A spoken presentation (YouTube) about how to differentiate offerings in crowded markets by delivering what a specific audience actually wants. The speaker contrasts two approaches — 'stand out' (offer something novel like Scaremail for horror readers) versus 'stand amongst' (replicating existing services) — and recommends adding interactive elements (links, puzzles, extra materials) to products (e.g., books) to deepen engagement.
Chapters
I don't necessarily believe in a saturated market. What I believe is in is if you are delivering the thing that market is looking for, they're a whole lot likely to ban behind it. Especially if it's been done right and hasn't been and hasn't been done specifically for them. So stand out or stand amongst. You have a choice. In this case, Scaremail was very much standout because it was not offered to horror readers before. There were six other services that I know are run by authors that have popped up in the last month since Scaremail went basically public with how things are going and they are standing amongst and you're finding that they're struggling to find traction. They're trying to replicate what was already done versus offering something new to a market through a different medium, through a medium that's already been done. There were a lot of good ideas in this talk lately about things that could be done differently through a book. Adding links, puzzle pieces, things to make it interactive, things to bring people into the fold and say, hey, look, this is a fantasy book. But here's also what's going on with it. That to me is powerful messaging because I'm not only getting what I asked for, I'm not only getting the fantas, but I'm getting something else on top of the.
