Targeting the right audience for your book can be quite the hassle, especially when you have no clue how to begin your search. It is a bigger disappointment when you know how much of an amazing writer you are, you have all of the creativity overflowing and the right words in check, but, if only you know just how to pinpoint your target audience.
Knowing how to target the right audience for your book will not only help a great deal in getting your books onto the hands of your readers( or e-readers), it will also help a great deal with your marketing process, especially if you’re looking to make money through your writing(https://tinyurl.com/Make-money-through-writing).
As a writer, one of the prewriting exercises that is proven helpful to your writing process is identifying the right audience for your book.
Oftentimes, authors make the mistake of embarking on ‘broad writing’, but that has never helped anyone as it would only get you lost in a maze of words. Writing for a specific audience gives your book a structure and clarity, not to mention the massive success rate added to your name.
While it is okay to write a book without an audience in mind or writing without a care in the world about who your target audience is, you absolutely should not expect the book to do so well. If you want to make good sales from your book, then you better buckle up and start hunting for your target audience.
WHO IS AN AUDIENCE?
While it looks like a great idea for your book to be centered around the right audience, without the slightest clue who an audience is, you might as well be building castles in the cloud. Who is an audience and how do you identify your target audience?
An audience is a group of people with a shared problem, experience or goals. Narrowing down as an author, your target audience is a group of people with a shared problem that your book solves.
This article provides four simple ways to make your search easy. Knowing how frustrating it can get seeking out the right audience for your book, we have carefully curated simple steps to take to ensure your book finds its way to the right audience.
CONTENT
- Create a Reader Persona
- Think Beyond Your Primary Target
- Identify With Books Similar to Yours
- Take Advantage Of Social Media.
Your target audience might be closer than you think, all you have to do is look. These steps will certainly help you get the ball rolling in your quest for identifying your target audience.
- CREATE A READER PERSONA
Having a vague idea of who your audience might be sadly won’t cut it this time. Having an exact description will make the job so much easier. When identifying who your audiences are, a detailed description of them largely solves the problem. This includes knowing the age, sex, marital status, location, interest, etc. Knowing the right details helps you structure your book to satisfy the needs of your audience instead of just taking a shot in guessing.
For example, if you set out to write a book on dealing with the effects of menopause, your book should be targeted around women in the ages of 40-60. Those are the people you reach out to when marketing your book.
In achieving this fit, you need to create a reader persona as a case study. This simply means, thinking like your reader. Placing yourself in the position of a reader will help you identify all the needed factors and information for your book and how to better reach out to the right audience.
Creating a reader persona greatly helps you figure out which community you should market your book to. It also provides the right structure to your book. Thinking like your reader places you in a position where you provide the right information needed to solve a problem as it serves as a guide in your research process.
- THINK BEYOND YOUR PRIMARY TARGET
In identifying with your audience it is also vital to broaden one’s horizons. While it is great reaching out to the right people or audience that needs your book, you should have at the back of your mind the possibility of extensions.
For example, if you are a writer who specializes in children books, while your target audience are the children who reads your book, you need to have at the back of your mind the possibilities of the parents, teachers, child therapists who will also source out your book to learn a thing or two from it.
Thinking beyond the primary target is also very vital when identifying with your target audience, this helps gives room to more accommodations not just in the content of your book, but also enlarges your book coverage in terms of sales. So, you should not tick that off your list!
- IDENTIFY WITH BOOKS SIMILAR TO YOURS
Identifying with your target audience may be harder than you imagined, to avoid the headache, sometimes the easiest thing to do is to identify with books and authors similar to your yours! Having a niche comes in handy when identifying with the right audience, chances are, writers with similar niches just as you probably shares the same audience just as you do!
The saying ‘the riches is in the niches’ couldn’t be more well said when viewed in this context. If identifying with the right audience seems to be a bother, all you have to do with network with the authors with similar books or niche as yourself and you stand a high chance of identifying with your target audience along the way.
- TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
This is an age where being a writer isn’t such a difficult road to embark on. The times we live in has provided just another tool to connect with authors as well as readers. When you think there’s no way in seeking out your audience for your book, you might be surprised what you find online via surveys.
For example, going on Facebook or Twitter to research on the interest rate of people likely to read your book will provide you with a stepping stone to identifying with your readers. Or simply conducting an online search or survey will also be of great help.
FINAL THOUGHT
Identifying with your target audience for your book via these steps will certainly make the job easier. However, if you’re a self published author, word of mouth is your best shot to connect with your audience.
You probably may not have enough resources to push your book to a good amount of your audience, however you can appeal to the readers already seeking out books similar to a niche like yours and if they love your book, they’ll certainly let the word out and you’ll be on your way to having a good sales coverage.
Your readers are out there, just keep looking!