When You Can’t Please Everyone, Please the Ideal Reader
Dear Friends,
This past week, I had the opportunity to attend a fantastic writers’ conference full of interesting and knowledgeable people, fellow authors, creatives, agents and publishers. To say I walked away buzzing with excitement, is an understatement. Remember all those note-taking and nerdy office supplies I couldn’t keep my hands off of? Let me tell you—they’re being put to great use now.
One of the sessions I attended was about identifying and finding your “ideal reader.”
I know as a reader, it seems funny to think there’s an ideal. I mean, what makes someone the ideal, anyway? Do they turn the pages in a crisper fashion? Maybe their Kindle swiping technique is unparalleled. In publishing terms, an ideal reader boils down to: who is your superfan? Who will preorder your books, or promote and post about them when they’ve finished reading? Who will leave a stunning review on book sites (reviews matter, folks)? Who engages on your posts and follows all your social media accounts? Who subscribed to your newsletter and then actually reads it?
Why are ideal readers important?
Well, as a wise person (not me) once said, “When you try to please everyone, you please no one.”
What sense does it make to try to make everyone happy with your writing when it’s impossible? It’s our ideal readers that will care, so it’s our ideal readers that should get our attention. They’re the ones that will stick with us on our literary journey. They’re the ones who (hopefully) give us a another chance if the previous book falls flat. They’re the ones who make the whole gut your soul wide open to the world thing worth it.
That being said, I never thought of myself much of an ideal anything before, but the more we talked about ideal readers, the more I realized—I AM ONE for a handful of authors on my auto-buy list. I will read their newletters. I preorder their books. I read and I post and I recommend to others. So if any of these authors want to pick my brain on why I love their work so much, I am here for it!
Leigh Bardugo, Ali Hazelwood, Melissa Ferguson, Kate Bromley, Emily Henry —> Hit me up!!
Are you, my Friends, superfans and ideal readers? Do we share obsessions? And if so, should we get matching tattoos? (Just kidding. Sort of. I might be persuadable.)
Until next time!
