WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM CHICKEN FEET

You know the term ‘gobsmacked,’ don’t you?  Gob=mouth.  Smacked=hit  The whole thing about chicken feet has me gobsmacked.  Did you know that without the ongoing and grand scale sale of chicken feet to China, U.S. farmers would have a hard time making a living?  I’m not kidding you.  Chicken feet are a delicacy in some cultures, and our chicken farmers are banking on the fact.  Literally.

What I’ve learned about readerships across the world has some parallels to the chicken feet story.  Now, my target audience for light suspense, sparked with romance, is out there.  I know it.  You know it.  My problem is how to find them.  I depend on those readers to buy my books, much like those chicken farmers pray every night for a new culinary concept for yumming up chicken feet.

As I’ve learned about fiction genres, I’ve become aware that each group is on the hunt for readers of their particular story line.  I’ve heard about a Regency author who has enormous sales numbers in Indonesia and she’s invested in figuring out why that is true.  All of us know that readers across the world line up behind specific category romances:  Paranormal, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historical, Western, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Suspense, Mystery, etc.  Readers divide themselves further by choosing unique romantic premises: M/F, M/M, M/M/F and so on.

Back to the chicken feet.  It behooves the U.S. chicken farmer and me, to find out everything we can about our customers.  If not, we’ll never sell our stories (or our lip-smacking chicken feet).