OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
One of the most difficult questions for an author is figuring out ‘who are your target audience?'
If you've tried to pitch an agent or publisher, you will have been asked about ‘comps' or comparison authors which is just one part of it. Today, thriller author Colby Marshall outlines how you can find your target audience.
When we writers set out to promote a book, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing our book is “for everyone,” particularly since we can separate its components and find something in our book everyone could enjoy. But to be promote successfully, we have to forget the notion that we’ve written a book everyone will love and instead, maximize our promotion toward those most likely to become our audience.
Here are a few tips to help you with identifying your target audience and with putting that knowledge to work:
1. Isolate what types and/or groups of people the content of the book would interest.
Example: If your book is about an archaeologist who uses Stone Henge to travel into the future, your book would probably interest history buffs as well as fans of speculative fiction/sci-fi. If that hero happens to be a former Marine, your book might also interest military personnel and/or the families.
2. Identify other books that are comparable to your book and look at the profiles of those books’ main buyers/readers.
While the Twilight saga might be plagued by jokes about Bella’s undying love (no pun intended) for a too-perfect vampire shinier than a package of Lisa Frank stickers, the series is the perfect example of a target market. The target audience isn’t always who the book was written for, but rather, who it ends up appealing to. Twilight draws in tween and teenage girls with its premise involving a normal, everyday girl falling into a romance with an young, attractive male (the bread and butter of many young girls’ dreams), but it’s appeal stretched to the cross-section of middle-age female readers who love romance and enjoyed Anne Rice in her heyday.
3. Pinpoint what is special about your book.
We all think highly of our own intricacies, but at the end of the day, when you tell someone what your book is about, what are the few magic words that boil it down to the main story? In other words, what is your hook? If you tell someone you’re writing a book about a witch who uses her power of communing with animals to rescue a lost dog from an evil dog-napper, then A. Wow, you have an interesting imagination! B. You may or may not have taken in 101 Dalmatians too much as a child and C. With such a premise, chances are, your story is more light-hearted than scary, so your target readers to which the mystery aspect of your story will entice are more cozy-type mystery consumers (i.e., they’re more Murder She Wrote than Silence of the Lambs), especially those that enjoy paranormal stories involving witches, ghosts, and their ilk. Your book might also appeal to animal lovers.
4. Determine some demographics.
Let’s take the example right above of the witch hunting down a hound-heisting criminal. In the previous model, we assumed this mystery was contemporary, but let’s take that same premise and make the main character an eleven-year-old girl who has to stop Cruella DeVille’s doppelganger while also keeping her little sister out of her room and making a good grade on her math test. In this scenario, the book is a Middle Grade novel, so instead of having a target audience of people who like amateur sleuth stories with a paranormal twist, this story is likely to appeal to kids ages 8-12. Since the book’s main character is an eleven-year-old amateur sleuth, it’s safe to say it will most appeal to kids who like mysteries, but it would also probably interest kids who like animals as well as kids intrigued by magical characters. And in this case, the parents of these kids are your targets, too!
5. Feed the previous four tips into each other to gain even more insight and narrow down who your target audience/s is/are.
(You can have multiple target audiences!)
Using our schnauzer-stealing villain to be found and thwarted by the elementary-age witch, we might realize based on our age demographic and the identification of similar titles (books, TV, and movies can help here!) that kids who like mysteries who also like watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch on Netflix would be the perfect type of reader for your book. Might I suggest a Venn diagram? This way, you can see where the different groups of people who are potentially good fits for your book overlap, thus refining your targeted groups and finding your primary target audience. Plus this way, you’ve finally had an excuse to make that Venn diagram you’ve had the urge to make lately.
How to use your target audience:
1. Identify where your target audience hangs out, then be there.
Look at the users of certain social media sites, the readership of publications in which you advertise, blogs on which you guest post, etc. Then, steer yourself in the direction of those with users compatible with your product. If you write epic fantasy, guest posting on two hundred blogs popular with erotica readers won’t be effective unless your novel’s elves are too randy for the final battle and instead, get hot and heavy in the castle stronghold.
2. Concentrate on the buyers.
While readers are great, more readers beget more word of mouth, and anyone who shares your work is a great help to you, not every avenue of promotion is equal. For example, while there are exceptions like the great Joanna Penn who gain a large following for their writing by building a writing-based blog, most often, other writers are not going to be an audience who becomes an avid fan base for your book (Let’s face it…writers are supportive of each other, but we’re busy focusing on our own books, too!). If you have a limited time to promote, head for spots where your target audience is (refer to number 1).
[Note from Joanna: I would second this point! I also wanted to note that I started this blog back in 2008 when I was only writing non-fiction and just wanted to document my self-publishing process. It has morphed into a completely different business and later I started writing fiction, but my site for that is at www.JFPenn.com where I DON'T talk about writing!]
