On knowing your audience

sknox

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The advice gets repeated so often and so widely, it has become its own adage. Know your audience. We authors are urged to this, admonished to it, even scolded for somehow not doing it or doing it poorly.

I'm here to suggest the advice is not only impossible, it does more harm than good. It doesn't inspire toward a noble or useful goal, but instead intimidates and leads astray those who take it seriously. Here is my argument.

I can know who I *hope* is my audience, or *expect* to be my audience, but there is no way of my knowing. Indeed, even after I've sold books, I can't know who my audience was. I could meet them in person and still not know them in any useful sort of way. To do that, I would need to know them *at the time of reading*, because people do change. I have a hard enough time knowing myself. An even tougher time knowing those around me. Knowing my audience? An illusion, sez I.

A live performer can know their audience. They see and hear and even sense reactions to their own performance. Over time, they can even experiment with different approaches and so adjust to the audience. Here "the audience" means that strange beast that exists only in an assembled crowd, a meta-being the comes into existence at the start of a performance and dissolves again at curtain fall. An author doesn't have the luxury (and burden!).

So, why not just dismiss the pronouncement as nonsense. and move on? I argue that new authors, the yet-to-be-published authors, can be intimidated by this advice. They fret over it, as they fret over so many things, and they fret when they ought to be writing. They can be led astray in the sense that they try to bend their writing in this direction or that, believing they've caught the audience's scent, and so go down every path but their own.

Even at the extremes, just to anticipate certain counter-arguments, I say "know your audience" is a chimera. Let's say I want to write a book for young children. Hah! That's an identifiable audience, isn't it? I wouldn't try writing a book with big, long words that they can't possibly understand ... oh, I beg your pardon Mr Seuss. Didn't mean to step on your toes. But even with such a crowd, I say it's better for authors to write to what they *think* is the audience. They should recall their own childhood, or look to their own children, or the children of others, and write whatever they are inspired to write. There are many different kinds of children, after all. They read all sorts of books.

There is one audience I can imagine as existing, being useful to identify: the publishing business. It pays to consider a magazine editor as the audience. It pays to regard one's agent as one's audience. It might pay to know something of the various editors at the major publishing houses. They decide whether written books get published. If the aim is to be traditionally published, then there's an audience worth knowing. Worth taking out for drinks.

There's my argument, stated plainly so as to elicit responses. I'll now duck, find cover, and see who advances.
 
If I was being cynical, I might say "know your audience" refers not to the readers but to the book editors and agents you need to get you book in front of.

That's how I take it. Not so much write something for an audience, but know which people your book is meant for.

Because often you also hear that every book has an audience--it is just a matter of finding them.
Not much help there.

My brother would say to me that if you want to make money at art,
make things that sell.

Yeah. I never would have thought of that.
 
I would rather people knew their genre, rather than some imagined audience. It is amazing how often I see people interested in writing fantasy who don't ever read fantasy books!

If you write a really good book that fits in at least one identifiable genre, someone will want to publish it. That may seem like a crazy thing to say, but I really don't think that all these frustrated, unpublished authors are failing because of some narrow issue. I think they are mainly writing stuff that is hard to pin down, or just not that good.

I'm sorry to say this, but I have yet to read an excerpt on a writing forum of a book I could see reading. Some of it I could see it getting polished to that point, other stuff makes me wonder who is telling these writers that they are on to something. (There are probably a bunch of specific exceptions to this broad pronouncement that I am forgetting, but please accept my hyperbole in the spirit intended!)
 
That's how I take it. Not so much write something for an audience, but know which people your book is meant for.

Because often you also hear that every book has an audience--it is just a matter of finding them.
Not much help there.

My brother would say to me that if you want to make money at art,
make things that sell.

Yeah. I never would have thought of that.

I like this way of putting it. If you want to write a book for action lovers, then you don't have lots of long philosophical conversations while the characters make tea (unless you want a hybrid book for people who wished they had books there were 50% action and 50% long philosophical conversations while making tea).

I guess you know your audience is taking that a step further and going "well I know action lovers like this, so lets include this" which anything else apart, seems a lot less fun.
 
I see two sides to this:

@sknox As a History academic, I'm assuming that you must have written non-fiction books, and those books must have been written for a very specific audience, even if it were simply a course book for your own students. When I wrote an article for a journal on a murder, the editor advised me that I could leave out all the stuff on railway history, because they had had a whole slew of recent articles of railway history, and the journal readers were already knowledgeable in that subject. I thought that was good advice that came from knowing his audience. It appears from reading SFFChrons that editors and agents for fiction books are only there to give poor advice and to make things harder for the author. I find that hard to believe.

