Building An Audience For The Unpublished Author Part 1 #buildingaudience #amwriting

Hello everyone and welcome to the first week of the web series, Building an Audience for the Unpublished Author!

Just over two years ago, I was an unpublished author. But I wouldn’t say I was completely unknown. I had a couple of things going for me. I had a blog, plus, I was on twitter and facebook. Through these forms of media, I slowly built an audience, and I continue to do so today, always looking for new ways to reach readers.

In this continuing series on my blog, I will be posting various ways that I and other authors have built an audience. Sometimes I will write the post, and other times, I will have guest authors and bloggers visit to tell you about things that have worked for them. The most important thing to establish before you start anything, is to know your audience. Know who you are writing for. (Mark Lefebvre from Kobo stresses this at every workshop.)

Now, most authors write books that they themselves would enjoy. So, your audience is going to share many of the same interests as you. There are some know your audience questionnaires that go through gender, age, income level, marital status, whether they have kids or pets… Personally, I do not get that detailed. My audience comes from a wide range of backgrounds. But they do generally prefer the same books that I like, as well as the same TV shows and movies. Those are common interests to use when finding your audience.

Where do you use these interests? We’ll talk about that during this web series. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting about different places to find your audience. Next week, I’m going to start with blogging. Various forms of social media will also be discussed, including yahoo groups, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and Goodreads. And I’m lucky enough to have Liz Crowe, Desiree Holt, Tawania Etheridge, Fierce Dolan, and Cassandra Carr as my guests for this series.

Along the way, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments. And additional comments about things I’ve missed are always welcome. Enjoy your weekend! ~Jessica

Schedule:

August 9 - Intro & Knowing Your Audience

August 16 - Blogging

August 23 - Using Yahoo & Facebook Groups with author Liz Crowe

August 30 - Twitter

September 6 - Facebook with Tawania from Wicked Readings by Tawania

September 13 - Pinterest with author Desiree Holt

September 20 - Google + with author Fierce Dolan

September 27 - Goodreads with author Cassandra Carr