Target Audience
Target audience. If you’ve been looking seriously at trying to get published, you’ve heard this term. What is it? Basically the group of people you’re writing for. Young adult fiction. Sportman’s monthly.
Too often, the target audience for whom you are writing gets looked over. I admit to looking over it as well. I mainly write for the pleasure of it above all things and hope I’ll find a publisher or agent along the way who will like my work.
However, if you plan on freelancing before you get “that big book deal” then you have to take your audience into absolute consideration.
My target audience for this blog is any and all writers. Thus I put in anything and everything I think might interest writers. That much is a given.
Previously, I mentioned a contest which I’ve decided to enter. I was getting rather frustrated because of such open guidelines and not being able to think of what to write, and my fiancé gently reminded me to think of my target audience. The readers of Women’s Weekly Australia aren’t likely to want to read about deer hunting.
It might get a bit stereotypical (and indeed a bit sexist) determining your audience, but it can be the difference between winning the contest and not, between getting published and not.
If you want to start getting into the habit of writing for a specific audience, try writing letters. (Or emails.) You know what (and what not) to write in a letter to each of the people in your life. Just as your mother probably doesn’t want to hear about your latest romantic interlude, a publisher of non-fiction history books doesn’t want manuscripts of children’s books. Those are a bit extreme, but the principle applies.
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