What Testing Your Book Idea Can Tell You, and What It Can’t
The KidLit Creator’s Chronicle – Issue #61
I have a confession to make about my own picture book.
Before I wrote Lilou’s Lost Rainbow, I did what all the advice says to do. I ran my idea through Publisher Rocket. I checked keywords and categories. I looked for comp titles.
And I did all of it with one thought in the back of my mind: it doesn’t really matter what I find, because I’m going to write this book anyway. This is the book I want to write. Haha, yes, really. Although, I suspect this may sound familiar to some of you.
Maybe you’ve done your market research exactly the same way, or skipped it entirely, because deep down you’ve already decided. And I don’t blame you, because most of the standard advice I’ve heard never made it feel worth doing. Not to bash the advice out there. Some of it is good. But somehow it always felt incomplete or one-dimensional to me.
Advice like: “Find comp (comparable) titles and make sure there’s space for your book.” That makes sense. But then a lot of explanations I’ve heard and read of how to actually do it would be too loose. For instance, if your book is about a funny frog, then your comp titles could be anything that is a funny frog book, a funny animal book, or sometimes even just a funny picture book. (To be fair, there are also trainings out there with clearer instructions.) Because of that, anybody can always find space, and any book can fit somewhere, even if you have a very unusual idea. In other words, it’s a test nobody can fail, so it tells you nothing.
There’s a second problem, too. “Space for your book” is something that needs a clear definition. Many experts say you should find a lot of comp titles, which makes sense to me. Plenty of comp titles can definitely indicate there is a demand. But the same advice then tells you to confirm there’s space for your book. If you find a lot of similar books, doesn’t that mean the market is already saturated with that kind of book? Unless you’re clear on what “space” actually means, the two instructions feel like they clash.
So, initially, the whole exercise felt vague to me. And to make it worse, I’ve heard quite a bit of false advice and rules along the way, like “Lyrical books don’t sell well,” or “Never write a book with a dog as the main character, because the market is too saturated.”
Combine vague explanations with false ideas mixed in, and it makes for a fun time trying to take action. So, at first, I did my research half-heartedly, wrote my book, and moved on. But over time, and with more thinking and more research, I realised that doing this kind of market research can be valuable for two completely different reasons, and the reasons depend on your goal.
Before we get into it, I just want to say I’m sure the big publishing houses, your HarperCollins and Penguin Random Houses, have tools, data and strategies I’ve only heard parts of. There’s more to this subject than what I’ll cover here, and I’m not putting this out as the top authoritative piece on it. This is my experience and my view, geared towards us normal self-publishers on the ground, and I think you’ll get some truly useful insight and strategies from it.
Same Research, Two Different Outcomes
The first reason one might do market research is the one most advice focuses on: you test ideas to find the most marketable one, so your book can sell as well as possible. If your goal is to make the most money you can from your books, that’s a totally valid way to do it. Some books are certainly more marketable than others, and you can get a real idea of that before you write. (Though not a guarantee. More on that below, and it might surprise you who else doesn’t have a foolproof method for picking winners.)
The second reason is the one that applied to me: you test your idea to learn how to position your book, what people actually type when they’re looking for a book like yours, which categories your book will fit into and next to which books it will sit. In other words, the test becomes the first step of your marketing, done before you write a word.
The second reason is the one that applied to me. This is if you already know what you want to write, and you’re less concerned with how many copies you sell (e.g., you’re more interested in reaching even a few kids with your specific message). In this case, you research to learn how to position your book, which categories it fits in, who it’s really for, and how you’ll reach those readers when it’s done. The information you gather becomes the first step of your marketing, done before you write a word.
These outcomes aren’t either/or. If you’re testing for the first reason, you’ll actually get both. You’ll find out how marketable your idea is and how to get readers to discover your book. If you’re testing for the second reason, you might only get the second outcome. The data will tell you about marketability too, but you’re not really asking that question because you’ve already decided.
Same research, two different purposes. Both routes are valid. It really depends on your goal.
(I will add something I often say to my authors: even if you’re publishing fully as a passion project, all of us would like to at least make back the money we spent, or enough to be able to produce more books.)
