYI, I have 12 ebooks on Amazon.

I would go for it. Most ebook subjects have a lot of competition but it is all about the spin you take on the subject and how you market it.

If you have a creative mind you can easily put your own spin on a saturated subject matter and still cut through the market.

I am of the opinion and belief that 19 ebooks is not a huge amount of competition on the world wide internet. This is especially true with the unique methods you can allude to in your presentation which will make your offering stand out above and beyond the other entries in the field. I would expect your unique methods would totally eliminate the other offerings. The whole "better mousetrap" syndrome. Don't even hesitate to go for it!

That isn't a whole lot of competition. Once you get some good reviews sales will be even easier if you think you can do more than the other books on the market.

Personally I don't worry too much about saturation. If I think I can produce a high quality book, I put it out there.

Saturation is only an excuse marketers use when they fail to compete adequately.

I would have no reservations about jumping into a niche with 700+ titles, especially if the competition looks weak. I would likely not take issue even if the competition looks strong.

You'll never know until you dive in. In order to get sales you'll have to self promote your book - that's a very deep subject. It will just lay there doing nothing on Amazon you will have to identify you niche and find multiple ways to advertise to them.

Those figures actually sound encouraging...

The 'market' for this topic supports 700 'real' books but Kindle owners only have 19 to choose from.

Go for it.

I wouldn't make my decision according to such numbers at all: they wouldn't influence me either way.

I agree with Jeff, just above ^^^

Looks like so far everyone is saying "go for it". Have you decided what to do yet?

If you understand the and analyze the market saturation and you know you can churn out some good thoughts then going for it seems the fine option.

Hi Nathan...Don't consider saturation on your first work..Look at it as a test run..Your learning curve will predicate how and if your ebook sells. In your first work 90% of the work occurs after the ebook is epub'd that's when the learning begins! (marketing it)

Have a great Afternoon! Lee

I'd definitely say go for it!

These days you'll find competition everywhere, you just have to be sure you are better than most of your competition.

Figure out what they're doing, how they're presenting their products, and blow 'em out of the water with yours.

Best of luck!

Paul

You need to be much more worried if there is hardly any competition.

Wow, everyone! I posted this, went to bed, and then today I saw how many responses this thread had and was pleasantly surprised! Thanks to everyone that posted. A few of you especially gave me interesting ways to look at this.

Now, it turned out that after I had posted this, I found out that I hadn't explored all the necessary keywords in Amazon's search box for finding every available ebook on this subject. There's a bit more competition than I thought, but it doesn't look like too much more.

However, I realized afterwards that what I'm really going to be able to teach is actually a subset of the subject. When I search for those exact keywords, nothing shows up, which is a bad sign. (Well, I get a couple ebook results, but it's worded differently, and I think it might appeal to a different audience). I wonder if it might be best to write it from the perceptive of the general subject, but with an emphasis on what I have much more experience in.

I decided to try to gauge demand by using the free Google keyword tool and typing in the main phrase people would probably use to try to find this information. It calculated over 30,000 exact match monthly searches for it, and lists the competition as medium. It's too bad there's no way to see search metrics for books on Amazon, because then we could know just what angle to hit the market at, the best words to use in the title, description, etc.

My main concern was that I just don't want to have my book buried underneath all the other search results. Maybe if I try to come up with a good comprehensive title, that will help me catch more searches. I'm guessing a lot of you all spend a good deal of time coming up with the title and descriptions to make sure your book is found.

I'm sure I'll also need to employ other marketing methods as well, as at least one person as suggested.

Anyways, yes hopefully my book would stand out. It sort of comes at the whole subject from a perspective of ways of thinking about it creatively, rather than exact steps.

Anybody else have any thoughts on this?