My Ideal Reader

Someone asked, “Would you rather sell a lot of books, or have a lot of readers?” That’s not really a fair question, though. If you’re not selling a lot of books, then you probably don’t have a lot of readers.

The truth is, I’d much rather give free books to people who would enjoy them than sell a lot of books to people who never read them, and I think most authors would. But who are those enthusiastic readers? Who is your book’s ideal reader? That’s a question worth asking, and until you’ve answered it, you’re not likely to know who you’re writing for, or how to find them.

I ran a brief “Ideal Reader Questionnaire” for my own work, and here’s what I came up with.

My books do contain action and adventure elements, but the driving force of each plot is a love relationship, so that plants them firmly in the Romance category. That means my Ideal Reader is most likely a woman. “Woman” is a very broad category, though, so let’s narrow it down further.

My books do contain mild language and, due to the fact they are set in a war zone, have some violence, but since they do not contain extreme violence or explicit sexual scenes, they would be classified as “Clean Romance.” So my Ideal Reader reader is a woman who loves a bit of adventure and action in a love story, but doesn’t enjoy the smut many Romantic Suspense reads contain.

While my stories aren’t preachy, my Christian faith is clearly evident in my writing, which means they would probably be most enjoyed by someone who shares my faith. So my Ideal Reader is a woman who loves clean, faith-based romance with suspense elements.

My writing style is simple and approachable because, while the characters in the stories are mostly adults, I had a younger audience in mind as I wrote. This is not to say adults wouldn’t enjoy the stories, but my Ideal Reader is a 18-25 year old Christian woman who enjoys clean or Christian Romantic Suspense.

Last of all, the love stories the Shards of Sevia series contains all play out against the backdrop of a fictional Southeast European city descending into ethnic-based violence and chaos. This is an environment that I would hope is unfamiliar to most of my readers—but it is also what sets my books apart from other Christian Romantic Suspense, and allows me to appeal to readers who also enjoy Speculative Fiction or Fantasy. So, to conclude, my Ideal Reader is a young Christian woman who enjoys a good love story, but also likes getting out of the box of what’s typical for the genre in order to experience a whole new world.