1st November 2008

 Building a readership (marketing)

"Thinking about writing...is thinking about your readers, is thinking about reading." The Unheardwords writers’ guide (of which this is part 5) is designed to help you with your writing regardless of the stage you’ve reached as a writer. It pulls together a wealth of collaborative advice. The first part 'thinking about writing' was covered in January's editorial. The second part 'Writing Something' was covered in the March editorial, part 3 'Producing a Manuscript' was covered in June, whilst the fourth part 'publishing work' appeared as September's editorial. Consider the Reader - Writers' Guide Part 5 What comes first the reader or the manuscript Assuming you write to be read or to develop as a writer whose work will be read, the action or view of the reader is ultimately the most important thing. Seen from the perspective of your passion, time and effort, your publication represents a creative / emotional investment. If few people get to see your work you may question the amount of time and commitment you put into it. I know we writers write because we have to and then, hope they’ll come and read. Though, I also know we’re driven by a need to communicate and we can’t communicate effectively unless they do come and read our work. Turn it all round, think first about your readers. You have your book, story, poetry in mind. Know who you’re writing for. Fix your audience in your head and write exclusively for him, her, them.  If you recognise your intended reader, then an agent, publisher or reader are likely to recognise him / her or themselves too.

A Book of Commercials

You may have also noticed that along the path to publishing, things have been moving from art and creativity to sales and product. Publishing is a business, and not necessarily a particularly profitable one. Those of us, who do buy books, tend to buy a narrow range by authors (or like authors) we already know.

Logically, it makes sense for you to seek the greatest audience for your work, and really that’s all marketing is, a means of targeting and attracting readers to your work. Seen from a commercial perspective, your new publication represents a risk for you and any one else who’s invested time and money in it. If you’re new to the book scene, it means investing in your work is a risk for any publisher. They're going to pay you (your agent), pay to produce your book, pay to distribute and market it, the intention being to make their money back through their proportion of the sales -assuming it sells well.

Your marketing approach and spend is going to be a matter of how much to invest (time and / or money) for what you’re likely to get back. Are you known, topical, controversial? Is your book likely to sell a lot or a little?

Once again it’s a matter of thinking it through, researching the options and focusing on the areas you feel will give a good return for your efforts.

Reaching the Audience

It began with a well written proof, which should by now resemble a well crafted manuscript (as discussed earlier). If you’ve taken the time and been through the process of refining your work, having it reviewed, commented upon, edited and re-edited it should be ready. You should be confident that it will attract a readership.

Here are some ideas:
You probably have ideas about the audience for your book but you should seek to test, clarify and confirm these ideas by using all of the sources at your disposal.

Make a list of the individuals or groups that these subjects are likely to appeal to – this is the basis for your potential readership.

Summarise those aspects of the book / publication that deal with particular subjects that will appeal to people (love, life, politics, money, sex, religion, entertainment, etc.). Ask yourself, who might be interested in the themes.

Consider having your book or manuscript reviewed by individuals, sites and publications you respect – including those you feel serve your readership. See if you can persuade those who have a following to review your book.

Compile interesting, thought provoking and complimentary comments according to the audience you feel they’ll best appeal to and use them when promoting your publication.

List all the ways you can think of to promote your publication and ask yourself which ways will best reach a particular audience group. For each group, work out at least five ways to communicate.

Determine and refine your message and approach for each group. Select ways of communicating that achieve maximum exposure of the book and perhaps you as the author, for lowest spend. This is not to say these routes will involve minimum effort.

Try to be selective when choosing where, what, how, who advertises, markets or promotes your work; it’s important to reach the interested audience with the right message. It isn’t so important and may be counter productive to broadcast to all an sundry over any and every medium.

Summarise the ways in which topics (of interest to others) in your book are like or opposite to your own views.

List these views, differences, reflections, their shades and contrasts.

List ways you can get yourself heard talking about or discussing these issues in relation to your book. Select a number of these options and get to work 'getting you, your book and related subjects' out-there and discussed.

Seek out reading, writing, local media places and spaces, along with those who speak or write on the issues and topics covered by your book.

Offer to attend local reading groups to speak about you as an author and your book as a body of work.

Get friends, family and well wishers to do their best to promote on your behalf.

Use online means (web, blogs, discussions, social networking, targeted sites) as you'd use news and entertainment media to increase the exposure of your book and of you as an author. But, be cautious. The online space provides a million windows onto the world and care should be taken when selecting how, where and who markets / promotes your work - as a rule of thumb try to keep your target audience in mind.

If this sounds like hard work, it is, but you do need to think carefully about these aspects when taking on the promotion of your own work. Those who do read, tend to read what they know about – if you can’t get you and your book known about -it won’t get read.

And finally...if you also choose to take on or manage the sale of your publication, consider how you’ll sell your book. This may range from taking personal, telephone, postal, online orders to using an online or high street retail outlet. Personal selling is very different from retail sales. When you sell, you may be able to offer a more personal service and experience but you need time, always more time. By contrast, when others sell on your behalf, they may simply be seeking to sell as much of what’s popular as possible – this may or may not include your book.

After all the hard work, hopefully you’ll be rewarded with much interest and some sales. Take heart and learn from every step along the way. Never do so much of everything else that you no longer have time for your first love, which I assume is writing.

And Finally, finally, try this activity:

Write a 2 - 300 word piece on who you’d like the intended audience for your work to be. Now write a similar sized piece on who you think your actual audience will or could be.

© editor@unheardwords.com, 2008 (all rights reserved)

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