Find Your Ideal Reader

You’ve written your dream book. You’ve spent many hours/days/months editing and rewriting your book. Now it’s time to get your book out into the world. For that you will need to find your ideal reader. That is where I come in to help!

As a self-published author of 2 books, I’ve been in this position. It can seem impossible to find those willing to read your book. By putting in some effort in finding the right audience for your book, you can have a much easier time promoting your book.

If you’ve missed part one, go ahead and check out how you figure out your target audience. Once you’re caught up, continue reading below.

Your Ideal Reader

You’ve taken the time to determine who you envision reading your book. You know their age, gender, occupation, favorite places to visit, etc. This is the person you want to read your book and you know exactly who this person is. (They may not be a real person, but it is someone you want to read your book.)

Where Does Your Ideal Reader Frequent?

The next step is finding out where your ideal reader spends their time. You want to be able to reach your reader when you begin marketing your book. In order to do this, you need to know where you can find them. Without this information, you could be spending unnecessary money and time targeting places that will never reach your ideal reader.

Social Media

There are so many different social media platforms out there that finding your reader can be difficult. You’ll need to focus on the age range of your reader and the types of platforms that they are most probably on.

For example, if you’re looking to target teenagers today, you most likely would not spend your marketing efforts on Facebook. The reason is because teenagers are not as active on Facebook as they are on Snapchat and TikTok.

Make a list of all of the social media platforms and determine who frequents each platform. The platform(s) that your reader frequents should be the one(s) that you invest in learning about or marketing on if you already know the platform.

Some social media platform examples include: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc.

Online Spaces

Places online other than social media sites where your readers hang out need to be looked into as well. Find popular blogs that your book may fit in and see how readers interact there. By finding out where your readers frequent, you will be able to get a small glimpse into what they’re interested in outside of social media.

Online spaces include: blogs, reader sites (ie. Goodreads), Amazon, bookstore sites, etc.

Public Spaces

Though we are currently living in a world where public outings are done online, there may be a day again where people gather. When this happens you will know you can find your readers out and about. Until then, finding online local events that your readers will be attending is a good start.

Some examples of public spaces include: the library, bookstores, and schools.

Finding your ideal reader is going to take time, but that time is worth it when you can focus your marketing on the right spots. Not only will this free up more of your time down the road, but you’ll be able to feel that your marketing efforts are going to the right place.

By finding the places that your readers are, you will now be able to interact with them on a deeper level.

Stay tuned for the next post where I will walk you through finding out your target audience’s reading preferences!