However, I agree with the rest of your comments. It's like the advice to a new mother on caring for a baby. Don't lie it down this way. Don't lie it that way. Do lie it this way. Never do this. Never do that. Repeated for breast feeding or weaning. All of it conflicting with each other, given by "so called" experts, to someone who doesn't know what they should do or who to trust. In fact, it's same when anyone tries out anything new - new jobs, new hobbies. What you need to do is to go with your own gut feeling, or go with the advice of someone that you already trust. Take very lightly, all the people who think they are experts because they don't know you or your particular situation, and what worked for them may not work for you.

As for actually knowing your audience in any case, yes, that must be almost impossible. My example of a journal or magazine with an existing readership doesn't exactly work with a first book by a new author, who has no basis on which to make such measurements.
 
I was going to bring up the Last Jedi as an example where they deliberately sought to do something to defy expectations for the audience. They knew their audience but deliberately defied expectations.
Take a western as example--there is not a lot of story variety in a western but some people like them enough for being familiar or predictable, or because of the cast and direction etc.
Fantasy books can be the same way--people may like to read a story that is just rehash of Lord of the Rings. They don't want something new--they want the familiarity. An orc! My kingdom for an orc.
 
That's how I take it. Not so much write something for an audience, but know which people your book is meant for.

I would rather people knew their genre, rather than some imagined audience. It is amazing how often I see people interested in writing fantasy who don't ever read fantasy books!

I agree with both these statements.

What Swank has said has put me in mind of new writers I have encountered who are confident they are going to totally remake the face of fantasy, because they know little or nothing about the genre and what little they do know leads them to believe that every fantasy ever written has certain elements which they, so brilliantly, have avoided. Look, they brag, no farm boys, no chosen one. My book is unlike anything you have ever seen before. Then I've taken a look at the book and seen that, yes, they managed to avoid a few cliché's, but have managed to include a dozen others as central to their plot and characters, and handled those in the clumsiest and most hackneyed ways imaginable. Why have they done this? Either because they don't know how over-used these particular elements have been in the past, or because they think that without those elements it won't be fantasy, because they have no idea of the breadth and variety that the genre already offers. To familiarize oneself with what a genre—any genre, but particularly speculative fiction—already includes, is to understand how wide the territory really is, and free oneself from confining (and false) assumptions.
 
I mean, I know all 10 of my audience... that's tongue in cheek but there's actually something to be said about being easily connected, and getting feedback directly from your audience. For instance, technically some of my work is young adult, but it doesn't sell to that demograph, by and large - so I market it mostly to adults. In terms of writing for an audience, I don't really as I find that I end up with books I don't love when I try to do that, so I mostly now just try to write something I'd like to read.
 
I have heard a comment on new books - actually a lot of years ago at a fantasy convention - "more of the same but different". So some parts are familiar, some are new. It was being said in particular regarding a new fantasy author, who in their day did shift some boundaries - and now gets a few reviews from new readers saying "this is nothing new". Well, it was 20 years ago.

so I mostly now just try to write something I'd like to read.
Yes. Me too, not that I am published.
Then you can run into the "thing" that if what you want to read is something that was really popular 30 years ago, then any agent who wants you to list books that inspire you - and is looking for you to mention big new success that came out in the last 5 years - isn't going to be interested. There may be plenty of people out there, who, like you, want to read more in the style of the 30 year old "thing" and can't find it any more and hates what is being published now. The big problem is finding those people when you are selling your book and making all of you happy.

I think some of the irritation with agents and publishers can arise from wanting to read books in a style/story type they are not currently interested in - so you as a reader are not getting what you want, and then when you write what you want, you have the further frustration of them rejecting it. When identifying what it is, is easy, like military sf, or warhammer type fantasy, you have a clear niche and a nicely defined audience. It is when you want more like Tanya Huff's Silvered for example that it all goes wrong. I've asked for recommendations for books, listing books I like and don't like and saying why I like them, and get recommendations that are way off base, because the reason I like the books is not the reason other people like the same book, so they recommend books to me that are like the reason they like the books we have in common - not the reason I like them.
 
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I mostly now just try to write something I'd like to read.
Readers who like to read what you like to read are your audience , and who should know them better than you do?

