How do you find your Target Market?

I keep seeing these posts and tweets about Write to your market!  Target your Audience!

How do you find your Target Market?

It’s this question I would like to address today.

You don’t!  They find you!

This is part of the process of getting discovered.  Getting discovered can be equated to getting your books and name out there in the world where people are discussing them, telling their friends about them and then a mass of people rush to buy your books.  If you’re writing good books they will be panting at the door when the next one comes out to buy it, and if you’re writing great books they will pre-order it months in advance of it being released.

In traditional publishing they put all the like books together on the shelves to help readers discover similar books by different authors.

In E-book publishing and where us Indie Authors live they have taken it step further to help sell more books and help get you discovered!  Every place you can buy E-books has built in a special program which works much better than being on a shelf near your book.

It says in some form similar to People who have purchased this also bought these books and shows other similar listings.  When in seconds you can check out similar books, read reviews, or even download trial samples of the book in question to start it and see if it hooks you.

The authors that have had break out books in the last couple of years have generally three or more books out on the market.  If you have one book your chances of being discovered are very low.  Write more books!

The fact that with e-books that you can download the first portion of the book for free in many instances is awesome.  So for the Writer the goal is to set the hook – using a fishing analogy!  You have to Grab the readers interest in those first few pages so they feel compelled to know the rest of the story.  In many cases you have to sell the book by the book cover, the synopsis of the book on the website in question, and the first few pages or chapters of the book.  Good reviews of the book help also.

I have stated many times throughout by blog posts that all the great writers that I researched say that until you write and publish your one million words you’re just spinning your wheels.  Some get discovered and make a splash in the ocean of being published before that point but many aren’t even noticed by then.  That translates to ten books of at least one hundred thousand words.  Basically ten full sized novels, which research also shows readers, prefer the fuller more developed books that end up between 80 to 120 thousand words in length.  So if you don’t have five or more books out there and many more on the way you had better keep typing and get busy.

You want to sell more books, hone your craft, and write better books, it is that simple.  When you have enough out there, if your stories are great, in time those who like to read your work, that elusive group you and nobody else can pin down as much as they like to discuss and chew on and on about it, Your Audience, will discover you!

For more on writing for your audience check out my previous post about Know your Market and Write to Your Audience!

http://thomaswilsonstoryteller.blogspot.com/2012/07/know-your-market-and-write-to-your.html

Posted in: target market sell books Indie Authors Write publishing discovered