The Target Audience

Some years ago at a Romantic Times convention I stumbled on this meeting of ten or twelve ladies sitting in a circle bemoaning the loss of some young woman's father, and how a man was trying to help her save the farm. It took me a few minutes to understand they were discussing fictional characters. None of these ladies knew the publisher, only two knew the author, but all of them knew the intimate details of the characters. Which told me it was much more important that my characters were memorable than I was.

Sure enough, when I told them I'd written a novel, they fell on me like ticks on a hound dog. It didn't matter that the novel wasn't published. It didn't matter that I wasn't published. They wanted to know how I came up with the story, where the setting was, what the characters looked like, what was happening to them, what did she do, what did he do, what they did with each other.

"I don't like that flowery language so much," one of them said. "I know what you mean, that stuff reminds me of High School Lit," another said. "I skip that. I want to know how she feels as she's sobbing into the night." Another pipped in, "Or how he feels when she leaves with another man and he's just standing there."

I had met my target audience in the flesh...avid romance readers. I had sense enough to listen to what they said because even in those early days, I knew their opinion mattered. Emotions are number one in romance. I took notes. If it were possible, I'd have packed those ladies up and brought them home.

Don't wait until the novel is finished to consider the reader. Start with the first word. Companies selling products know the importance of studying the target market. Millions of dollars are spent test marketing. Usually they're right, all except for maybe that New Coke thing.

As far as I know, neither writers nor publishers test market a manuscript to see if it will sell, but they do study what has sold, hence you see plenty of books with the same theme or style...what's hot at the moment. But I wish there was a way to test market an unpublished book, or even a proposal. Yes, we spend plenty of time trying to find a professional editor or another writer to read our work, but they have so many filters, they can't see what the ordinary reader does.

How does one find the target audience and get a sampling of that audience to read the manuscript or a portion of it. What questions would I ask besides the all important one of "Would you buy this book?" Even if I could do that, how could I make sure they would be unbiased since they'd have to be paid? But if I had a test market, a sample of the entire avid readers in the country, could I avoid the time and effort of writing and polishing a losing proposition?

Regardless, the target audience will be an important consideration...no, the top consideration...as I build my sales platform. Which brings me to the reason behind test marketing. How do you make your book better than the other ones out there? How do you beat the competition?

What is the competition in today's Christian fiction market? That's the subject of next week's blog.

What's your idea of the average Christian fiction reader?