If you are writing a book, you are sure to like the topic about you write. It is substantial for a writer to identify or to be able to define his future audience. After you have psychologically and socially located your target audience, ask yourself:

- What kind of web sites are they likely to visit?

- If they are supposed to visit discussion boards and forums frequently, which and where are they?

- What social and professional groups do they belong to?

- What kind of other articles are they likely to look for?

These questions will enable you to find out, if a niche market exists for your book idea or if there is only a niche without a market.

The World Wide Web is the most important source of information on nearly everything nowadays. If there is a target audience for your book, you are to be sure to find them there. There are places on the WEB where people come together to share ideas, to tell stories, or to ask and answer questions on some topics. These places are discussion boards, forums and newsgroups.

Finding keywords
You have to imagine the keywords your potential readers are most likely to use, when they look out for books. A visit to your competitors at some big online booksellers store (Amazon etc.) can be helpful, because in the readers reviews of the competitors books you could fine the preferred expressions of your target audience regarding their favourite readings. Many of these readers have built lists with favourite books provided with descriptions you could use as a source for keywords for your search.

Search engines
Next you go to any search engine like Google or Yahoo, type in the keywords with the word forum at the end. This way you will get a listing of web sites which have forums discussing your topics. Likewise your can use for your searches the words: message board, bulletin board, discussion board, community. A metasearch engine like Dogpile would be also a good choice, because it shows results from many popular search engines like About, Ask.com, FindWhat, Google, LookSmart, MSN, Teoma, Yahoo etc.

Blogging
Weblogs are website journals or diaries which comment some particular subjects. Technorati is a search engine specialized on blog entries and you can use it to explore the personal liking and disliking of your potential readers by means of your keywords.