Who is my audience? As an aspiring or newly published author you
might be asking yourself this, wondering how you can connect with those
interested in reading your novel. Regardless of whether you self-publish
or publish traditionally, I believe this is the most important question that an
author has in mind when selling a book. I know lots of authors write because
they just want to tell the story they had envisioned. However, do you find that
after you have written your story, you may be having a problem selling your
book?
Assuming you just got the itch and after writing your story were
looking to sell your book, how do you identify your audience?
From what I know and have heard, writers rely on those closest to them -
typically family members, friends and writers groups. That is great support,
but is it enough? I’d actually suggest that family and friends are ‘supportive’
and should not be considered as an appropriate audience unless you are writing
specifically for them. Writers groups are great at critiquing your books but at
the end of the process do you find that a few may buy your book and others are
interested in selling you their books? I’ve had a writer describe this to
me succinctly as “a cannibalistic writers-marketing-to-writers situation.”
Although you could be selling books worldwide, your audience and understanding
of them is limited because you start your book off with a group that does not
encompass a spectrum of ages and gender. Have you limited your initial audience
such that you are having a problem with discoverability?
Let me say upfront that this blog is not for
writers seeking to share their story with only a small circle of friends and
family. If your aim is to write for a personal group or your consumption,
please don’t change a thing. This blog is for writers seeking
to share ideas on how to make their stories stand out and to share their
creativity with an erratic world; a world, which is looking for a quick sound
bite and is saturated with books, among other forms of entertainment.
Most writers I’ve spoken to have a general idea of who they are
writing for. For those interested in traditional publishing, publishers
will want to know who your audience is and their demographics through the book
proposal you send to them. In other words, can the book sell and to who?
For some self-published authors, I’ve heard that question come up again during
the marketing stage. A bit late? Maybe. More importantly, what would prompt any
author to seek to understand their audience better during the marketing stage?
I’d guess that their books are not selling as expected. If this describes you
as a writer, then it sounds like you have not made your work stand out for the
public. Your book is buried under an avalanche of other books on Amazon or even
in bookstores. At least 3 ‘successful’ authors (success defined as ability to
sell books consistently) I’ve met or listened to are good at marketing.
This means that they have found ways to make themselves and their book stand
out from the crowd.
