Self-Publishing Niche Research Tools and Techniques

Romney shares niche research techniques and tools for scaling self-publishing business by finding profitable niches with low competition and high demand.

### Mastering Niche Research for Self-Publishing Success
* 🔍 Romney shares his niche research techniques for finding profitable niches in self-publishing, emphasizing the importance of **high demand and low competition**.
* 📊 He uses Amazon's BSR (Best Sellers Rank) to assess demand, looking for **four books with a BSR under 250,000** in his chosen niche.
* 🔗 Romney demonstrates how he uses tools like **KDSpy** to calculate **average BSR** and **Publisher Rocket** to assess **competition and potential earnings**.
* 💡 He recommends using **Book Bolt for niche ideas** and **Red Bubble for trending topics** to inspire book covers.
* 📈 Romney's goal is to find niches with **under 2,000 search results** and at least **four books on the first page** with a **BSR under 250,000**.
* 📚 He advises **tracking all researched keywords in a spreadsheet** to monitor **competition and potential profitability**.
* 💰 Romney credits his research methods for helping him **sell over 20,000 books in a single year**, emphasizing the importance of **finding profitable niches**.
* 🎯 The key takeaway is to **combine multiple tools and techniques** to identify niches with **high demand and low competition**, essential for success in self-publishing.

Hi, my name's Romney, and thank you very much for joining me on my YouTube channel. If you haven't been to my channel before, it's all about creating, building, and scaling your self-publishing business. Now, after having published over 350 books on KDP and also IngramSpark, I want to be able to give you the opportunity of learning the skills and the knowledge that I've acquired to help you to scale your self-publishing business. So today's video is all about niche research, and what I do to be able to scale my books by finding the right niches. So welcome and thank you again for joining me as part of this tutorial. Remember, if you like these videos, to give me the thumbs up, to subscribe, and hit that notification bell so you're made aware of new videos I'm creating all the time about self-publishing, particularly in Low and No Content book niches. So in today's video, I want to be able to teach you and show you some of the techniques and

the research methods that I use to be able to find those niches that have low competition but are in high demand, and there's a few different tools that I use that are actually really important to be able to find those niche categories and areas that you know that you can actually compete in, and perhaps appear on one page one or page two. The hardest thing right now is that with KDP, it's obviously free to be able to upload your books, therefore the resistance point of people being able to create books is quite low, so a lot of people are starting to do it, but you need to be able to continue to find those niches and get onto them early so that you can get your book there, get some good reviews, and be able to have a long-term impact in that niche and have a long-term passive income. So what I want to be able to show you in a moment is to look at a tutorial that I've created.

that will help you find those special niches, 
and the tools that I personally use, and   fortunately, having been able to sell well 
over 20,000 books already this year,   I've been able to find particular niches that 
have really scaled up my publishing business.   So let me jump on now, and I hope you enjoy the 
tutorial. Welcome to my niche research video, and   the intent of this video is to be able to show 
you the techniques that I use, the tools that I use,   that I find the most beneficial when I am 
searching for niches that I believe are   going to be profitable for me, and books that I can 
actually make. So throughout this video, I'm going   to actually be showing you the tools, the different 
methods that I use, and then I'll actually provide   you right at the end of the video with a couple 
of really important tools that you can use   yourself, and a tracker. So that's something that 
I would highly recommend that you stick around.

and watch, because that will mean you'll be able 
to track all of those niches, all your research,   collectively put it together so that you can 
actually put that into place, and you can make   sure that you actually go and do all those or you 
know find those special niches that you know are   going to be profitable and have a follow-up action 
plan ready for it. So the first thing we need to do   is go on to what the niche research actually 
means for us and how that will work with KDP. So   the first thing we need to understand are the considerations. So what we're looking for in any   of the books that we want to make are high need - so 
customers actually searching for that particular   niche or that genre or that book type, and 
there's low competition if we can find it.   And that's the challenge with niche research, and 
that's what I really want to try and help you with.

