A novel is born – part 4
In this series, I assume that you write and publish the book yourself. If you use a publisher and maybe even a ghostwriter instead, different terms apply. The processes are the same, but the division of responsibilities between you as the author and the publisher as rights holder and publisher will result in a different division of labor and dynamics.
I also write from the premise that you want your book to be a commercial success. That it must sell more than 3,000 copies. And I assume you don’t have a huge budget.
The articles start by describing how to create an outline of your upcoming book before you write a single word on the manuscript.
The summary contains the following twelve elements:
- Title, subtitle and cover (front, spine and back of the book)
- Purpose
- Summary
- Target audience
- Similar books
- Magnets
- The manuscript process
- The publishing process
- Marketing and marketing
- Format, prices, ISBN and categories
- Timetable and finances
- About the author
In the previous article, I discussed points 10, 2 and 3. In this article, I only look at the target audience.
Target Audience
The opening pages of every book on effective marketing make one point abundantly clear: success begins with choosing the right target audience, knowing them well, and understanding how big that audience really is.
This also applies to books.
Your book is not meant for everyone. If you try to make it so, you end up writing it for no one.
Target groups can roughly be described from two angles:
- Demographics
- The situation
The demographics angle uses criteria such as age, gender, marital status, position, number of children, residence, education, income, occupation, interests, reading habits, travel habits and many other criteria.
The situational angle uses all other criteria, which can be permanent or temporary. It could be a job change, divorce, bereavement, unemployment, infidelity or other conditions that can’t be read in the demographic data, but that affect a person’s focus.
When demographics are combined with situation, what you write can map precisely to something the reader wants to understand, explore, or experience.
Who needs to find who?
or those of you who are neither household names nor backed by large marketing budgets, it’s worth deciding which of the following two statements best reflects your situation:
A. You want readers to find you.
B. You need to find your readers.
My own assumption is always that I must be the first to find the readers. Once a certain momentum has been established (I’ll return to how that happens), more and more readers will eventually find me on their own.
That assumption shapes how I define my target audience. I therefore place strong emphasis on searchable criteria—characteristics that allow potential readers to be identified and reached deliberately rather than passively.
Because I write for a business audience, LinkedIn is my primary data source. Potential readers are relatively easy to identify there, but reaching them is another matter. If they are not already a first-level connection, gaining their attention organically is difficult. Paid advertising on LinkedIn tends to be ineffective for this purpose and is therefore expensive.
Facebook has a larger user base and offers more extensive targeting options. Creating content that spreads organically to a clearly defined target audience is challenging, but paid advertising works quite well. The platform makes it possible to reach specific segments at scale—provided you are willing to pay for visibility.
Genre readers as a target audience
If you want to write crime fiction, it can be tempting to define your target audience as anyone who reads crime. A biography then becomes a book for anyone who reads biographies, and children’s books are aimed at adults who read to children.
In practice, such target groups are far less homogeneous than they sound—and almost impossible to identify or reach in any meaningful way.
The only context in which it makes sense to think in terms of genre readers is when you invest in joint marketing activities with a book portal. In that case, your book can be exposed to readers who have already demonstrated a willingness to buy similar titles. I’ll return to that option when I discuss marketing later on.
With 1.4 million adult Danes holding a LinkedIn profile, a substantial part of your potential readership is already present on the platform.
The first challenge is not whether they are there, but which search criteria you should use to identify them. The next challenge—how to engage them in a meaningful way—I will address in the discussion of marketing.
I began my career as an author by writing non-fiction in English. That experience led me to subscribe to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which provides access to an extensive set of search filters and the ability to send personalised messages at scale.
According to Statistics Denmark’s Cultural Habits Survey, 66 percent of adult Danes (aged 20 and above) read novels or other forms of fiction. Crime fiction accounts for 34 percent of that readership, making it the single largest genre, while historical novels show the strongest growth.
The Henrik Bertelsen series—a contemporary, business-oriented chronicle—is aimed at a broad audience. I estimate that roughly half of the 66 percent, or about one million people, could potentially be interested in its themes.
The series is particularly relevant to readers who work with, or have worked with, management and sales. On LinkedIn alone, this group numbers approximately 750,000 people in Denmark. If the same 66 percent reading rate applies, this translates into nearly half a million identifiable potential readers whose names and professional details can be found on the platform.
The ability to define your target audience as named individuals, rather than abstract segments, fundamentally changes what is possible in marketing—and illustrates the power of LinkedIn as a tool for authors with a clearly defined readership.
Reviewers and Book Bloggers
In later articles on marketing, I will go into much greater detail about reviews. For now, I want to make one point absolutely clear: reviewers, book bloggers, and other influencers are not your target audience.
Naturally, you want their attention. But they are not the ones who will buy 3,000 copies of your book.
There is a fundamental difference between what motivates a reviewer to spend time reading and reviewing your work and what motivates a reader to purchase it. Confusing the two is a common—and costly—mistake.
Reviewers, book bloggers, and other influencers should instead be understood for what they are: communication channels. How you capture their interest, and how you make it easy for them to pass your story on, is a separate discipline—one I will return to later.
Next article: The Magnet That Attracts Readers and Reviewers
Tidligere artikler i denne serie:
- Article 1: A novel is born
- Article 2: How to write a good book
- Article 3: Book value proposition
