How to Narrow Your Reader Audience
Is it important to narrow your audience to a specific person when writing a nonfiction book? Yep!
Okay, that’s all for this blog post. Thanks for reading.
Just kidding! It is super important to narrow your audience as much as possible when writing your nonfiction book. Here’s why.
Business tip #1: Niche down.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard exactly this advice in business books, blogs, and podcasts. “Niche down, niche down, niche down.” It must work, right? That’s why everyone is saying to do it? (Also me. I’m telling you to do it too because it does in fact work. So if you don’t trust business pros, trust me. ;) ) So do it for your book! Niche down and narrow your target audience for your book.
In this blog post, we’re going to talk about how to do this. If you still don’t think it’s important to narrow your audience, read this other blog post!
How to Choose Your Audience
If your book is a marketing tool to sell a product or service, your audience for the book should be the same as who will be buying your product or service.
If that’s not the case, here’s what you need to consider to choose your audience: age, geographical location, interests, education level, SES, gender, family situation, career, hobbies, knowledge/experience level, religion and beliefs, pain points, and more. You don’t have to narrow down your audience in every single category, but choose some. Here are some examples of books I’ve edited and their specific audiences:
The 15 Minute Formula (Cara Harvey)
family situation: moms with young kids
career: stay-at-home moms who are also new entrepreneurs
interests: productivity, efficiency, gaining better work-life balance, starting or improving their business
pain points: not enough time for family and business, struggling to manage time during the day and get things done, feeling overwhelmed with their to-do list
Looking for Proof (Jamie Francis)
demographic: adult, married, maybe has kids but doesn’t have to, middle-to-high SES level
pain points: family member suffering from addiction, feeling stuck and unsure how to help
interests: addiction recovery stories, inspiration and support from someone in the same position
Catch More Fish (John LaMorte)
hobbies: fishing
pain points: struggling to catch fish, not having enough time to catch fish, overwhelmed with fishing techniques and options for gear
experience level: beginner
Make an Audience Avatar
It may sound weird, but it can really help to picture someone specific in your audience and remember them as you’re writing. If you don’t know someone in real life who’s in your audience, make someone up! Give them a name if it helps. This can keep your content focused and applicable to your audience.
When writing, ask yourself, “Does Margaret [my made-up target audience member] care about this? Will this help her?” If the answer is no to either question, cut it out and get back on track.
Review my target audience examples in the last section. They have some leeway and variation, which is perfectly fine. If you feel backed into a corner making an audience avatar and instead need a brief list of traits like I have above, that’s okay. Do what works for you.
When Is Audience Important?
When you start writing, you should have a clear audience in your head. This will keep you on track while writing the entire book. You’ll be able to better address their issues and structure the book in a way that’s helpful for them.
If you already started writing your book or are done writing your book, that’s okay. Choose an audience now and keep that in mind while self-editing your book.
What If You Have Two or More Target Audiences?
Okay, so my first question: why? Make sure it’s a good idea you do this. Maybe it is; I don’t know your book, so maybe this is a great idea. But most of the time, you probably should only be speaking to one person.
If your audience is too broad and you have too much important information to say to too many people to niche down, maybe that’s a sign you need to write several books—one for each target reader. The books might all be similar but with different audiences in mind and slightly different content. Fabulous idea! I love it.
If you’re sure you need to have it all in one book, fine. I won’t tell you that you can’t. But think about this: imagine you made avatars for two different target audiences. As you’re writing, keep Jim and Sabrina [your two made-up target audience members] in mind. If you’re writing a chapter that speaks directly to Jim and answers all his questions perfectly but doesn’t help Sabrina much, she might stop reading because she’s bored. And vice versa. And if you leave out the things Jim isn’t interested in to keep him reading, Sabrina won’t have all her questions answered.
Choose a specific audience. Write to them. Solve their specific problems.
Pro tip: It’s helpful if the people reading your book and giving you feedback are in your target audience. This includes beta readers and editors. When I was editing Catch More Fish, I was able to give the writer lots of feedback on what was confusing for people who had no knowledge of fishing (because I had no knowledge of fishing). This was extremely useful because he has been fishing for years and forgot that beginners don’t know the difference between bait and jigs. The book is much more helpful for beginners now because it explains all the jargon and keeps complicated concepts simple.
A book with a generic audience will be somewhat helpful to many people. A book with a very specific audience will be incredibly helpful to slightly fewer people. Which would you rather write?
