As promised, I’m going to share with you here the insights, tips and insider info I picked up at the London Book Fair…
And if you’re wondering why that should matter to you, then read on.
Like all trade fairs, this is the place to come to see what’s not even on the market yet (which is why, if you’re into ecommerce, you should always visit any relevant trade fair you can find).
Unlike most trade fairs, the London Book Fair is also an excellent barometer of what’s new and hot in niches and markets as well as in publishing.
Think of it as a behind the scenes peek at what will be hitting the Amazon bestseller lists and you have some idea of how valuable it can be, especially if you use Amazon in your niche and marketing research. As, indeed, you should!
But the Book Fair is even more valuable than Amazon in its own way because it largely focuses on physical books which means that, if someone is putting money into printing and marketing a book on a certain topic, you need to pay attention.
And boy are there books – thousands upon thousands of them. Don’t worry, though – I took careful note and have distilled it down to the trends worth watching.
To give you an idea of the vast scale of the Book Fair,here are some pictures:
This is the replica of the Oval Office built to publicise James Patterson’s new book with Bill Clinton: The President Is Missing. It was a brilliant example of viral and experiential marketing as some of us had our photos taken behind that famous desk (yes, including moi!) and then were asked to Tweet/Instagram/Facebook with the relevant hashtag:
Here you can see the great hall at Olympia with just some of the vast array of stalls, including big and small publishing houses, associated software and digital companies, marketing agencies and even individual authors who took stands:
This is the Kindle Direct sponsored seminar for self-published and aspiring authors who were pitching their ideas to the literary agents on the stage, including several friends of mine who were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of submissions:
So what did I discover?
That the evergreen niches are still, yes, evergreen. We’re talking cookery, gardening and DIY which were all huge, especially the first two.
You might think that this means the market is saturated but far from it – all you need to do is find a good sub-niche and you’re away.
To do that, here’s a particularly helpful tutorial on the subject from the ever wonderful Stuart at Niche Hacks on a gardening sub-niche that is (spoiler alert) one of mine:
https://nichehacks.com/urban-farming-report/
And he also gives you great tips here on how to spot a sub-niche in almost any niche:
https://nichehacks.com/profitable-sub-niches/
While for some good gardening affiliate programs apart from Amazon, go here:
https://www.affilorama.com/blog/gardening-affiliate-programs-like-growing-money-on-trees
Food blogs are, of course, massive…and massively competitive. But you can get ahead of the game by following the excellent course here, the basic version of which won’t cost you anything apart from your details when you register.
Oh and it’s far from basic…
As for cookery and food affiliate programs, there is a lot of good information here:
https://thirstyaffiliates.com/increasing-sales/food-bloggers-need-know-affiliate-marketing
Of course, being a book fair meant that there were plenty of small publishing houses and self-published authors alongside what is known as the Big Seven – although that number is probably shrinking in the wake of mergers and takeovers.
Staying with the cookery theme for a moment, if you’d like to create and publish your own cookbook then this is one easy and no cost way to do it with an app that allows you to make your own interactive one:
Or you can go the Kindle route:
http://www.selfpublishacookbook.com/info/how-to-publish-cookbook/more/how-to-publish-on-the-kindle
If you are thinking of self-publishing then the Alliance of Independent Authors could be worth joining – they have their own rundown on the LBF here:
https://selfpublishingadvice.org/tag/london-book-fair/
I’ll be sharing more on self-publishing and story in your next bulletin but, for now, I also want to mention the topic of one of the seminars I attended which was on collaborative marketing efforts, i.e. a couple or more authors getting together to blog, create promos, mail to one another’s lists etc
There is no reason why you can’t link up with a marketer whose list is complementary to yours and do the same. I say complementary because you really don’t want to be directly competing but rather bringing even more value and scope to your individual communities and subscribers.
Guest blogging is one form of this and there are some good tips on that here with particular relevance to SEO:
https://backlinko.com/the-definitive-guide-to-guest-blogging
With some more good tips here:
http://www.jeffbullas.com/how-to-start-guest-blogging/
Although you can simply reach out to other marketers you know via social media, forums or other groups and help one another out that way.
I’d like to leave you with a TED talk about shaking yourself out of your comfort zone – the same comfort zone that might stop you going to a trade fair to discover what real life experts are creating and selling or that could hold you back from doing the same:
