This week: Ultra-Specific Niches Edited by: Jeff  
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"A writer is someone for whom writing is
more difficult than it is for other people."
— Thomas Mann
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm your guest editor for this issue of the official For Authors Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 400 newsletters across the site in that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me directly or submit feedback in the comment box at the bottom of this newsletter.
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Ultra-Specific Niches
With the advent of Amazon and other online resources, it's become possible for authors to find communities for very specific niche fiction. Whereas you used to go into a brick-and-mortar bookstore and find all the Science Fiction & Fantasy books crammed together on the same shelves, you can now find resources that will separate out Science Fiction and Fantasy from one another, and even go further to break down each of those two genres into a variety of subgenres and sub-subgenres, and sub-sub-subgenres.
Just looking at Amazon's official literary categories for Mysteries & Thrillers (another popular bookstore section), they have it separated out with one category for Mystery and another for Thrillers & Suspense, each with a number of subgenres. A small sampling:
Mystery
 Amateur Sleuths
Cozy Mysteries
Police Procedurals
Private Investigator Mysteries
Supernatural Mysteries
Women Sleuths
Thrillers & Suspense
Crime Thrillers
Domestic Thrillers
Financial Thrillers
Legal Thrillers
Psychological Thrillers
Technothrillers
There's a lot of self-publishing advice out there that will tell you to focus on an ultra-specific niche like one of the above because it will help you sell books. But why is that? What is it about an ultra-specific niche that helps you sell books?
By many accounts, most readers have a particular thing (or things, plural) that they like to read. This is something that I'm admittedly not an expert about, because I like to read everything, and I go through phases where I'll read one genre, then move on to another one... but that's a bit of an outlier. A lot of people, when choosing something to read for pleasure, will gravitate toward the same type of thing. Some people like crime stories, while others prefer action/thrillers. Some people like romance in general, while others specifically prefer modern paranormal romance, or historical romance (often with a very specific time period in mind).
Today's modern methods of searching for books (like being able to narrow down an online search on Amazon or your local library with keywords), and communities built around shared love for a particular specific type of book mean that you can develop a dedicated, engaged fanbase if you focus on an ultra-specific niche. Whereas in the past you might generally be considered a "horror author" and gain a bunch of fans of your supernatural horror debut, only to lose a lot of them on your follow-up because it's psychological horror and you realize afterward that they were really into the supernatural aspect of your first book... now you can write for a much more specific audience. You can find and cater to an audience that only wants to read procedurals featuring FBI agents, or romances featuring billionaires.
Back in 2017, when I was a regular editor for this newsletter, I wrote an editorial about Kevin Kelly's now-infamous essay called "1,000 True Fans" . In it, he made the case for a writer (or artist) being able to make a living with just 1,000 fans who will buy anything you create. And if you think about it, there's some logic to it... if you self-publish a handful of books, offer a writing seminar or Q&A session for your fans for a nominal fee, maybe sell a few items of merchandise based on your books... a thousand fans can be a steady source of income for a productive author for years to come.
The advice to focus on an ultra-specific niche may not be the right advice for every writer. Even for myself, I have varied interests and could easily see myself getting bored or burning out by writing the same type of thing over and over again. But there's no denying that, for the right author, a hyper-focused approach to what you write can help you find the audience that will support you as a writer.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
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For Authors: February 19, 2025 Issue [#12997]
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