From the catwalks of Paris to New York and Milan, fashion will always be a part of our lives. Clothing us in the season’s hottest garments, fashion designers start out young.
This is made obvious by the fact that fashion sketchbooks on Amazon KDP are mainly targeted at young girls, aged from as little as eight. And with all the hype around these books, it’s worth exploring how you can make it in the Amazon KDP game.
In this article, we set out to explore the market size for fashion sketchbooks and the best practices of top sellers. We also look at the profitability within the niche and what steps you can take to avail of the hundreds of sales this niche is generating.
Let’s take a look.
How big is the market for fashion sketchbooks?
As no-content books aimed at young fashion designers, fashion sketchbooks give the user the opportunity to create unique clothing designs on a dummy model that is in the shape of a human body’s outline.
A quick search on Book Bolt offers a glimpse into the market for these books, unveiling that they are primarily targeted at young girls. And when it comes to market size, a search for “fashion sketchbooks” nets a total of 100 results with an average best-sellers rank (BSR) of a low 786,203.
However, when browsing through these results, we see that multiple sellers are making sales that go into the hundreds. So, what is the overall market size of this niche? We take a closer look below.
Keywords and search volume
One thing that makes for a successful niche is a high search volume for keywords in your relevant category. Bearing this in mind, we continued our search on Book Bolt and extracted the related keywords in the fashion sketchbook niche.
Here is a short list of the most relevant keywords, alongside their search volume:
- “Fashion”: search volume – 49,606
- “Fashion coloring”: search volume – 2,788
- “Fashion designs”: search volume – 2,631
- “Fashionable”: search volume – 2,591
- “Fashion bookstack”: search volume – 2,270
- “Fashion drawings”: search volume – 2,152
- “Fashion figures”: search volume – 1,699
Although this is by no means an extensive list of all the related keywords, the ones extracted above were chosen because of their relevance to this niche. In particular, we see that the main keyword “fashion” has a search volume of nearly 50,000 per month. This alone is an indication of the enormous customer interest in the field.
However, because “fashion” can relate to apparel and not just no-content books, we also looked at those keywords with a lower search volume. Overall, we get a combined search volume of over 15,000 searches for the more relevant keywords, which is not bad at all.
This interest from consumers warrants the supply offered by book creators, and explains why the overall BSR in this category is so low. The niche is clearly profitable.
Keyword saturation
Since we already mentioned that there are multiple bestsellers in this niche, it’s worth examining what keywords they are using to get in front of an audience. Below is a short summary of the most important keywords they have used:
- Main niche: fashion (289), fashions (10)
- Type of book: coloring (127), book (112), sketchbook (44), books (18)
- Audience: girls (48), adults (29), women (28), female (16), adult (12), kids (11)
- Additional descriptive and related keywords: figure (34), design (30), templates (29), style (23), stylish (18), beauty (17), sketch (16), designs (14), illustration (13)
- Locations: Paris (6)
This keyword saturation reflects our initial findings. For example, the most high search volume keyword “fashion” appears the most times in sellers’ titles.
In terms of the type of book, we see a differentiation between coloring books and sketchbooks. This means that some bestsellers who are selling coloring books with a fashion theme are using this niche to jump on the bandwagon of success.
Regarding the audience type, the findings above reflect that fashion sketchbooks are generally aimed at young girls first, followed by women, and lastly – adults in general.
The deeper intricacies of these fashion sketchbooks are revealed when bestsellers use other associated keywords to emphasize their offering. These keywords include “figure”, “template”, “illustration”, “collection”, and others.
Finally, a very limited number of bestsellers (6) have used the fashion capital of the world Paris as a keyword in their titles.
Pricing
The pricing of these fashion sketchbooks also needs to be explored. This means looking at the lowest, highest, and average prices to determine your pricing strategy.
A quick summary from Book Bolt indicates the following:
- Lowest price: $4.99
- Highest price: $13.53
- Average price: $8.09
What are some of the best-selling merchants doing right?
Two bestsellers emerged from our Book Bolt search for fashion sketchbooks.
Bestseller 1: Ricca’s Garden
This seller has created a fashion sketchbook by the name of “Fashion Sketchbook: 418 Female Figure Templates for Fashion Design and Illustration”.
