The Audience I Write For

I remember having to define the audience I was writing for in the some writing classes I used to take. It certainly helped when I did define it when I was writing non-fiction, but I find with fiction, the definition tends to get a bit murky.

When I put out my fiction works up for sale, I never worried about defining audience because it isn’t necessary to mention it. It’s not like genre, which I have to pick at least one. (Technically I have chosen two.) In all the time I have uploaded ebooks for sale on various sites, never was I asked who the intended audience was.

I can’t say I ever worried about the specific audience I was writing for. I just write the stories and focus on the story itself. It certainly doesn’t help when audience becomes another marketing term with all the murkiness you can imagine to go with it. I’ve read writing from authors who write for both young adults and for adults. Sometimes I can tell a difference between the two audiences, but sometimes it’s not readily so obvious.

Audience can be determined by the age of the main characters, vocabulary, and the content of the story itself. Alice Hoffman and J.K. Rowling have both written for children and adults. They are good examples to read because they write in such a way that it is clear when the story is for adults or younger readers. Their books are labeled correctly. Unfortunately, there are others who don’t write as clearly and it becomes all muddled when their books get labeled.

I don’t recall hearing my friends who are writers mention the audience they write for. In fact, I don’t think we even talk about it. I’m not sure why that is. I suppose it’s more important to the traditional publishers. But they typically are the ones who don’t define audience well enough to make any clear cut distinctions.

There is a problem with the narrow definition of audience when it comes to age group because sometimes readers don’t care and will read books that aren’t supposedly written for them. Just think about a series like Harry Potter and realize that many adults read the books and enjoyed them just as much as kids.

I suppose if the traditional publishers can’t get it right much of the time with different authors, and I don’t have to list it whenever I put out a book, then I won’t worry about it. But it’s still a good question to answer when writing anything at all.