Who is your audience?

[Denise Tanaka]

My so-called "author success" marketing coach tried to teach me about how to target an audience and then how to expand that circle. Her method depended on finding the unique hooks in my manuscript and matching it to groups of people who've expressed interest in those things. If you wrote a book about dragons, seek out people who like dragon stuff. She asked me to dig deeper into my manuscript -- if my characters went on a quest/journey up into the high icy mountains, maybe my epic fantasy would appeal to hikers and outdoors-ey people too! It gave me some insight into how marketing people think they can predict human behavior based on a person's previous actions. It's the same pseudo-psychological methods used by online t.v. streaming services, credit card companies, Amazon, etc. "If you bought this... you'll enjoy this too."

It depends heavily on the premise that humans are creatures of habit. But, maybe we're not? Maybe I bought that one thing and I didn't like it. Maybe I've read too many dragon books, or fairy books, and I'd like to try something new... but I'm not sure what it is. C'mon, surprise me! Take me somewhere I've never been! Yes I read fantasy but I read other stuff too. I read non-fiction or stuffy Victorian lit or Japanese lit or contemporary lit or ethnic lit from Indian and Asian authors that my friends share with me. If something is GOOD I will read it, so nobody (even me) can really predict what I'll like until you put it in front of me.

All the time, I hear about the so-called professionals being surprised at who the fans of such-and-such turn out to be. J.K. Rowling was astonished that her little book about an orphan boy from Surrey going to wizard school in the Scottish highlands would appeal to Americans. The producers of the t.v. show Supernatural never expected their fans to be teenage girls. Anime as a worldwide craze - the xenophobic Japanese never saw that coming.

Yet the experts who want to make spreadsheets, and graphs, and mathematical models keep trying to predict human behavior. They need to know where to invest their advertising dollars for the biggest effect. That's why sports events show commercials for beer and trucks, and daytime t.v. has commercials for cleaning products and women's clothes. I understand how they are nervous when a 30-second spot at the Super Bowl can cost millions of dollars. But it's terribly short-sighted of them. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned salesmen who could sweet-talk people into buying new inventions that they didn't think they'd ever need? Bottled baby formula... who needs that? I have breasts! See what I mean?

So to answer the question, no, I don't think of a particular audience when I'm writing. I get an idea. I scribble it down. I shape it into something coherent. I worry about getting it "out there" after the fact. Am I right? Am I wrong? I don't know. I certainly have not experienced any blazing commercial success to validate myself. It's just that I don't know any other way to create something out of the sparking neurons in my head.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

if my characters went on a quest/journey up into the high icy mountains, maybe my epic fantasy would appeal to hikers and outdoors-ey people too!

Probably not.
But appeal to people that like quest stories.

It's the same pseudo-psychological methods used by online t.v. streaming services, credit card companies, Amazon, etc. "If you bought this... you'll enjoy this too."

It's the companies that would do it effectively that would worry me. Most companies don't know enough about you. Google is trying their best to change that. So called store loyalty cards that offer discounts are part of the desire to track and profile you.

Whatever happened to the old-fashioned salesmen who could sweet-talk people into buying new inventions that they didn't think they'd ever need? Bottled baby formula... who needs that? I have breasts!

Seen the sales of sweets, soft drinks, Bottled Water, cosmetics, creams (that don't work), overpriced sports clothes for people that don't do sport?
The fake snake-oil salesmen are better than ever!
Apple makes x4 the profit per sale of other companies selling same or better quality because they have convinced a certain demographic that Apple is special and better.
People buy special offers in supermarkets that they don't need and sometimes there is no saving on comparable products elsewhere (pots, TVs, clothes, tools etc, esp. Lidl and Aldi) or the comparable products elsewhere are cheaper, or better quality.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why calves are routinely fed an alternative to Moo Milk too?

 

[Denise Tanaka]

Apple makes x4 the profit per sale of other companies selling same or better quality because they have convinced a certain demographic that Apple is special and better.

I marvel at the marketing genius of how they've made using Apple products seem like a better way of life.

 

[Mad Alice]

I try and keep things young adultish in nature. Its easier to add a few spicy bits then write it down tamer later.

 

[Warren_Paul]

I marvel at the marketing genius of how they've made using Apple products seem like a better way of life.

And it boggles my mind how many people believe them... All it takes for me is to look at the specs of an Apple PC and realize it is inferior hardware inside. For instance, the desktop Macs that people think are so awesome for doing graphic design on are all just glorified laptops, with the same weak, mobile grade hardware you'd find in any cheap laptop. Yet they are charging this premium for it that's close to double the price tag of actual desktop hardware.


Anyway, as far as target audience goes, that's really decided once the book is finished, imo. You write what you want to write and then decide later who you're going to sell it to. My writing has been all over the board. I've done some YA, yet I've done some very adult themed as well.

 

[JG Martin]

I marvel at the marketing genius of how they've made using Apple products seem like a better way of life.

Only in the U.S. Outside the U.S. Android's market share is ridiculously higher. I think it's because we Americans are elitist by nature. Or at least more susceptible to marketing.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I'm wondering who people target as their audience when they start writing their stories/novels?

I write for myself - however, my story is YA aimed at the upper age group sort of 15+ It's just the way it turned out. It's not a completely comfortable YA fit but it also isn't a completely comfortable epic fantasy fit.

I'm going to have to self publish it as a result but that's allowing me more freedom to put out the book it should be not the one it would have been made into.

So far the beta readers who have loved it have been a wide and varied demographic - and so are the ones who hated it. If anything teenagers, gay men and middled aged women are the biggest thumbs up. But also some real devotees of Gormenghast for some reason. The latter is not a book I would compare it to

. Harry Potter may have struck a chord with all age groups, but it was directed at a specific age range with specific considerations of subject matter and language.

JK Rowling has said several times she didn't have a specific audience in mind when she wrote it though - she just wrote it and that's the story that appeared.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I have always written the stories I would like to read, or perhaps I felt I could tell, well. I feel it is no good attempting to write for an audience at the beginning, during the editing stage, then yes, you can enforce certain aspects, say YA or adult, stronger male or female characters. But in the end your readers will make up their own mind where your story fits in the cannon of the genre, and often it is not what you think it is.

 

[Denise Tanaka]

Only in the U.S. Outside the U.S. Android's market share is ridiculously higher. I think it's because we Americans are elitist by nature. Or at least more susceptible to marketing.

I'm really insulated in a bubble because I live in Silicon Valley near Apple headquarters. The iPhones are everywhere.