Do you need help promoting your book? Are you not sure what aspects of your book to talk up when conversing with a potential customer? While you may have written the book with a particular audience in mind and you believe that your book fills a specific niche, people might buy it for entirely different reasons than you imagined. Your readers may be getting something other than what you intended out of it.
Could it be that your young adult novel also appeals to senior readers? Are seasoned gardeners and nursery owners buying your beginner’s book on tips for nurturing a successful garden? Maybe your book of spiritual prompts is being noticed, not only by readers of your faith, but those who are seeking.
So how does one appropriately determine or define his audience and promote to that group? By listening to what they have to say.
Go to your book’s page on Amazon and study what your readers are saying. Pay attention to what your readers tell you in person or via email. Ask questions to further understand how your book is helping or otherwise affecting them. Incorporate those things you feel are valid in your promotional material.
Certainly, you are going to read and hear the positive things your fans say. But also listen to the criticism—and if you are promoting a book, you are bound to get some criticism.
I recently discovered some heavy criticism from an author with regard to one of my books at one of my Amazon pages. This woman was so dissatisfied after reading the first chapter, that she would like to get her money back. I attempted to contact her, so I could find out how much she paid and where to send the money, but she is one of those who is impossible to locate. I even went to her pay-to-publish company website and they have no record of her or her book. This company seemed much more interested in signing up new authors than in helping someone locate one of the authors who has already used their services and has a book for sale in their catalog.
Okay, I got a bit off subject there. But I did learn something about the sensitivities of a segment of my audience and now know that, for some authors reading this book for the first time, I need to do some handholding and encouraging to get them past the first chapter, which is full of truths that some of them simply can’t take.
The point is, you have many potential readers with a wide variety of views, idiosyncrasies, belief systems, former experiences, knowledge, needs, etc. And an author must attempt to be sensitive to this when promoting books. And when someone is generous enough to comment on our books, we should consider this a gift and use it to assist in our future promotional efforts.