As an author, discovering and leveraging your niche audience can make all the difference when it comes to selling books. I recently saw a great real-world example of this while connecting with fellow corgi owners online.

One creative dog owner I follow started regularly posting cute photos and videos of their corgi. Over time, they built up a sizable Instagram following among fellow corgi fans. Once they had an engaged audience, they began creating corgi merchandise and products that corgi owners ate up.

So, what’s the next logical step? A children’s book starring their famous corgi. They scored a book deal with a major publisher – Penguin Random House – who recognized the built-in market. The book is Maxine Gets A Job. For almost no upfront marketing costs, they could tap into the huge corgi-loving audience this dog owner had amassed.

As a fellow corgi parent, without a following if I create an identical book I’d have no shot of getting the same book published.

This example demonstrates the power of zeroing in on a specific, passionate audience for your work. While my own writing may be high quality, without a niche community to market it to, the likelihood of getting a major publishing deal is slim. Self-publishing used to help unknown authors, but with the rise of AI writing, flooding online bookstores with automatically generated content, self-publishing is less feasible today.

In fact, Amazon recently began limiting authors to only THREE book publishes per day to cut down on AI-generated content! That means without a unique angle, it’s harder than ever to stand out from the publishing crowd.

The takeaway? Take the time to organically build your audience within a niche category you’re passionate about. Establish yourself as an authority voice. Engage in conversations. Once you have that loyal community, you can leverage it to publish books and other content they crave.

While uncomfortable at times, putting yourself out there on social media to directly interact with readers is invaluable. As a wedding videographer, I often resist the self-promotion aspect that platforms like Instagram require. However, I know those who lean into that social side of the business book far more clients.

It’s not easy, but well worth the effort. Mediocre writing with an engaged audience often outsells great writing without one. So take inspiration from those creative corgi owners as you build your author platform!