in this tutorial. So, what I would always do first is you need to go and try and find out what those high needs are and where the low competition is, and that will obviously start with Amazon. But firstly, we need to get an understanding of what is high need and what is low competition and what that actually means to us. So, our rules will be for high need, we need to use the average BSR, which is four books with a BSR under 250,000. So, let me show you what I mean for that to start with. So, the first thing we need to do when on Amazon is to go into incognito mode. That just allows us to have clean search results rather than if you're just to use the normal Chrome, for example, and you might have cookies that are attached to previous search results and previous books that you've searched might come up and distort your data, so we need to

try and have a clean slate pretty much when we start. Now there are two trains of thought when you're doing your niche research. Some people like to look under 'Books', like this, other people like to search under 'ALL', and it's okay either way, but the way that I always look at it, if I'm doing No Content books, I'll go to 'ALL' or 'All Departments'. If I'm going for Low Content books, I'll go to 'Books', and it just works for me better that way, and I find that my results are much better, and the search results are going to be much better for me as well. So the first thing we need to do is actually have a bit of a look and see what I meant about the BSR and what a BSR is. So I've got a chrome extension, it's called AMZ ...sorry 'DS Amazon Quick View', that's the chrome extension

and that will allow me to see what the rate ranking or the BSR is. That's basically where the book stands against every single book on Amazon and what the ranking is. So these books here, they're the Best Sellers, so the BSR of this book is six. So if you scroll down, the BSR changes and you might have a book, for example, it's got a BSR of 835,000. So that's your ranking on Amazon. What we're looking for are books that have obviously, you know our BSR needs to be under around about 250,000 for us to sort of consider whether the niche is going to be suitable for us. So the first thing we need to do is to actually find a niche and I can show you what I mean with the competition and the search results as well. And when I'm talking about high need and the low competition. So high need, we'll use the average BSR of four books with the BSR under 250,000.

It'll make sense in a moment, and low competition search results. We're aiming for under 2,000 search results. So let's go back to Amazon, and for example's sake, if we were to do a search for, you know, we'll do a Kids Gratitude Journal, okay, and we'll do a search for that one. We'll see that the results are 50,000, which is huge. We're looking for results of around about 2,000, and that will actually show that the competition side of things is low, so it means there's 2,000 results. We want to get that results as low as we can, but we want to get the average BSR, the books that appear on the first page, for example, to be quite high. So, if we were to before to just eliminate the search results, we're looking for about four or five books on page one that have a BSR of under around about 150 to 200,000. There'd be one

two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So we'd already have our... there's a need for it, an absolute need for these kinds of books. However, our search results are way way too high! Let's look at another niche and we'll find out what this looks like. And remember, I'm also going to be showing you some other really critical tools in regards to finding book niches as well. So let's just write hand handwriting.... Ok, let's have a look. There might be. Let's just do... I know... Cursive Handwriting. We might try Cursive Handwriting... Ok, cursive handwriting and then these... this will actually show us the search results. Now, what we need to do is collectively get these search results and we need to start to check each of these as we go along. So what I would do, I'd go control > print screen,

and I would place them in a 
special spreadsheet that I've made. So this is something I would highly recommend 
that you do. So, you have what your keyword is... a long or short tail keyword. So a short tail 
keyword is pretty much 'cursive handwriting paper'. For example, a long tail keyword would 
be 'Cursive Handwriting Workbook for Kids Age Eight to Twelve' and so, that's and even these 
ones, they're what they call long-tail keywords. So, we would then write down these keywords here. So 
we might go for more of a longer tail keyword. So 'cursive handwriting book for adults' and then we'd 
write the next one down. And I'll just pause this and I'll write a few of the 
keywords down that I've got here. And then what I would do is write down whether 
it's a long tail or short tail. So just go long

and then... just keep going down here... ok, these 
are, these are long-tail... I would call that a short-tail keyword. That would be a short tail 
keyword, and that would be a short tail keyword. Now, what I need to do is determine the average 
BSR. Now, how do I do that? Well, I would go back to my results and let's write.... let's do this 
one here. Cursive Handwriting Book for Kids Age Eight to Twelve. So this will be a good example of 
what it looks like. So this one's got 690 results. So it's the Cursive Handwriting Workbook 
For Kids Eight to Twelve. So what I might do... I'll copy this up, and I'm going to paste it 
in my spreadsheet unless I've already got it? No, I don't have it, so I'm going to write that 
there. I'm going to call it a long tail keyword.

