Defining Your Book's Audience

Bigger is not better

One of the hardest parts of your book proposal or your personal marketing plan is the audience section. You have this great idea for a book that will interest or help a lot of people. But now you have to somehow explain who those are and figure out how many people actually are in your audience. Here are the tips I give my authors on defining and narrowing their audience.

Understand the Purpose of Identifying Your Audience

You have to identify your audience so that you can figure out how to reach them. You can’t market a book to a reader you don’t know how to reach. So, the whole purpose here is to define the audience in a way that makes it possible for you to do things that will inform them about the book.

Refine Your Audience

If you decide your audience is women 22-60, that is a huge group of people who don’t have much in common. They don’t read the same things, they don’t belong to the same organizations, they don’t listen to the same podcasts, etc. There’s no easy way to make contact with them. Your audience is too broad.

You want to figure out specific characteristics of the people you are writing for so that you can understand where to find them.

The easiest way to do this is to think about the problem your book is solving or the niche it is filling.

If your book is about a career topic for women, think about whether this is a problem that is faced in the beginning, middle, or end of a career. That will help you refine your age range and also the professional standing of the reader.

If your memoir is about a family relationship (such as dealing with a parent’s dementia), isolate at what age people are most likely to face such a situation. Sure, there might be someone in their 20s with a parent with dementia, but the bulk of your audience is going to be over 50.

Drill Down

Once you’ve figured out who your primary group of readers will be, challenge yourself to refine it even more. I am always telling my writers “drill down” and make it more specific.

I’m working with a client on a book that deals with a specific type of trauma. Millions of women deal with this type of trauma. That was her identified audience, and it’s a huge, varied group. As we worked, it became clear that this type of trauma is statistically most likely to happen to women under age 25. Yes, they deal with it for the rest of their lives and may seek help at any age, but the initial trauma often occurs at that age. So, narrowing the audience to college-age women or young career women more clearly defined her audience. And it made it much easier to market to those women.

While all women who deal with this trauma may be accessing mental health resources and media about the topic, they are a scattered audience—all across the country and of all ages. By focusing the audience on this younger group of women, know where to find them: colleges, sororities, university health centers, college bookstores, certain urban resource centers, and media directed at college students, recent college graduates, and young career women.

Get Statistics

Once you know who your people are, you need to get statistics to show the size of the group. Do some Googling. Put the numbers in your proposal and hyperlink to the source. It’s better to try to link to the original source (a study or a census or something official) rather than to an article or blog post that mentions the statistic.

You might not get direct specific numbers for your audience, but you can work around it by combining some stats (and maybe doing some math!) to get enough information. Think creatively when you’re searching, and don’t be afraid to ask AI to help you pull numbers (but always makes sure you also ask it to provide the source and doublecheck it).

Develop a Secondary Audience

You’re probably focused on who you’re directly writing for or to. But take some time to shift your thinking to consider who else might benefit from this book. In the example of college-age women with trauma, the secondary audience might be women 30-50 who are dealing with that trauma.

A secondary audience is often people who are connected with or helping the prime audience, such as therapists, health care providers, spouses/partners, family, guidance counselors, work supervisors, etc. And don’t forget that while women might be your target audience (true for many self-help books), men could with the same issues could be a secondary audience.

Understanding who your audience is in detail will make it easier for you to develop a marketing plan for your book.

Fun Stuff

We had a brief “fool’s spring” for a few days but now are back to some cold temps in my area. I combatted this by putting up my spring decorations, and I also broke out a spring purse.

In My World

I’m wrapping up work on a new book of my own that will come out in the fall (more on that in coming months) and I’m working with a podcast host on a book proposal that is focused on the uplifting message her podcast offers. I can’t wait till it sells and I can tell you about it!

Obsessed with…

I am finally reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which has been on my TBR pile for years. And it’s so good! It sounds very heavy (and it is a long book), but it’s very readable and engaging. I’m about 1/3 through it, and I cannot get over his conclusions about so many things, including that switching from foraging to farming was essentially the entire downfall of humankind. My husband listened to the audiobook, and it was also very good.

Good Goods

I lost my damn mind at the grocery store and bought about 6 brands of jelly beans and made up jelly bean flights in little bags for my kids (adults! My husband said, “You’re just going to do everything you can to keep them as little kids.” Yes, yes I am) to put in their Easter boxes (if you live across the continent you don’t get a basket, you get a USPS flat rate box). I had the most fun sampling them: Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, Starburst, Swedish Fish, Brach’s original, and some pickle-flavored ones. Trader Joe’s is my winner.