Where many people get into trouble is in writing books of a sort they would never read themselves . . . because they think such books sell well, or because they hope to impress everyone. The results are frequently lamentable, and even when that is not the case and the book is successful, the author often finds him or herself in a rut, and comes to resent publishers and fans for demanding more of the same and for ignoring the books they feel are more true to themselves, books they feel more proud of having written.
 
I would say write for yourself then consider your audience as a marketing decision, not a writing one.

To judge from the signings my audience is a very different demographic to what I was expecting. I would also add that word of mouth seems to be exceeding Amazon in terms of sales, I need to order another box of author copies.
 
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The trouble about writing to trends is that, unless you are a quick full-time author, by the time you've produced a potentially lucrative novel, the trend for X will have been replaced by one for Y. So I think this could be quite difficult in practice, unless the trend is very strong or you are being paid/contracted to write the book up front. I would also say that writing about something you aren't interested in raises the chances of the book not "ringing true", whatever that entails.

I find it quite hard to comment on this: while I wrote Space Captain Smith purely as a laugh, part of the reason the publisher looked at it was a trend for retro books like The Dangerous Book for Boys. So I was probably lucky there.
 
I would also add that word of mouth seems to be exceeding Amazon in terms of sales, I need to order another box of author copies.
If I may be curious - and do say no if you prefer - I was trying to work out what your advertising/selling route is - you're on Amazon, you are going somewhere with physical books - so may I ask about your advertising and selling route?
 
If I may be curious - and do say no if you prefer - I was trying to work out what your advertising/selling route is - you're on Amazon, you are going somewhere with physical books - so may I ask about your advertising and selling route?
Have PM'd you.
 
I would say write for yourself then consider your audience as a marketing decision, not a writing one.

To judge from the signings my audience is a very different demographic to what I was expecting. I would also add that word of mouth seems to be exceeding Amazon in terms of sales, I need to order another box of author copies.
I like both aspects of this post. I agree about writing for yourself. Or for a group of readers you know directly (e.g., beta readers) and from whom you can get solid feedback. Knowing the audience is indeed more about marketing than it is about creative writing.

In addition, I'm not at all surprised to find those who buy your books are different from those you were expecting. In fact, it would be rather astonishing if I as a writer--isolated, preoccupied, living in a fantasy world (indeed)--were by some magic be able to know who out of hundreds of millions of people were the ones to aim for. I'm certain there are those who can. I'm equally certain I am not among them.

Both these comments bolster the real point of my post. That especially for the new writer (yet to write that first book, or yet to be published), the general nostrum about knowing your audience is worse than useless precisely because it leads toward marketing rather than toward writing, all the while pretending it somehow is relevant to the writing side.

I have to add that there are measures of success that have nothing to do with money. Plenty of folks (here and elsewhere) look at "author" and think "one who makes a living from writing", nor is that wrong. It's merely incomplete. For me, and I know this is true for others because they've said so, the first success was simply finishing a story. Second success was finishing a novel. Third success was getting that novel published (self). Fourth was making a sale. Any sale. Fifth was getting a review on Amazon.

All those were successes. I had and have no illusions or desire to make a living at this. I'm reitred. Making a living is exhausting, in any field. I do still have one goal, which looks increasingly remote; namely, to sell enough books to cover the expenses of that book. This would mean making some few hundreds of dollars which comes to several hundreds of sales. But I'm not willing to work very hard at that. I'm content to write the stories to the best of my ability.
 
If I was being cynical, I might say "know your audience" refers not to the readers but to the book editors and agents you need to get you book in front of.
No, that's not cynical. I actually said that in the OP. But it applies only to traditional publishing.
 
> those books must have been written for a very specific audience,
Not really. The advice is usually to write for the interested reader. So, when I wrote something with the title of The Destruction and Conversion of the Wends, because it was my Master's thesis, you could say I was writing for my thesis committee, but I wasn't. Nor would my advisor have advised me to do so. I was writing for the reader who, upon reading the title, thought they would take a look to see what I had to say on the topic. And I'm pretty sure of that because it's exactly how I approached each of the hundreds of books I read in order to do all my graduate work, thesis and dissertation. But I never thought much about an "audience". Not even when I wrote articles for ABC Clio, or for a Festschrift (my one genuinely academic publication!).
 
A postscriptum -- post postum?
Thanks to all who resopnded. I knew I would get thoughtful posts. I hoped they would make me think more deeply about what is mostly just a feeling that sometimes rises to the level of an opinion. In that I am not disappointed. I hope at least a few uncertain new writers are encouraged to think first about the story, second about their reaction to their own story, and only much later to consider the general reading public. Do well by the story and by your own standards.
 

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