then what I need to do is determine the average BSR. So what I do... is a special software that I've got called KDSpy. And what I would do is use KDSpy to determine the average BSR across these books. Now you can do it manually and you can go through and you can count up all the books and average it out, but with this with KDSpy, it actually does all the calculations for me and that's going to be really important! OK, so it starts calculating the average sales rank and that's what we're looking for, and we want an average sales rank under... look... under 150,000 is excellent. Even up towards 200,000 he's okay but that is very very good so, we've got the results. So we've got 690 so we go back to our spreadsheet and we write the number of... sorry 'search results' which was 690. Then, we've got the number of books under 150k on the first page.

Let's have.... so I'll actually write this down so 
the average is 90,000. Although what I like to do   is discard any of those really big blowout sort 
of BSR books like this one here. So get rid of that,   and the rest are pretty good. So, anything sort 
of over around about 800,000, you   can just eliminate. Maybe it's usually two or three. 
So now it brings it down to 28,416. So we go back here 28,416. We got search results 690 number of books   under that so we go here and 
we've got one, two, three, four. One, another one, there's about gosh... it's about 15. 
There's about 15 of them, so or more. So what we do   we go back here write 15. And that is a very 
very good, one that we would consider doing

so what we do, we have our little competition. I need we then highlight it in our color. And therefore, we know that that's going to be a good one to use as well, and you can even you know you can once you get here you can actually do the sort as well and you know you can sort them through. So what you do, is go through each of these keywords that were coming up when we did our search. So remember, when we did our search here.... so one more so let's go to our first one which was just here and we copy that. Then we go to... and we write... we put it into our search bar..... that didn't come up, did it? I need to do it again! And then what we'll do is go to a search and this brings up 1,000 results. So we go back to our spreadsheet. The number of search results is 1,000. The average BSR, we need to use KDSpy... it's a one-off payment for KDSpy and

I love it. So, but you could add all these up and average it out. But what we do is use KDSpy, and I'll calculate the average BSR for us. Just wait for it to calculate. The calculation comes up, and we have a look through here... that one we could get rid of. Then it brings the BSR average down to 27,500. So we go back here, we write 27,500, the number of books... remember we want if we go back to our rules. We're looking for four books with a BSR under 250 and under 2,000 search results. So we go back to here again, and we get rid of that one... and we have a look. So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six... OK, it already covers it. Seven, eight, nine, ten. All right, so we write 10, for example, and then we do the rest for all these keywords here and eventually

we start to see what it looks like. So I'll fast forward, and I'll show you what a completed one would look like. OK, so I've just been redoing these. So, I just want to make sure it's all unified. And this would be how I do my niche research, and I then color code it based on the high, little... oh sorry... little, medium, or high competition. So I would then filter them and have them all ready to go, and then I could determine whether these are books that I'm going to actually go through and pursue. But the next thing is well, how can we continue to find profitable niches? That's a really important point, and we can't just suddenly... they appear out of nowhere! So there's another software that I use to try and get ideas about my niche research, and it's called 'Book Bolt,' and I'll show you what that looks like in a moment. So this is Book Bolt here. It's www.Bookbolt.io.

It's a like a one-off. Sorry, it's a it's a monthly subscription of around about $10 to $11 US dollars, but for me, it has been absolutely worth the spend. In fact, I'll show you what my orders have been like. So from May 1st to July 29, 2021, I've had 3,854 books ordered. So that's the power of using software, and I can credit Book Bolt to be able to help me get to these kinds of figures. Now, watch my other videos if you want to sort of see my other results as well. So if we go to Book Bolt, what I'm going to do is sign in. So in Book Bolt, there are different features that are here, but the one that we're going to be focusing on is called 'the cloud,' and this is where I get a lot of ideas for niche research and what you need to

do we want our average BSR range to be around about let's just say we'll go to 295,000 'Price'. Our books usually sell for under 10 dollars so we go to there. And you can choose the categories. So you can have all these different categories. Here you might just want to leave it on journal, for example. Top 100 Bestsellers we can choose whatever we want to, and I might do kids and a few random ones come up occasionally and let's just have a look and see what it comes up, what results come up? And it gives us some ideas about what's tracking well and what's not. So these results come up and these might give us some ideas about what we want to do. So the average BSR past 30 days 146,360, 1,589 and what you can do you can click on this little button here and this will actually give