In Issue #51 of The KidLit Creator’s Chonicle, I told you your idea doesn’t need to be original. (This is actually one of my most popular articles by far, if you’d like to check it out.) Now, I’ll add that it’s your choice if you want to pass any marketing tests.
But whichever route you take, the same research shows you where your book fits and how its readers will look for it, and that’s worth knowing before you write a word.
The Three Checks
So what does this research look like?
It comes down to three checks. I’ll give you the concept of each one here, and in the next issue I’ll walk you through exactly how I did every step for my own book (with real numbers and screenshots), alongside a bestselling (self-published) title, so you can see how it works and follow along with your own idea.
Check 1: Demand, competition, and categories.
Does your topic(s) actually get searched for and bought? Which books are ranking for it, and are they mostly publishing giants or do they include indie authors like you? And do relevant Amazon categories where you can actually rank exist for your book?
This is the one place where the market notably differs between ideas, and you can check it with real data (I use Publisher Rocket) in an afternoon. Even if you’re not aiming to sell thousands of copies, this is crucial research if you don’t want your book to just sit there, eternally undiscovered.
Check 2: The tangible mechanics.
There are qualities that make a book easier to sell, and you can check them in fifteen minutes:
- Does it attach to an occasion or need? Finish this sentence: “A parent/grandparent/adult buys this when ___” or “A parent/grandparent/adult buys this for [need/desire/benefit they get.]”. If you really need to stretch, work on your idea a bit more. Any book can meet this criterion if you give it some thought (and maybe refine your idea a little).
- Does it have series potential? Can you think of two of three books with the same character or topic to make it a series? (Less of a requirement, but it makes it easier to sell.)
- Is it giftable? Would a grandparent or family friend buy it? Bonus points if they’d buy it without knowing the child’s tastes.
- And crucially: is the audience one YOU can reach? Name three specific places your buyers gather, or three ways you know you can reach them.
Check 3: The prep work.
Hooks: Have at least three or four clear hooks (the things that make someone pick your book up: your topic, your character, a fresh angle, a need it meets). For my book, the five hooks are: the message that all the beauty in the world lives inside us, helping kids find resilience and courage, a girl on a brave adventure, the power of friendship, and the colours of the rainbow.
A logline (your whole story summed up in one sentence). Mine: “When a gust of wind steals Lilou’s magical rainbow, she sets off on a brave journey to get her colours back. Along the way, she discovers that the magic she was searching for was inside her all along.”
Book buyer: Have a clear answer to, “Who is this book for?” (the age range and the reader you have in mind). Mine: “parents and teachers looking for a read aloud that helps children build resilience and discover that we each make our own life beautiful.”
Notice it includes not just who buys the book, but what they get from it.
Think buyer + use case (read-aloud, discussion starter, wind-down ritual) + age range + benefit.
If you can’t come up with these for your idea it’s most likely not that your idea isn’t marketable. It’s either unfinished (needs refinement), or you need to dig a little deeper to extract hooks, a logline and your audience.
After some time, this is where something fell into place for me: “testing your idea” and thinking your book through properly turn out to have huge overlap. (I cover more about hooks and finding your book’s angle in TKCC Issue #49.)
Most Buyers Don’t Care If It’s A Frog Or A Dog
Now, here is something where I’ve heard a lot of conflicting teachings.
Go and look at the current picture book bestsellers. Some are high concept, some are lyrical. Some are funny, some are very touching. Some have an animal as the main character, some have a human.
You can write a picture book with a frog, a dog, a cat, a llama, a boy or a girl, and all of them can perform equally well. You can write one that’s funny or one that’s sad, and they can perform equally well.
Yet there’s a lot of advice out there saying otherwise. You’ve probably heard some version of it: “Rhyming books don’t sell.” “Quiet, lyrical books don’t sell, write high concept.” “X is such a hot topic right now, you should write that.”
I’ve heard advice like this over the years from all sorts of people, including experts. Sometimes there’s some truth to it. But when I’ve really researched these claims, I couldn’t find anything that backs them up as rules. Some of the best-selling picture books of all time (Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You) are exactly the quiet, lyrical kind. Rhyme: The Gruffalo and Llama Llama Red Pajama have done pretty well for themselves.