It has a low BSR of 91,102 and is priced at $8.99. So far, the seller has made 235 sales on this product.
Bestseller 2: Studio Bye Bye
Studio Bye Bye has created a product titled: “Fashion Sketchbook Figure Template: This professional Fashion Illustration Sketchbook contains 230 female fashion figure templates. All fashion … in Paris and are now available in this Book”.
It goes for $9.90 and has a BSR of 52,161. It has made 269 sales to date.
Keyword usage
What both of these bestsellers have done is to use the overarching keyword “fashion” and “sketchbook” in their titles. Next, they have included words like “figure”, “templates”, and “design”, which are keywords that we identified above as being successful and with a high search volume.
Studio Bye Bye has also included the keyword “Paris” in their title, which although not used frequently by other bestsellers in this niche, actually makes for a nice touch to bring the title to life and make it more relevant to the fashion industry.
Pricing
The average price in this niche is $8.09. With this in mind, both sellers have aimed to price in this region with Ricca’s Garden going for $8.99 and Studio Bye Bye’s book going a bit over the average at $9.90.
Nevertheless, these amounts still fall within the average scope and contribute to both sellers’ success.
Cover design
The cover design on Ricca’s Garden’s product is defined by sketched outlines of a female model in an upright position. This gives the audience insight into what types of templates they can expect to see inside the book.
Studio Bye Bye on the other hand, has both female outlines on their cover design, but also a fully designed outfit in color to indicate the possible outcome of what a finished sketch might look like.
Both sellers have used the female body outline in their covers and they have also placed their title in the top center part of the cover to indicate that the audience is specifically getting a fashion sketchbook with templates.
What is the profitability within this niche?
Heading over to Amazon KDP’s royalties calculator, we also tried to discover the profitability within this niche.
Ricca’s Garden’s product sells for $8.99 with 235 sales. At 212 pages, we get royalties of $2.00 per book sold, which means that profits for this seller come in at $470.
Studio Bye Bye sells their fashion sketchbook at $9.90 and it has made 269 sales. This means that at 134 pages, royalties per book sold are $3.48, which results in profitability of $936.12.
It’s clear that a difference as small as a dollar can bring your profitability up to nearly $1,000. And Studio Bye Bye has done well for themselves in this niche by capitalizing on the price and optimizing their keyword usage in their titles.
Our recommendations
When it comes to tapping into a niche on Amazon KDP, it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel. Instead, you should focus on what current bestsellers are doing and emulate their strategies.
Here is a brief breakdown of what the bestselling strategies for the fashion sketchbook niche is and how you can enter it successfully:
- Be sure to use keywords that accurately describe your product, while relying on those with the highest search volume. In particular, you want to go for the broad and overarching keyword “fashion” and then supplement this with words like “illustrations”, “templates”, and “designs”. Throwing in a fashion location such as Paris is not done by many sellers, but is a strategy used by the bestseller in this niche.
- Make sure you carefully study what the average prices are in the fashion sketchbooks niche. In general, you want to be pricing very close to the $8-mark but not too high or too low above that. While Studio Bye Bye has priced a little bit above the average, this has worked in their favor. But anything higher than $9.90 should be considered a no-no. After all, you want to strike that fine balance of pricing just right so that you can earn as much royalties from each sale as possible.
- Finally, we talk about cover designs. When compared to other Amazon KDP niches, the cover designs of the best sellling fashion sketchbooks are quite simple. They only feature a human form outline and they are primarily black and white, with the exception of Studio Bye Bye, which has added some color to the fully designed outfit on their cover as well. Using centralizing elements for your title is crucial and ensuring that there is design harmony between your title and cover designs are also strategies worth following.
In conclusion
The fashion sketchbooks niche on Amazon KDP has the potential to earn you almost $1,000 per month. And if you follow our tips above, you can probably exceed this amount. However, approaching this niche intelligently and with the right tools at your fingertips is a must.
This is why we used Book Bolt to help us do that. For only $9.99 per month, this is a negligible amount that will help take your Amazon KDP side gig to another level. The investment is seriously worth it.
