I suggest that you always write a book proposal before writing your book. At least develop a book proposal before you start shopping your manuscript around or decide to self-publish or pay someone to publish it.
An important part of the book proposal is the process of targeting your audience. And I’m finding that more and more authors are trying to create an audience for their books instead of targeting the most reasonable audience. Rather than determining who would most likely read their books, they are inventing the audience of their dreams and listing this as their target audience.
If you are writing a book proposal, take a look at where you identify your target audience. Be truthful, now—are these likely readers for your book or are you using wishful thinking? While you might want to entice people who have never attended a car race to read your book on insider secrets of car racing, this is NOT your target audience. Everyone who drives cars, who likes movies with fast car scenes or who has ever attended a jalopy race is not your target audience. Your audience comprises people who follow car racing or who are involved in some way. Sure, you might get some curiosity seekers to purchase your book for themselves or as a gift, but these folks are so remote that you would not even list them on your book proposal as a possible audience for your book.
Think long and hard about who makes up the audience for your book. Be realistic. Make sure those on your list are legitimate—folks who would probably, if they had a chance, purchase your book or put it on their wish list. A realistic look at your target audience early on is one of your best tools for publishing success. If you are honest and true in your evaluation, you might discern that your book doesn’t actually have a very large audience. This is not when you start making up potential audience members, this is when you begin to reevaluate your book. Is your niche too small? Are you trying to make the focus too narrow?
There is nothing wrong with a niche book—there is a huge need for them and those with the right stuff will sell to your niche market. But that’s all you can expect. I have actually worked with authors who believe that their obvious niche book could make it to the big time. But that’s another blog post.
My message today is in the form of a warning. Do yourself a huge favor by understanding what is meant by the term target audience and by being realistic when you determine yours. These are the people who want a book like yours—who typically read books like this, who are seeking the information in your book and can’t find it anywhere else, who, if they knew about this book, would definitely (or even probably) buy it. This is your target audience. Sure, others may come out of the woodwork and decide to read your book, but these are not the people you are writing it for—they are not part of your target audience.
If you want to create a larger or a different audience for your book, do it by changing something about your book project—expand on the concept of your book to include a wider audience, use my technique (in The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book) to build a larger audience base, bring in aspects and features that will attract additional segments of readers.
For more about targeting your audience and many, many other aspects of publishing and authorship, be sure to purchase my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html
Get your FREE ebooklet, 50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book: http://www.patriciafry.com