Usually, the true part of it comes from somewhere specific, like what’s easiest to pitch to an agent, or what sold well last year, and then it gets flattened into a box you supposedly must fit into, or you’ll really struggle to sell books. But the market isn’t a set of boxes. It’s a vast spectrum, and books succeed all along it.
Publishers are educated and do a lot of research along exactly these lines, and there is some validity to it, and they have some success with it. But they also miss a lot. If you watch some interviews of the top people at big publishing companies, they’ll say honestly that they miss as often as they hit, or even miss more often.
If they can’t pick winners with whole teams and decades of data, no checklist is going to let you or me do it with 100% accuracy.
Now, let me clarify one thing so this isn’t one-sided. Your choice of character or topic does matter, but usually not in the way a lot of advice claims. It matters for competition. You might find that if you use a frog, you’ll rank much more easily than with a dog, which means your Amazon ads will be cheaper, and your book will be easier to find. That’s real and worth checking.
So, if you fall into camp two where you aren’t trying to sell thousands of books, write the style and the story you love. Research for positioning, not to find the most sellable idea.
But, again, it’s always worth thinking about, no matter your goal: it’s good to sell books, even if just to cover your costs of illustrations. And even if you’re writing purely for passion, you’re writing to actually get your story out to kids, so you need to know how to market it. But if you’re writing about a very specific topic because that is absolutely your passion and your message, you might be completely fine getting it into fewer hands. That is the message you want to get into those fewer hands, rather than some other message into more hands. That’s completely valid. The research will still help.
What I’ve Seen in Real Life
Two authors I’ve worked with show both sides of this beautifully. (I’ve kept them anonymous and the examples slightly vague, for obvious reasons.)
The first wrote a series of fun stories set in a place she had deep personal connections to, with a community she was very well-connected in. Her idea was marketable to an audience she could personally reach. In truth, there were ideas that would’ve been more marketable, but hers was workable. She sold well over 10,000 copies quite quickly by marketing directly to that audience. After some time, she stopped marketing, and the sales died.
This shows us two things: 1. Marketability can help you sell a lot of books, and 2. marketing is senior to marketability. (You can have the best, most marketable book in the world, but without any marketing, chances are it won’t sell.) If this author had kept marketing, she could probably have kept running with it. But it shows you that the two (marketable idea and consistent marketing) absolutely can’t be separated. Getting both right is the best path to success.
The second author writes about a topic she has lifelong experience of, and one the children’s book world is actively looking for right now. That has opened doors like media attention, funding, and invitations from organisations. But without strong ongoing marketing, attention doesn’t automatically become sales. On paper, to a cold audience, like someone browsing Amazon who’s never heard of either author, her books are the more marketable of the two. But because she markets less, she has sold far fewer copies.
A marketable, well-positioned idea makes your marketing easier and opens doors. But marketing is the bigger factor in your sales.
Next Issue: I’ll Show You Exactly How I Did It
In the next issue, I’m going to show you the full research, step by step, on my own upcoming book. I’ll walk you through all three checks with real data: the demand for my topic, the competition, and the categories, and what these all told me. And I’ll run a very successful title through the same steps, so you can see what passing the test looks like in practice.
You’ll be able to follow along with your own idea, so if you have a manuscript or an idea brewing, keep it handy.
An illustration from Lilou’s Lost Rainbow.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you: have you ever done this kind of market research for one of your books? If you have, how did it go? And if you haven’t, what’s held you back? Let me know in the comments! Your answers will help me make the the next issue as useful as possible.
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The book you choose to write ultimately depends on your goals. I decided no matter what, I’m just going to write the book I want to write, and you might want to do that too. But if you want to write a book that will help you sell as many copies as possible, that’s also a completely valid choice. Whichever path you choose, deciding intentionally and knowing how to research, so your book can perform as well as possible within your goal, is key.
There is no right and wrong path, but it’s always better to know what you’re doing so you can do it the right way, right?
