Will "everybody" want to buy your book?

Identify the target audience for your book!

As a consultant and book writing coach, one of the first questions I ask is: who is your target audience? Then I go on to explain that they'll need to identify their target reading audience, the person who will benefit from your insights.

AND NOT "EVERYBODY" WILL FALL INTO THAT CATEGORY!

For nonfiction books, the future readers are usually the buyers, too. So the content, arrangement of information (Table of Contents) and additional information like glossary or resource material need to appeal to the one who's going to curl up in a chair with the book in hand. (Or settle onto a booth at lunch with their e-book version.)

Make a TARGET AUDIENCE list:

       *  Male -- female -- both
       *  Age range
       *  Book shoppers -- yes or no
       *  Primary age range

As you write and promote your book, keep those  in mind. 

If your chapters have clever titles, add matter-of-fact subtitles, like Flying Solo: budgets for the newly single in a personal finance book.

Put yourself in their place in wording some of your sentences. If it's something you learned through trial and error, say so.

That kind of information builds a bond between them and you and isn't that what you had in mind to begin with?

Happy identifying!

Lin

                Create Your Writer's Journal

Ever wish you had a bushel of ideas and spot-on observations about the world around you to dip into for article and book ideas? You can have handy books full of them. Start your own journal.

You can give it a name if you want, maybe Henry or Randomness or Jewels. Start with a hard bound "book" of blank pages wrapped in burgundy leather or a steno pad. If it has blank pages, it'll work.

When you fill it up, start a new journal, write the date begun on it and keep it and a pen handy.

DO NOT TRY TO...

·      organize your thoughts,

·      worry about a "theme,"

·      aim for straight lines or punctuation.

JUST WRITE...

   ·     nature observations,

   ·     people interacting,

   ·     personal, neighborhood and world crises,

   ·     your critique on anything,

·      notes on gratitude, annoying habits, yearnings, joys and rhyme.

·      cuss, pray, demand,

·      write a sultry haiku,

·      ...snips and bits.

Sometimes you'll start an essay or even a book. You don't need to finish it. Over time, lots of small ideas take glorious shape, blossoming silently while you were thinking about getting the oil changed .

When you're fresh out of  publishable ideas, start paging through your journals, and enjoy the wealth of ideas you created. 

Happy writing, 

Lin