Dan Blank's Epiphany: Your Audience is Unorganized

by Deren Hansen

Sometimes someone says something that organizes what you heretofor have known in a fuzzy, muddled sense with crystal clarity. Dan Blank did that for me, in a recent article on Writer Unboxed, when he shared his epiphany: Your Audience is Unorganized.

"You want to find a group of ideal readers for your books, but do you ever feel like you are herding cats?

"The truth is: your audience is unorganized. They do not stack neatly, they don’t always form logical groupings, and they do everything possible to obscure their tastes and behaviors from your view."

Why would we think our audience is organized?

"You hear of others’ success and begin to feel that there is a secret that they found and no one told you about. So we begin to look for best practices, shortcuts, and magic buttons.

"As if there is some secret place your readers are hiding: some mysterious section of Amazon or Goodreads, or some social media hashtag that no one told you about, and these things have already done the hard work of bringing together EXACTLY the right people who want to buy your books. And once you find this magic button, all you have to do is press it."

But there is no such thing as a pre-assembled audience: this is a strictly DIY affair.

What does that mean?

Dan offers the analogy of a wedding--your wedding--where the chapel or reception hall is filled with people who are there for one reason: you (and your new spouse). You, not some ready-made marketing list, are the organizing principle.

So how do you organize your audience? Dan uses the example of the lone dancing guy at an outdoor concert who started a dance mob.

"I’m going to end on with this classic video by Derek Sivers, who makes the point in a unique way:"

"He frames the message as being about “leadership,” but I think it applies here as well. That “lone nut” dancing guy didn’t come to this concert and find a group of other dancers. So, he started dancing. Then he found one other person who would join him. Then two. And so on."

Read the full article here, and then come back and tell us what you think.



Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

Self-Conscious of the Audience: Talking down to Children

by Deren Hansen

In an interview in the Guardian, Martin Amis said:

"People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book ... I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. ... I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write."

I couldn't help smiling at that because I've long been convinced that Madeleine L'Engle came much closer to the truth when she said:

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

But there's something deeper here than an I'm-right-you're-wrong tempest in a teapot. Amis said, "the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me." In children's literature, the worst kind of talking down to children comes from authors who are conscious--or, more to the point, self-conscious--of their audience.

So does that mean Amis is right? That you should be unconscious of your audience?

No, quite the opposite.

You need to know your audience so well that addressing them in appropriate and evocative ways is simply second nature. One of the hallmarks of a master is that they make what they do look easy--as if they didn't give it a second thought.

Amis can say, "fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable," because in the first case he knows his present audience so well that he is effectively unconscious of them, and, in the second case, coming to know another, younger audience would, for him, be a process full of self-conscious restraints.

Children's authors feel none of the restraints that worry Amis because they don't talk to their audience, they talk with them. And the very best are, themselves, still very much a part of their audience.

Know Your Readers--Even If You Have To Make Them Up

by Scott Rhoades

Ask a writer about the intended audience for her book and she'll likely say, "4th to 8th grade kids," or maybe she'll get more specific and say, "Girls around 9 to 11." That helps, and it's probably enough, but what if you narrowed it down more?

What if you used the technique that is often used by product designers (at least in the software industry, which I know, and likely in other industries I don't know so well)? In the software world, designers create personas, specific make-believe people who are based on real data collected about customers. For example, "We're aiming this product at Michael, a sales manager for a manufacturer of boating accessories who needs to track the sales and commissions of his staff of 12 international sales people. Michael is 42 years old, and likes to spend his weekends boating and camping, but often has to skip fun weekends out on the lake to process the latest sales data from his staff. He's looking for a product that will automate much of the work he now does by hand, especially the creating of reports he sends to his director every Monday morning."

Michael is not necessarily a real person. He's more likely a composite of several customers or prospective customers who have been visited by product designers. But he becomes real to the designers. They will probably even find a photo of "Michael" and post it someplace as a reminder of their target audience.

We can do the same thing. Instead of aiming at "Junior-high-aged girls," write for Becca, a thirteen-year-old girl who enjoys reading fantasy novels as a way to escape the boredom of her life. Becca is a good student when the teacher holds her interest, but even though she's fascinated by history, she thinks it's boring in classes. She thinks of herself as an outsider at school because she doesn't quite fit in with any of the usual groups. She prefers a few good friends to a large circle of people. She feels awkward in social situations, especially if there are boys or popular girls involved. Teachers are often unsure how to work with her because she doesn't often seemed engaged in her lessons, but she is actually listening very carefully while she doodles in her notepad. She likes spaghetti and other pastas with tomato-based sauce, but is more likely to grab something cold from the pantry or fridge than to heat something up. She's read the popular books like Twilight and Harry Potter, but she hasn't found anything that she really loves. Still, reading anything is better than nothing, and she loves a story she can immerse herself in. She loves the feel of books, especially older books, but says she prefers to read ebooks because she considers it an invasion of her privacy for others to see what she's reading. In reality, it's more a case of being self-conscious and afraid other will jump to conclusions about her if they see what she's reading.

Get as specific as you can, then think about Becca when you're writing. Go beyond types (in other words, do better than I did in my example) and make her real. That's the key. She has to be real to you. Internalize her. Make her as important to your story as the characters you want her to identify with.

