Knowing Your Books' Demographic is the Key to Big Sales

Who do you think is going to buy your book?

When you're in the middle of it, riding high on that great plot twist you came up with or that perfect speech you put in your secondary character's mouth, you're probably not even thinking about that question. Or if you are, the naïve, excited answer is probably – everybody!

Who wouldn't want to read your masterpiece? It's brilliant! It's going to open minds and blow people away and change the very foundation of literature. Why would someone not want to read that?

Unfortunately, in reality, even if your novel was that good, a lot of people still probably wouldn't bother with it. Harry Potter books have sold in the hundreds of millions, but even they haven't been read by everyone, and if your book can even sell 1/1000th the copies of Harry Potter, you should be thrilled.

But let's take a step back. Remember where I said you haven't thought about who will be buying your books? Well, stop right there and take a second to do that, because knowing your audience is the number one factor to making book sales. In fact, bestselling author Kathy Sierra breaks it down even clearer than that, saying that books aren't sold due to great writing, ideas, marketing, or even a huge platform – it's all about finding readers who will be genuinely passionate about your concept, buy the book themselves, then sell it to other readers.

Now, granted, Ms. Sierra is talking specifically about writing nonfiction computer books, but the lesson holds. Especially as a self-published author in a sea of people who have far bigger marketing budgets, you want evangelists for readers. People who will praise you to everyone they know and do some of that hard marketing work for you.

How do you get those readers? By realizing who your "ideal reader" is. You can narrow this down by thinking about your story and characters. What world are you exploring? Who's your main character? How old are they, and what's their background – race, socio-economic, etc.? This doesn't mean that only African Americans are going to read my novels, but it's not a bad place to start when looking for that ideal reader. In fact, let's use African Americans age 18-49 as my starting point, then narrow from there by asking questions about this rather big group.

What books have these people read?
What magazines do they read?
Where do they hang out – online and off?
What clubs and associations do they belong to?
Are they mostly single, married, divorced?
What kind of jobs do they have?
Are they wealthy or from a lower income bracket?
What's their highest level of education?
Are they fashion-conscious or "trendy", or oblivious to such things?
Are more of them located in urban, suburban, or rural environments?

The old adage is that you should write to please one person. Well, the same holds true for selling your book, and the more clearly you can define your audience so that you market to that specific segment, the more successful you're likely to be at finding readers who will become true fans.