Targeting your book marketing campaigns to fans of your genre is one of the most effective ways to reach relevant readers. That’s why our partners’ Featured Deal campaigns are so successful — they target distinct category lists, reaching members who will be most interested in reading their book.
We get requests from readers, authors, and publishers for new categories all the time. When we see enough demand from both partners and readers for a certain category, we’ll test a new list and launch it if the test results are strong. We also regularly launch new categories when we see a particular sub-genre isn’t performing well within a larger list. For example, we used to have only one Romance category! We knew there was huge demand from readers for Historical Romance, but this genre wasn’t performing well to the general Romance list because there were also Romance readers there who didn’t want Historical. As such, our Historical Romance authors were less likely to be selected for Featured Deals by our editors. When we launched a separate category, our Historical Romance readers could get their fill of content they liked while our partners saw much better ROIs and greater chances for selection.
Another benefit we’ve seen is that many of the smaller categories we’ve launched, such as LGBT and African-American Interest, have extremely engaged subscribers. While these more targeted genres might attract a smaller base of total users, they draw very active readers who consume a high volume of content in that genre.
Because we know that niche targeting is such an effective book marketing tactic, we’re excited to have recently launched four new categories for Featured Deals: Dark Erotica, Business, True Crime, and Parenting. Here’s a rundown of these categories so you can see if any of your books might be a good fit!
Dark Erotica
Dark Erotica is sexy and sensual. Unlike Erotic Romance, Dark Erotica features an unconventional love story with an anti-hero and may not have a happy ending. The stories in this category can be suspenseful or even psychologically thrilling, and many of them explore the forbidden or taboo. Some common tropes found in Dark Erotica include the mafia, kidnapping, captor/captive, blackmail/coercion, abuse, and nonconsensual sex. Some readers may find this content disturbing, so by breaking out Dark Erotica into its own category, we’re helping niche genre authors and publishers target readers specifically interested in risqué content.
Business
The Business category consists of books about leadership, management, and work–life balance. Unlike the General Nonfiction category, it specifically includes advice for businesses of every scale, from running your own Etsy shop to making your name in a big corporation, and for people with different aspirations — making money, finding happiness, talking to coworkers, or all of the above. So far, practical advice for small businesses is one example of content that has performed well in this category.
True Crime
The True Crime category is for nonfiction books that examine real crimes — this could include how they were committed, how they were solved (or not), and what implications the crimes have for society as a whole. While we’re still gathering data on what content performs best in this category, we’ve seen books about murders are popular with our readers.
Parenting
Parenting is a category for advice and stories about being a mother, father, grandparent, or caretaker. Branching off of the General Nonfiction list,Parenting features books on the joys and challenges of caring for a child, from how to craft the perfect lunchbox to insights on how the teenage brain works.
If you think one of your books is a good fit for one of these categories, submit your book for a Featured Deal. Not only do our niche lists tend to have higher engagement rates, but they can also be less competitive than some of our larger categories.
*Note: If your book is selected for a Featured Deal, our editors will choose to run the deal to the category in which they think the book will perform best based on our readers’ tastes.
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