How to find your readers online
Many authors think it’s enough to get their book into the hands of their publisher, and the publisher will do the rest. But actually, in today’s market, it’s essential that the author understand how to engage their audience directly. Once you know who your audience is and how they want to be communicated to, you’ll be able to connect with them in just the right ways so that your sales numbers will increase.
So the question to ask is who is your readership? Be specific. know such details as:
- gender
- age
- where they live
- education level
- socio-economic status
- jobs held
- reason for reading your type of books, and reading in general
- what else they read (other books, magazines, sites, etc.)
- beliefs about life, love, family, religion
- what they really want out of life
- favorite vacation spots
- and more!
How do you go about finding such information?
— Ask them! If you’re an as yet unpublished, ask your early readers. Young women in their late teens and early 20s respond with great interest when I share tidbits about a paranormal YA I’m working on. For the published authors, you can run surveys on your site using services like www.surveymonkey.com, which has an easy-to-use free version, and you can ask your readers at book signings, and the like.
— Other ways and places to find your readers and make some educated guesses about who your audience is:
- lurk in bookstores and libraries, book sections of supermarkets, Target etc. Watch who picks up books like yours. Watch them. Use your people watching skills to fill out the details listed above.
- go to book reviewer sites. here’s a list of a few I’ve gathered, collected in a twitter list: http://twitter.com/bethbookcoach/book-reviewers
- talk to your librarian
- talk to your independent booksellers
- book review sites. Here’s a few: http://sirenbookreviews.blogspot.com/; http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/; http://www.likesbooks.com/; http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/. I did a search for “romance book review blogs” and came up with a huge list, of which the 4 listed here are just a few.
As to answering the question on how they want to be communicated to, I mean, really how do they want to stay informed about your upcoming releases, book signing, etc?
— the best answer to this is give them choices. Connecting with you via Facebook, Twitter, a newsletter, a blog, are all options that different readers may take. Notice which of these mediums has or gets the largest numbers, and use that as your primary funnel, with everything else acting as a support. Or, you can duplicate the same content across multiple channels.
For example, Eloisa James (http://www.eloisajames.com/contact.php) encourages contact with her in a lot of different ways: a newsletter for book releases; a forum for avid fans; a Facebook Fan page, and Newsflashes, which is actually her RSS feed. I like that: Newsflashes! I enjoyed reading Eloisa’s FB posts, especially the ones about her European summer, though everything she posts is fun! I notice that Eloisa offers different information via different channels. Her web design team probably has tested out a lot of different ways, or just made educated guesses, about what kind of readers want what kind of content. If you’re like me, and you want nibbles, FB or her Newsflashes are good. If you absolutely need to know when her next book releases are, her newsletter is good. If you need to be talking about her books with others, probably her forum and her FB fan page are best for that. Wow!
HOMEWORK
1. Find 1-2 book blogger/book reviewer sites where your readers hang out, and make guesses about who they are based on comments and how the reviews are written.
2. How do you like to stay connected to your favorite authors?
3. How connected would you like to be to your fans, if time and money were no concern?