us some other book about where it's been tracking uh what the price so that's the price it's remained at $5.99 and July 6th, it was ranked 271. On August 29, 1,589. So it just shows you what data it actually has and you can actually click on this link and it'll actually take you straight to the book. So you can go down here and get some ideas, and you go, okay.... Creative Gratitude Journal, Unicorn Composition Notebook. A Comic Book, Homeschool Planner, Unicorn Journal, Composition Notebook there. There might be some common themes that you start to see. 'Space', you've got a yellow composition notebook, another comic notebook, another unicorn one as well another space one. There's Shark themes, Dinosaurs, space again. So obviously Space is quite popular. And we can click on that again. Let's have a look at this one and see how this one's been tracking?

So it doesn't have any data. That's alright. I'm not sure why? That's a wrong book to pick, wasn't it! So we can continue going down... another blank comic book! So obviously they're doing well, so you just need to try and find the niches through Book Bolt that are trending at the moment, and they will give you great niche ideas. So what you would then do is click, for example, on this one here. This can then take you into Amazon directly to the book. You can find out the features of the book in regards to the size of it, the format of it, how many pages it is, like what the information is about the book. So it's a really, really handy resource to be able to go and just find different niche ideas that will help you. So that's called 'Book Bolt' and I recommend it. There's a link

below to 'Book Bolt', if you feel it's going to be 
suitable for you. So the next niche research   tool that you might be considering would be 
'Red Bubble', and I'll show you that in a moment.   And you just go to www.redbubble.com, and you.. if you 
do searches on Redbubble, you can actually start   to find out what's trending as well, so there 
might be different things. For example, if you did...   let's wait for this... if you see the 
nurse gift, for example, and you push ENTER. And it will bring up different 
things that are actually trending, so   I've used it a few times, and it'll actually 
show me, you know, different things that   people might search, and it might be an idea for a 
front cover for your book, so there are different   things that you might like to look at as well.
And just to go to those tools. So we've used Amazon.

I've showed you a quick look at Book Bolt. We've used KDSpy. I've shown you a really quick look at redbubble, I think that's something that you might just need to look at yourself a bit more. The last one is 'Publisher Rocket' and Publisher Rocket is a one-off payment of about 90 dollars (USD), but it's very, very valuable in regards to, you know, trying to find out if the niche is going to be profitable or not. So let me jump on Publisher Rocket and we'll use one of our keywords from our research to find out if it gives us some more information about that topic. So I'm now on Publisher Rocket and it gives us these different categories that we can use. So we're going to use the Keyword Search Tool and we're going to plug in...if we just do maybe this one just here, and we'll go back to Publisher Rocket

and we paste that one... it might be too long, and we want to choose 'book'. You can choose 'ebook', but we're just going to choose 'book'. We go 'Go Get Them Rocket', 'Go Get Them Rocket', and we'll find out if it actually comes up with something for us. So, it just takes a little search. So this one didn't give us a huge comprehensive look at what we want, but we'll just click here anyway and see what the results come up as. Probably won't come up with anything. So it gives you the competition score. So we're going to change it. We're just going to do Cursive Handwriting. And you can do this for any topic. You can choose any topic you like and just do maybe three, maybe max four words. Put it into Rocket, and then you will come up with all these different options here, so these are the different keywords that people are likely to be searching for.

and what we do, we check out what the competitive 
score is. So, I'm going to click all these here, as long as it's relative to what we want... and 
then I'll show you what the results look like. It comes up with what we call a competitive score. 
The closer to 100, the more competitive it is, so something quite low. So this one, for example, 
it's got a competitive score of 10, but it's only got an average monthly sales of 18. So we 
don't want that. Let's go up here a bit further. Now, this is the one that we're looking at before... 
Cursive Handwriting Workbook For Kids Age 8 to 12. 93 pages, number of competitors 673, average 
price 7 dollars, average monthly earnings 3,304. Amazon search results there and a 
competitive score of 35 which is fantastic!