3. Work the connections you’ve found to popular books in the same vein as yours by appealing to those books’ readers.
Got a psychological thriller you think Dean Koontz fans might like? Check out his aesthetics and marketing techniques. I’m not saying to tie up Koontz’ cover designer, throw him in your trunk, and take him home and force him to create your cover, too (This is my cover before! Do you see?! This is my cover changing. Do you see?!). I’m for putting your own stamp on things and staying original. All I’m saying here is that you can emulate certain style choices without Xeroxing Odd Thomas and pasting your head from last year’s Christmas card over Dean’s face on the back of the book. Or if you’re convinced fans of Eragon would like your fantasy adventure story, make a note of where you can find droves of Christopher Paolini’s fans and head to Dragon Con.
4. Hone in on your target audience when you decide on branding such as cover design.
For example, if you write romantic suspense with a target audience of female consumers of books in the vein of Harlequin novels with a suspenseful twist, a cover design featuring romantic leads in an embrace amongst other elements might enhance your appeal. However, if you’re writing a thriller that contains a love story but might also be heavy in action and adventure and so your target audience might also contain men who are fans of Clancy or Ludlum, a heavy romantic element in your branding may hinder more than help.
How have you worked out who your target market is? Who are your comparison authors? Please do leave a comment below.


Thanks for all this very good information. I am writing non-fiction and I have come to the conclusion that it is never going to be a commercial proposition. I mean my book, which is about Spain’s political crisis and absolutely unreal financial scandals, as well as a brief look at the Catholic Church’s contribution to the horror story, the child-robbery perpetrated massively until the eighties and resulting in thousands of people in search of their identity. It may be that I should have written this in Spanish, but I wanted to publicise some of these things outside Spain. Any views would be welcome?
Great post. Thank you for the info. It was really helpful.
Thanks so much Colby for this post, I turned it into a worksheet, and five books later I finally know who my target audience is. lol, thanks so much!
Such a great post–just what I was looking for today. Thanks a bunch, Colby and Joanna, and happy writing & book success to you both!
This article gave me insight and useful ideas, thank you Colby. I have a question: did you market your books in any sites because you wrote ”the readership of publications in which you advertise”
Am I the only person who finds these “find your target audience” questionnaires incredibly frustrating? I don’t know *how* to answer the questions, and if I did I wouldn’t need the questionnaire!
For instance, I really *don’t* know where the audience for my cross-genre books hangs out, nor do I know how to figure that out. I can also tell you that choosing one of the three or four genres that my books partially fall into (the operative word being partially), or even more than one, does not work, either. Each genre seems to alienate the readers of the other ones.
Yes, I probably should have decided on my market before I wrote the books. But I want to sell what *I* want to write, otherwise what’s the point?
I can relate. I cannot seem to stick securely inside any one genre. Furthermore, I already enjoy the more obscure genres to begin with: cyberpunk, steampunk, fantasy, even westerns. I have no idea where these people are.
I’m stuck with this obscure genre as well. I’m writing a mystery/adventure/western steampunk graphic novel. I notice people that follow me on twitter are gamers and star wars fans but it still varies, other writers follow me too and their writing genre is completely different from mine. I got to write for my audience and at a stop with my screenplay because of it. I’m leaning towards young adult but then there is some cussing in the novel that suits a scene so that leans the story more toward new adult but I only just recently found out about this genre and heard it wouldn’t be a good choice to write for that audience.
Looking forward to fine-tuning my vision. Going into 3rd printing of my book and want to reach the targeted audience with whom I believe my book will best serve. Thanks for taking the time to post your helpful tips! Will follow up with outcome based on your suggestions.
Thank you for your post, I do believe you have given us great insight on the basic. But I still have no idea on how to find a target audience for a drama, romantic with a touch of supernatural.
Any info on this?
Kindest Regards
Thanks for the great ideas. Writing comes easy to me, but marketing is tough.
A good and helpful article, but I caught a couple of things…
*Who IS your target audience (not “who are”).
*Stonehenge (not Stone Henge).
Happy writing, everyone!
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but what if your neutral gender book has a wider appeal? DIY for example; appeals to both sexes, but a book with a ‘macho’ title and a fellow on the cover might not appeal to a lady and vice versa… Is it ethical to release essentially the same book, but re-titled and re-covered, re-blurbed (re-branded if you like) to appeal to a particular target audience? I guess I’m thinking about discoverabillity of the title and sub title via SEO etc. as well… It was just a thought and feels wrong to me, but what do you think?
Colby wrote
“Plus this way, you’ve finally had an excuse to make that Venn diagram you’ve had the urge to make lately.”
My novel has a variety of elements and I can see how a Venn diagram will illustrate their connections. Question: Would it be useful to send the diagram along with my query letter?
Enjoyed this blog. I was deluding myself into thinking my new book was for everyone—it would be travel, adventure, religion, spirituality and history. In fact, when I boiled it down it was a hybrid travel/religion book. That focused me into reaching out to those groups. And that has made marketing the book that much easier. Thank you.
Fantastic 🙂 This is one of the hardest tasks for authors!