Consider The Reader: Identify Your Audience

A number of authors have recently contacted me about marketing their books. So I’m going to begin by providing the best piece of advice I can on this topic, which is to consider your reader. Without taking this approach, I think it’ nearly impossible to market a book. That said, there are two specific components to this:

1. Identify your audience
2. Know what your audience wants

Once you know those two things your marketing plan is much easier, and if you can’t identify those two things, just about any marketing plan is likely to fail.

BUT ... what if my book is for everyone?

Let me begin by saying that it’s not. There are people who are indifferent to and even hate some of the best selling books in history. My point is that no matter how great your book may be, there is no way that it’s for the entire planet. My experience is that if you really believe that everyone is your audience then no one is likely to buy the book. People don’t believe they’re all the same, either, so there’s no way that everyone would like the exact same book. Sure, we have some common experiences (that’s part of being human), but we also have individual differences. This is why there are so many different genres, and that’s a good thing.

What if I just write for myself?

Then consider that maybe publishing isn’t the right answer. Sure, you may have something to say that could be beneficial to a segment of the population, but if you don’t know who that segment is then you’re highly unlikely to reach the people who would get anything from your work. So your book will go unnoticed, and you’ll wind up frustrated. In addition, if you write only for yourself and don’t consider the reader, then the only person you can successfully market your book to is you, and, again, there’s no reason to publish. I'm not trying to be harsh. I’m attempting to emphasize the point that writing is communication and if you’re just talking to yourself on paper then there’s no point in getting frustrated when no one else listens. So ask yourself if you have an audience that you need to define better, or if your writing should simply be a personal exercise.

Defining Your Audience

This may appear to be a daunting task, but it may help if I share my experience. I find that readers of my work fall into three categories:

Some love my work.
Some hate my work.
Some don’t care about my work.

The audience I want to identify is the first group. People buy books for different reasons, but there’s a high probability that the people in that first group share some very similar reasons for the books they choose. These common characteristics may be defined by gender, occupation, location, education, or other combinations of qualities. Some of the things I know about my audience is that they tend to have three things in common: they like children’s literature (many because they are children or work with children), they typically don’t take themselves or life too seriously, and they generally tend to be female.  Does this mean that I don’t have any male readers? Of course not. It simply means that if I market to women I'll be more successful than if I market to men or both. Marketing to everyone wastes your time and resources, so it's best to focus as much as possible.

There are numerous way to figure out your audience. For example, you can find geographical information from sales data and your Facebook Fan Page (this will also give you age and gender information). However, I’ve found that the best way to define my audience is through interactions. When you do a book signing or public event look at the audience and see who took the time to attend. Make yourself accessible online and see who contacts you through your website or friends you on social networking sites. Also monitor the engage different social media posts receive - observing how people respond to your posts tells you what's important to them.

Once you identify who is likely to be in the first group of “some who love my work,” then it’s easier to figure out the next step, which is what they want ... and that will be the topic of my next post.

More Advice on Becoming an Author: Approaching Agents and Publishers

Agent and publishers are flooded with manuscripts daily.  Remember this when you approach them.  In order to stand out you need to convince them that you are not a waste of their time, so the very first thing you need is a completed and polished manuscript.  Yes, finding an agent or publisher can take months or years, but you will be immediately disqualified if they ask for your book and it hasn’t met the minimum criteria.  They will throw it away.

I would also recommend hiring an editor to look at it before submitting it.  You may be under the impression that you can delegate the editing of your book to the publisher’s editors.  This is a mistake.   Here ‘s why: Because, as I said earlier, you need to convince the agent or publisher that you are not a waste of their time.  If a book hasn’t already been through preliminary editing it may take months to get it ready for printing.  A book that is already in good shape will go to market sooner and therefore is worth their time. Submitting a manuscript that needs work is the same thing as letting them know that you’re not ready to be published.  Your manuscript will be on the discard pile faster than you can say “edit.” 

Whether or not you decide to pay a freelance editor, I strongly recommend that you find someone other than yourself to edit your manuscript.  Never assume that you will catch all your own typos and mistakes no matter how good a writer you may be.  I have successfully edited books by other authors and I still can’t catch all of my own typos. The problem is that when you’re the writer you’re too close to the ideas in your head and you may even be reading the prose the way you correctly imagine it to be inside your mind, rather than the way your hands have typed it.  A second pair of eyes is a good investment.  If you can afford to pay for experienced eyes, it’s an even better investment.

So before writing a query letter, make sure that your manuscript is in excellent form.  Yes, the publisher will have an editor go through it again and there may be more changes.  But most of professional writing is rewriting and it’s a process.  The deadlines for new drafts only help to make it more exciting (Writing humor.  Just laugh.).

A great resource is the Editorial Freelancers Association where you can find freelance editors and other information, such as a guide to current fees so you can get an idea of how much this work will cost you.  Remember that the number of hours it will take to edit your manuscript is dependent upon the strength of your writing skills.  Manuscripts with more mistakes take longer to edit and therefore will cost more.  It’s a good idea to go through your manuscript several times yourself before sending it to the editor.  This can save you money in the long run. Also note that editing and proofreading are not the same thing.  Proofreaders are cheaper, but they will not address any content, plot discontinuities, or style issues.  They will only correct spelling, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes.  Finally, make sure that any editor you hire is familiar with your genre. The styles of editing for different genres are not the same and getting the right editor can make a huge difference in the quality of your manuscript.

Advice on Becoming a Writer

Despite all the nonsense I write on my blog, I get a lot of serious requests from people who want to get published seeking my advice.  I’ve gotten more than the usual number lately, so I thought I would do a blog post on it.  This will probably take several blog posts to write all of this down, so here’s the initial step:

The first thing you should do is ask yourself “Why do I want to be a writer?”

Writing is not something that you “fall back on” if you lost your job or need some cash.  I’ve been contacted by a lot of out of work people who think that getting published is the answer to their financial problems.  The truth is that it’s quite the opposite.   Several famous authors (Balzac and Sir Walter Scott, for example) have gone bankrupt publishing their own works.  Granted that the publishing industry has changed since those times, but the lack of or difficulty generating income is still there for most authors. 

Starting a writing career is like starting a small business.  You’re going to be doing many jobs (writing, marketing, developing your online presence, event planning, etc.) and working long hours to build yourself.  And, just like a small business, you should anticipate that it will take at least 3 years for you to get things moving.  Your planning approach for this career should be long term and you should not expect fast returns from your work.  It will take time to build yourself up and get your career moving, so make sure that what you really want is to be a writer.  If you’re writing because you enjoy the escape of going into your imaginary world, you may be better off reading books by other authors, going to the movies, or daydreaming.

Like most occupations in the arts, writing is not something you go into for the money.  Most writers don’t make the salaries of Dan Brown or J. K. Rowling (let’s face it, no one makes J. K. Rowling’s salary but J. K. Rowling!).  However, there appears to be a myth that getting a book published is like winning the lottery.  Here’s the reality: most books actually lose money.  By the time that you pay for editing, printing, and marketing you will be bankrupt unless you sell enough books to absorb those costs.  Even if you strictly publish eBooks to avoid the printing costs you still have considerable up front costs that you may never recover.  This is why publishers reject even well written books: because they know that if they can’t sell enough copies to cover their expenses that the book is going to cost them money.  Books that don't make money also don't pay royalties to the author.

So my first message to those who want to be a writer is to make sure that this is what you really want to do because this is a very difficult industry.  In fact, it’s probably easier to become a rock star.  After all, there are no reality TV shows called “American Author” where writers compete for a publishing contract.  But maybe there should be...

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