So that is the power of Publisher Rocket. And the one other thing we can do, we can actually have a look and check out by pushing this button here, some different books that we might be competing against. So this will bring up some more information here and we can find out what the average BSR is. And we'll just wait for this to load a little bit further... And we can sort of scroll down and have a bit of a look. So monthly sales gives you the monthly sales and all different data about even the categories. So if you're searching for categories, for example this one here, we have a look at this category and this will actually tell us the categories that that book's in and what the sales ranking is as well. So that's the power of Publisher Rocket. And again, I'll leave a link to Publisher Rocket if you think this is going to be something that's going to be powerful for your niche research as well. So let's

just quickly finish off by going back to our presentation. So the last thing we need to cover is actually keeping track of all your keywords. Make sure you write them down, write them down. You can call the niche whatever you want to. Longer or short tail keyword, the average BSR, and the results, and remember we're looking for low competition and high need. And if we go back to our original slide and we look at our rules, we've got high need, we use the average BSR for books with a BSR under 250,000, and low competition. So the search results, aim for under 2,000 search results. So that's what we're looking for as part of our niche research. Well, I hope you enjoyed that? They are some of my techniques that I use for research for KDP. Now it's never going to be exhaustive because there's always different methods and means that you can

actually used to find different niche categories, however, they have been effective for me today. So, remember that if you've liked this video, please give me the thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, and hit the notification bell as well, and I look forward to seeing you in my next video!

The BEST NICHE Strategy and Tools to Find Profitable Niches - KDP Low Content Books

Global Self-Publishing With Romney Nelson

Scaling Your Self-Publishing Business Through Niche Research

Romney's YouTube channel focuses on teaching niche research for scaling self-publishing businesses.

He shares the importance of finding low-competition, high-demand niches and offers tools and methods to identify profitable book topics.

The key to success in self-publishing, according to Romney, is to find special niches that allow for a long-term passive income.

It's essential to identify high-demand and low-competition niches, starting with an average Best Sellers Rank (BSR) of under 250,000 and fewer than 2,000 search results.

Using the "DS Amazon Quick View" Chrome extension can help identify the BSR of books, with the goal of finding niches with high BSR and low search results.

Differentiating between high need and low competition is crucial, with a focus on having a few books with a BSR of 150 to 200,000 on the first page of search results.

Finding the Right Book Niche through Keyword Research

Keyword research is essential for identifying book niches with high demand.

The process involves identifying long-tail and short-tail keywords, then determining the average Best Sellers Rank (BSR) using tools like KDSpy.

Aiming for an average BSR of under 150,000 is crucial for identifying profitable book niches.

Analyzing Book Search Results for Optimal Selection

The process involves filtering out books with a BSR over 800,000, narrowing down to 28,416.

After conducting a search, finding 15 potential books with good BSR for further consideration.

Using KDSpy for calculating the average BSR, leading to a final selection of 10 books meeting the criteria.

Book Bolt is a valuable software for niche research, with a monthly subscription of $10 to $11.

The cloud feature in Book Bolt provides ideas for niche research based on BSR range, price, and categories.

The software has helped the user order 3,854 books from May to July 2021, demonstrating its effectiveness in niche research.

Book Bolt provides data on trending book niches, offering ideas like gratitude journals, unicorn and space-themed notebooks.

It also allows users to directly access books on Amazon for more information.

Red Bubble is another tool for finding trending ideas, such as nurse gifts, for book cover inspiration, through online searches.

These resources are valuable for niche research and idea generation for book publishing.

Using Publisher Rocket for Niche Research

Publisher Rocket is a valuable tool for assessing the profitability of a niche, with a one-time payment of around 90 USD.

The Keyword Search Tool allows users to find popular search terms and their competitive scores, helping to identify profitable topics.

The tool provides data on average monthly sales, competitors, and competitive scores for specific keywords, enabling users to make informed decisions about their niche.

The Power of Publisher Rocket for Niche Research

Publisher Rocket allows users to analyze competitors' books and track important data like monthly sales and categories.

The key to niche research is finding low-competition, high-need keywords, and focusing on books with a BSR under 250,000 and under 2,000 search results.

This tool provides effective techniques for KDP research and helps users identify powerful niche categories.