When you're unsure how to resolve a story situation, consider what Becca would like to read. Go out on the Internet and find a picture of somebody who might be Becca and post it prominently in your writing area. Don't be surprised if Becca becomes a character in your story after all that work figuring out who she is, but be careful to remember that she is your audience.

Sure, you want your book to appeal to more than this one reader, but if you aim at a specific persona, somebody who becomes real to you, constantly considering what he or she wants to read (while never forgetting the story that you, the writer, want to tell), then chances are you'll come closer to writing a book that real people want to read.

Book Country's Genre Map

by Deren Hansen

I recently suggested that Genre is no more or less complicated than identifying your audience. Put another way, genre is a crude, pre-Internet way of approximating, "customers who liked this also liked these others."

The problem of categorization doesn't go away in the coming e-book utopia where we won't be limited by traditional bookstore shelving constraints. In fact, the always-on world of digital media multiplies the opportunities (or demands) to know what other books your is like.

So, how can you confidently determine the genre of the book without reading every other genre? The good folk at Book Country have produced an interactive genre map. (The example here is only an image.) Click on a genre to see a list of representative books.

One of the ways to use the map is as a guide for your reading. Once you've chosen which of the five general genre feels most like home, go through the sub-genres and make sure you've read at least one book in each list.

Still not sure where your book belongs because it's a thrilling romantic mystery set in a future where a technological society battles medievaloid magic users? Try the exhaustive, pair-wise comparison exercise: for each pair of genres, if you can only choose one, which genre best characterizes your book. Then tally up the winner for each pair. The genre with the highest score is your primary genre.

I should point out that the genres in this map are for adult fiction. Young Adult and Middle Grade books can be classified in similar terms, but were, until recently, all shelved together. Barnes & Noble now has different shelves for YA genres like paranormal. In other words, while genre boundaries aren't quite as strictly drawn in children's literature, you can't ignore the question.


Deren blogs at The Laws of Making.

Demystifying Genre

by Deren Hansen

In an early episode of The Appendix, a writing podcast, Robison Wells, Sarah Eden, and Marion Jensen discussed choosing a genre.

Marion Jensen said, "When you pick a genre, you've got to pick something  that you like. It's kind of like picking a career."

That's right, writers. No pressure. Just like the end of high school when well-meaning people like guidance counselors and parents say, "Now that you've spent your life listening to us tell you what to do, it's time for you to make a decision, oh and by the way, this decision will have life-long consequences."

Choosing the genre in which you'll write is a critical decision only if you succeed.

Why?

Because with each book you publish you create precedents and build expectations among your growing circle of readers. It's not that you can never try anything different, but imagine the hue and cry if J. K. Rowling decided she wanted to write gritty detective stories full of graphic sex and violence.

The advice about picking a genre is better understood in terms of setting up shop someplace where you're comfortable because you could be spending a lot of time there.

One of the reasons this seems like a big deal is because genre is to kind as veal is to beef. This is another in a long series of cases where we have two words in English with the same meaning, but the Latinate, or more specifically French, version sounds more sophisticated.

Repeat after me, "Genre means kind." It's nothing more or less complicated than deciding what kind of books your book ought to be shelved or grouped with.

And why does that matter?

Because you're hoping to take advantage of recommendation engines, whether human or automatic, that will suggest someone might like your book if they liked something similar.

Put another way, in terms of publishing being a market, genre is shorthand for your audience.

That's why you must decide on your genre: you must know your audience and their expectations.


Deren blogs daily at The Laws of Making.

Finding Your Audience

by Deren Hansen

The genre into which your book falls is one of the basic pieces of information you're supposed to include in your query.* I approach things systematically, so I've thought about genre in library terms--that is as a way of organizing a spectrum of materials (with the implicit assumption that readers were like library patrons).

When I visit the library, liking a book is a secondary (or tertiary) concern, well behind basic questions like, "Does it provide the information I need?" Even with fiction, I survey the shelves and then scan the books, looking at more than the first page, to determine my interest.

In a book store, however, the fiction buyer is generally there to find something they like, not to survey the offerings. With the exception the exception of mega-best-sellers that become an independent cultural forces, not everyone will like your work.

In fact, most people won't.

Thanks to the practical matter of only having twenty four hours in a day, I don't "like" about 95% of what's in the book store.** Assuming I'm representative, it follows, then, that 95% of the people out there won't "like" our work.

Here's my epiphany: getting published is really about finding an audience.

Notions like genre are at best an approximation of an audience. So are all the rules and expectations of genres and commercial publishing. The zeal with which the gatekeepers sometimes seem to uphold these rules only shows their best guesses as to what a given audience wants.

So what does all this mean?

We'll be on a much more positive footing with both gatekeepers and the buying public if we don't try to please everybody but look instead for the people with whom our work resonates.

* Indeed, before we query, we're supposed to go to the book store, find the spot where our books will be shelved, and make a space that will be filled someday.

** Not "liking" 95% of what's in the book store isn't a matter of good or bad. It's simply that I don't have the time to pay attention to all that material.


Deren blogs daily at The Laws of Making.