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Defining Your Audience and Positioning Your Book Is Critical for Success

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Published: 13Sep2007
Word count: 550
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The more clearly you can define your audience-and identify their precise needs-the better you are positioned to develop a book and create sales pieces that address those needs.

Understanding the needs of your target audience and the strengths and weaknesses of your competition will help you develop a meaningful book that provides a unique solution or tackles a known problem in a new way. This clarity will help you create elements that will speak directly to your target markets (i.e., topic, title, content, design, layout and cover).

While you may write a book that anyone might enjoy reading, there is probably a most likely reader-male or female, thirtysomething or older, lay person or professional, and so forth. It is critical for the author to know who is most likely to want and benefit from his or her book and then write that book in a way that is most accessible and interesting for her targeted audience.

The wider the appeal, the bigger the potential audience for the book.

Your book is competing with so many other books for shelf space and the reader's dollar. Your "position" is how your book compares with what else is out there and what makes it special to your readers.

By identifying your audience and their needs and knowing what their other choices are in the book marketplace, you can decide how you want readers to see your book. Then you must create one that fits the market position you want to occupy. For instance:

• Do you offer a broader or a more in-depth approach to your subject?
• Are you easy to read or designed for the subject matter expert?
• Is your price point higher or lower than other books of this type?
• Who are you versus other authors? What is your level of experience and breadth of experience vis-à-vis other authors?
• What does your book offer compared with other books? Do you have exercises, resources, Web interactivity, and the like?

Design the book to fit the needs of your audience and be sure to communicate your positioning with your title and back cover copy and in your sales information. Don't make your customer work hard to discover you've written just the book they are looking for.

There is as much controversy about writing a book in a way that will appeal to the audience as there is about product placements in movies. Should a writer write what he or she has to say and not be concerned with the audience? Most of our brilliant new ideas are controversial and not very popular at first. This is a decision only you, as the writer, can make.

But if large volume sales are your goal, you can't ignore what the audience wants. If you think a particular company, association, or group would be a good candidate for large volume purchases, showcase material that might make them take notice.

A rookie mistake of new authors is to tell people what they should do instead of enticing them in with stories they can relate to and accept. If you are the expert, then you do want to share your knowledge. But berating your readers so they feel bad about their actions isn't the way to high book sales.

Gail Richards is founder of http://www.AuthorSmart.com a dynamic website connecting aspiring authors with the classes, audio library, tools, information and resources needed to make smart, informed decisions at each step in the nonfiction book publishing journey. Jan King is the founder of http://www.eWomenPublishingNetwork.com a membership organization devoted to supporting and coaching women who become successfully published nonfiction authors.

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