Write for Your Ideal
Reader
Every
book has one
Every book has an ideal reader or too.
Knowing you your ideal reader is a good way to begin to shape your
writing.
Don't let yourself be bamboozled by the
notion that your book is for everyone - it isn't! The whole world is not a
market, it's a mess Most good books have one, two, or maybe, three
ideal readers. Once you identify them specifically, you're in a much
better position to really meet their needs and communicate your ideas.
Defining your ideal readers accomplishes
several things:
-
Knowing who your
readers are helps you focus...
...not only on what you want to
communicate, but how you want to say it.
For example, you might want to write a
book on the effects of spending hours in from of a computer. If parents
are you readers, you’ll want a whole different tone than if teenagers
are your audience.
Or you might want to tell a story based
on something that happened in your family. Such a book might be a
children's story, a novel for young adults or a biography or
autobiography. Obviously each has it's own ideal reader.
-
Imagining the ideal
reader helps with marketing
When you know who your ideal readers
are, you’ll know how to find them. Knowing how to find the reader is the
basis of all your marketing efforts.
For book length manuscripts, knowing
who your readers are is an absolute requirement. Tempting as it is to
think whatever we’re writing is for “everyone,” that’s just not true. In
fact, if you try to write for everyone, or even a broad section of
people, the work you produce is likely to be boring and disconnected,
satisfying no one.
-
Editors know their
readers
Editors know exactly who their readers
are. The book catalogs from publishers reveal they know, in detail, the
gender, age, income and interests of their readers. They know because
they track sales in detail. That's why it's a good idea to ask for a
book catalog from any publisher you're considering.
Defining Your Ideal
Readers
At a minimum you need to know the age and
gender of your ideal reader, but that's rarely enough to sharply focus
your book. You need to know where they live, what their income is,
where they shop and their problems, dreams and goals.
How do you know these things without
doing expensive research? You use your own experience and your
imagination.
Let's pretend you want to write a book on
some sort of alternative healing method. The chances are you didn't just
pick this idea out of the air. You probably have some background and some
experience in the method you want to write about.
You then extrapolate from your own
experience. You know your own age and gender - how close is that to your
ideal reader? If you're much older or younger, adjust. The same thing is
true of gender.
Where do these people shop? Probably in
health food stores. They probably read, at least casually, alternative
health magazines. They probably tend to go to a chiropractor or other
alternative healer more often than allopathic doctors. If that's true,
they probably also have a higher than average income because so many
health insurance plans don't cover alternative healing methods.
Do you see how you begin to define the
ideal reader?
Give it a try for your book.
Write well and often.
