Do you already know who your ideal readers are?
Over the last few days, I’ve been blogging about finding your readers or audience. But perhaps you already know who your readers are or where to find your audience. Answer these questions to find out:
- Are you reading and writing in a clearly recognisable genre, like romance, sci fi, fantasy or crime? (Or a mix of more than one of these?)
- Do you want to self-publish and distribute your work to family and friends? Are they your main reason for writing?
- Or do you want to publish a book related to your business that is mainly for prestige or attracting clients?
- Do you want to write a poetry collection? Do you attend poetry readings regularly and hang out with other poets?
- If you write short stories, do you follow other short story writers on social media and read magazines and journals that publish them?
If you answered yes to any of these sets of questions, then you already know where your audience is or who your readers are likely to be. Continue to support other readers and writers in your audience, be a literary citizen and consider your niche – but the good news is that you have an identifiable audience who are ready and waiting to access your work.
What to do if you still don’t know who your ideal readers are
- You may not be far enough into your project to know yet. That’s ok, keep turning up and then come back to the concept of the ideal reader later.
- Remember to consider what you love to read – what overlaps are there with what you love to write?
- Follow those who write about readership and audience, such as Dan Blank and Jane Friedman.
- Try submitting a small piece of work to an opportunity. You can find one here. Read the publication first. The process will force you to consider how appropriate your work is for the publication concerned.
More soon. Until then, happy writing,
Louise xx
P.S. You can catch the other posts in this series by following the links from here.