Market Research for Authors: How to Reach the Right Readers & Sell More Books

If you’re serious about scaling your author career, and want to actually sell books rather than just publish them...then market research isn’t optional. It’s the foundation of everything: your positioning, your marketing, and yes, even your writing.

At Six Figure Author Coach, we don’t just talk about market research. We help our clients implement it using tools we’ve developed (and refined) to cut through the noise and give authors the clarity they need to grow.

Why Your Audience Might Not Be Who You Think It Is

Even authors who know their genre and write familiar tropes often miss the mark when it comes to identifying their true audience. And that’s understandable, because most market research tools out there don’t go deep enough.

Inside our 3xP Program, we guide clients through our proprietary Author Nebula Research Tool, which helps them isolate the most relevant data for their current career stage.

And quite often, this process leads to one major revelation:

“My readers aren’t who I thought they were.”

Once that becomes clear, everything changes. Because marketing to the wrong reader, even if you're writing in the right genre, is one of the fastest ways to waste time, ad spend, and emotional energy.

Aligning Strategy With Reader Expectations

After clarifying their audience, we guide clients through a deeper layer of research using our Trope Mapping Tool, another exclusive to our program.

Here’s an important note: trope mapping is a term we coined, and like many terms we’ve created, it’s been misused by others. But make no mistake, the method we teach isn’t just about identifying popular tropes and repeating them. It’s about understanding how your unique storytelling intersects with what your audience is actively craving, and building brand alignment from there.

When this is implemented correctly, the results aren’t subtle. It shows up in your sales. If you’re “trope mapping” and not seeing a difference, odds are you’re using someone else’s diluted version of the strategy.

We see this often. Rebecca Hamilton, the bestselling author and strategist, developed these tools after years of testing and refinement. And when you lead in results, imitation happens. But few can replicate the methods behind the success.

Three Things to Focus On When Starting Market Research

When you’re ready to get serious about market research, start here:

• Shift from researching similar authors to understanding your ideal reader’s behavior. Don’t base your strategy on what other authors in your genre are doing. Instead, study your ideal reader; what they’re reading, why they’re reading it, and what kind of emotional experiences they expect. This allows you to show up in the right places at the right times, increasing reader familiarity with your brand and drastically improving discoverability and conversion rates.

• Look beyond tropes and sub-genres to decode true reader expectations. While sub-genres and trending tropes may offer creative inspiration, they’re only surface-level insights. Effective market research requires understanding what readers expect on a deeper level, such as emotional arcs, character archetypes, pacing, and tone. Then you can either adjust your storytelling to meet those expectations or pivot to a genre that aligns with your strengths and creative vision.

• Evaluate trends critically and prioritize long-term reader engagement over short-term hype. Many authors fall into the trap of copying trends they see from peers, but this rarely leads to sustainable growth. Instead, your focus should be on the patterns in what your target audience consistently engages with and purchases. Prioritizing data-driven decisions over reactive trend-following leads to a stronger, more scalable author brand.

Strategy without alignment is just noise. When you take time to understand your ideal reader, their expectations, and how your stories can meet those expectations with your unique voice, that’s when the magic happens.

And if you want help staying focused on what works, we invite you to join our free Facebook community, where we share exclusive guides, actionable insights, and ongoing support to help you grow.

You’ve got the stories. Let’s help you sell them!