The Importance of Finding Your Audience

If you want to test out different covers or titles or blurbs for your book, who do you ask? It's true, we really don't know what will resonate with our readers, so testing is a critical aspect of our indie writing and publishing. Time and again, I'm surprised by what I think is brilliant only to have my readers not like it that much. So, test and test again until you find what works.

But, who can you ask? If you've developed a list of followers and fans, that's an obvious place to begin. They already know you and like your books, so they want to see you succeed. So set up a poll and email them for their input.

Alternatively, you may have a few other writers who are also knowledgeable about your genre and also want to see you succeed. You can approach them too for their input.

I made the mistake of polling a group of generic writers on possible titles for my Sissy Jupiter novel. It's now with beta readers and I wanted to get a sense for which title resonated. Even though I made it clear I was looking for input only from those who write and read that genre, I got all kinds of feedback from all kinds of others.

Not helpful.

What began as an exercise in narrowing down the nuances of my title ended up in some complaining that a YA audience or younger might be horrified by possible misinterpretations. These comments were from writers who did not write in my genre and I suspect didn't even read my genre.

That was a big mistake and got me questioning a lot of things.

Fortunately, those I knew wrote and read science fiction and its many sub-genres, were more sensible, so after scratching my head for a while, I stuck with their opinions.

All this taught me (again) about a few things:solicit feedback from readers and writers in your target audience / genre. They are the ones who are most importantstop listening to feedback from others who really don't know your work / style / genre. Their comments are not helpful.select beta readers carefully. Stick to those in your genre.