Something that means people actually want the information in it. That could be self-help books, technical guides, business books, or even sufficiently compelling general-interest (or fiction - see Tucker Max) - anything that offers the reader a big enough benefit ("Yay, I can sell stuff better!", "Yay, I can now set up Apache 2!", "Yay, I now feel better about myself as a person thanks to this fascinating overview of Bolivian politics!") to get them off their arse to actually buy the book.
Or at least off one arse cheek to get their wallet out.
If those books were massive sellers then they'd be on Pirate Bay and people could get them for free. By energising a niche market you can get them to hand over cash for something that they see as giving them an advantage they cannot get for free. If an author outgrows that niche then they'll hit the point where their work becomes available for free and their revenue will go down.
However - do we actually have any examples of people who have suddenly seen a massive drop-off in cash flow thanks to piracy? Most superstar authors still seem to be doing OK.
(Not trying to destroy the argument, geninuely interested. I think your niche idea is a valuable one.)
I have no idea what the sales figures for major authors are like, and whether they are taking much of a hit from piracy at this point.
Hard to tell, I'd guess, as you can't really compare sales across different books for the same author. You'd have to look at (say) the sales across the NY Times bestsellers year-on-year and see if they dipped.
The thing is that ereaders, successful as they are, haven't yet taken a massive bite out of the book market, so far as I know. There are, what, 12-15 million Kindles out there, and maybe the same again of other ebook readers? Compare that to the number of MP3 players on the market. If ebook readers become the norm then the market will be quite different to a situation where ebooks are only a small fraction of the book market.
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Or at least off one arse cheek to get their wallet out.
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If those books were massive sellers then they'd be on Pirate Bay and people could get them for free. By energising a niche market you can get them to hand over cash for something that they see as giving them an advantage they cannot get for free. If an author outgrows that niche then they'll hit the point where their work becomes available for free and their revenue will go down.
Hmmmm.
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However - do we actually have any examples of people who have suddenly seen a massive drop-off in cash flow thanks to piracy? Most superstar authors still seem to be doing OK.
(Not trying to destroy the argument, geninuely interested. I think your niche idea is a valuable one.)
no subject
Hard to tell, I'd guess, as you can't really compare sales across different books for the same author. You'd have to look at (say) the sales across the NY Times bestsellers year-on-year and see if they dipped.
The thing is that ereaders, successful as they are, haven't yet taken a massive bite out of the book market, so far as I know. There are, what, 12-15 million Kindles out there, and maybe the same again of other ebook readers? Compare that to the number of MP3 players on the market. If ebook readers become the norm then the market will be quite different to a situation where ebooks are only a small fraction of the book market.