A candid account of a common author problem: Marketing a book without a clear genre and target audience.
Why aren't we taught at school to first identify our target market whenever we are trying to produce anything that we want other people to like?
Maybe we were and I didn't pay attention, but before I became an indie author I thought that writing, like any artistic endeavour, was free of the confines of convention and expectation - A true unrestricted expression of our every part, thought, and innermost being.
Uh. It is... if you don't care about selling anything and making any money.
Regardless of where you are at in your author/creative journey, at some point, you will likely come to the point where you need to decide:
Do I write for me, or do I write for other people?
Do I care about making money or not?
Am I creating because I need to create and express myself, or am I creating something to appeal to people and make a living from the creating?
Your answers will then shape what you do from that point.
Honestly, I'm still undecided.
I want to live my dream of being a successful author with a decent income and strong readership, but I also want to just write whatever the hell I want, without needing to define *it*, or who *it* is for.
Without needing to fit my creativity in a box with rules and expectations.
So, this brings me back to attempting to define my target market.
I wrote my books with no clear genre or audience in mind, in other words:
I wrote my books for myself.
I hate writing that. It makes me cringe. It sounds selfish, almost narcissistic. I wrote them HOPING that other people would like them too, but I certainly didn't identify what those people like, want, need, and expect before I got stuck into the process.
I write because I want to write and writing makes me happy, but yes, I also want to make money from it.
So, am I my own target audience for the books that I have already written?
Hrmm, okay. Let's do this, um, "marketing homework".
This is me:
A woman
A reader
A middle-aged mother
A deep thinker/philosophical
Nature lover
On a journey of self-discovery - knows they can always grow and get better
An anxious and self-conscious overthinker who cares deeply about what other people think but tries hard not to
Creative
Time poor
Conventional hippie
What is a conventional hippie?
A conventional hippie is a term that I made up to describe a wannabe hippie who mostly conforms to social norms. eg:
I'd love to walk around shoeless, but rocks and broken glass hurt
I'd love to wear pretty, flowy, hippie clothes all the time, but I get cold. All. The. Time. And I have young kids, so I constantly end up stepping on the hem of my dress and yanking it down. And I'm a little self-conscious about the extra curves in my middle.
I'd love to live off-grid in the middle of the bush, but I don't, for many various reasons
I'd love to have no TV or electronics, but my husband and kids would hate me, and I work on computers and need the internet and stuff
I'd love to grow my own food, but my thumb is not green
I'd love to eat all-natural, organic, raw, vegan whatever, but I don't, because it's expensive and I am addicted to sugar and coffee, and I love the taste of bad things, and I have a family who I would need to cook separate meals for, which is never going to happen
Ya get me? How I picture my ideal life in my head is different from the way that I live, but I am totally okay with that. I'm a practical hippie - a hippie at heart. A conforming dreamer.
Why does all this matter?
Because my books are kinda the same as me - not full hippie, there are just glimpses of conventional hippie throughout.
In my books, you will find some hippie
themes: earthing, moon-bathing, crystals, singing bowls, meditation, and a lot of nature lovin' and philosophical thinking, scattered amongst the regular ole contemporary women's fiction stories.
Are people who are like me and who like the same things as me, my target market?
I have no fricking idea!!
Really. I don't know.
If you are a woman who likes to read and think, and if you don't automatically discount new-aged thinking and natural medicine as 'hippie-dippie woo-woo crap', then you are my people...
Are you my people?
Much love,
Marley x
* The Silver Sheep is available as an ebook or paperback and is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Find it on Amazon and other good online bookstores.
Comments