You have decided to write your first book. You have had a great adventure or have thought up a great plot and can’t wait to get going. What should you do first? Start with an outline? A description of characters? Write frantically to get your thoughts down? As you think about it, you realize the amount of work involved in committing to writing a book. You make a plan, sit down, and start writing. If you are like many new writers, you don’t think about marketing and developing your readership; in your mind, that will come later, after you finish the book. Unfortunately, this is probably one of the greatest mistakes you can make as a beginner writer.
The first thing you should do is a consider the audience. If you want to sell books, and aren’t writing just for yourself, finding the target audience will help you hone your message, your voice, maybe even your vocabulary for maximum reader appeal.
Identifying the ideal reader
Some writers may do this subconsciously while others make a purposeful effort to understand their ideal reader. They ask questions, such as:
- Male, Female, Both?
- Age?
- Culture? Ethnicity? Sociopolitical and religious stance?
- Married or single? With or without children?
- What are their interests?
- Where do they live?
- What needs do they have? How can this book fulfill that need?
- Do they read only one genre or many? Can you write the book for cross-genre attraction?
- Do they read for escape or information, inspiration, motivation?
- How do they spend their time?
- Do they prefer ebooks or paper?
- How knowledgeable is the reader about this topic?
- Do they want a free book or will they pay for book?
Knowing the answers to these questions will help you write the book that your target audience will want to read, because you will be writing it for them, using tone, language, and style specific for that audience. Doing so will be easy as you envision the reader and mentally engage them as if you were in a conversation with them as you write. This techniques works for both fiction and nonfiction writers.
You may find that you have more than one target reader, and that you can or cannot write a one-for-all-readers book. This can be a boon for you—with a slight change in audience focus, you can write subsequent books directed at different, but specific, readers. Or you might decide to stick with one specific type of reader, for consistency between books.
Why is identifying the audience important?
- Writing for someone specific helps you decide what material to include and how to organize and support your thoughts.
- Understanding how the reader processes the content can keep you from writing in a boring manner. Are you oversimplifying or overly complicating the story? Can the reader follow your logic or do you need add better transitions?
- It can help you be consistent in tone and word choice. Imagine you are sitting across the table from your readers and engaging them in conversation or telling them a story. Now imagine you are telling it to someone else. Does the tone and tempo of your story change with a change in audience? Avoid this change by continually maintaining a clear vision of your ideal reader.
Another benefit to identifying your audience prior to writing your book is that you can now start to develop your author’s platform, building a following that will be receptive to your book once it is released. What more can you as a writer ask for than to have readers anxiously awaiting YOUR book? How do you build this platform? By engaging the reading from the get-go.
How to build a following of readers that love you
- Start a blog. Write about the topics in your book and ask your readers to comment. Respond to their comments. If the comments ask for more clarification, you can assume that you will have to develop the topic better in your book. To entice his audiences, Adam Nathan publishes excerpts of his book on his webpage.
- Depending on your audience, start a Facebook Fan page. Discuss the book development. Ask them to chose topics, titles, book covers, have contests. They will love you for it and will provide you with valuable feedback. For an example of how to engage your readers on Facebook, see Michael Hicks’ fans page.
- Find other places in the social sphere where your audience hangs out, and join them there. Start a discussion.
From this audience, you may find beta readers who can tell you what they do or did not like about the book so that you can address those issues before you publish the book. You may find the interaction encouraging and inspirational—a comment can lead to an unexpected development that enhances the book. The biggest advantage to building this following, is that you have readers just clamoring for the release, readers who can’t wait to read and review your book.
Do you know who your readers are ? Tell me about them? How did you envision them? How did having this vision help you write your book? Please comment.
