One Writer’s Quest to Find the Perfect Reader

“Picture your perfect reader…”

“Picture your perfect reader,” the marketing guru begins, and already I feel the anvil’s crush. Because I know where this is heading. I’ve been here before.

I’m not naïve. I understand how marketing works. You have to know your audience before you try to sell a product. (Yes, typing that took a piece of my soul.)

A writer has to be able to answer that question because agents need to answer publishers who need to answer the booksellers. Who is going to read this book? Asked another way, Which shelf will you find your ideal reader perusing at the bookstore?

The Venn diagram didn’t help

After all the advice to “know your reader,” I sat down and honest-to-goodness attempted to create a Venn diagram. I put my ideal reader in the center circle and labeled the outer box, the universe, with “Literature and Fiction.” After that, the page got real messy real quick. (And this, friends, is why you don’t see my Venn Diagram here.)

I ended up with a sloppy arrangement of overlapping circles all around the center: readers of fantasy, mythology, romance, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, women’s fiction. (Don’t blame me for the historical fiction– I never considered mythology to be history, but apparently Amazon does.) It’s not hard to make an argument for any of these overlaps. Quick example- at the intersection of romance and fantasy, one of my favorite books of all time, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. So, it’s not that crazy that my book, First Quiver, overlaps with all of those categories.

That’s either the best news or the worst news. In an ideal world, I’d attract readers from all those different spheres, even ones who don’t yet know they’d love a novel that sits at the intersection of all those circles. Unfortunately, I often have to tick just one box, and that’s where I lose people.

Maybe we should stop asking readers to put themselves in a box

Readers aren’t one-dimensional any more than my story is, any more than I am. This used to be just a theory, but now I have proof.

So far, either by my direct handoff or by virtue of a site called NetGalley – where thousands of readers, librarians, and serial reviewers all have access to Advance Review Copies – my story has landed in a variety of readers’ hands. I’ve heard from a self-described “nonfiction reader,” a “romance reader,” a reader who loves mythology but wasn’t so sure about the present-day setting of First Quiver, a reader who didn’t remember mythology from high school and wasn’t sure she liked it the first time, a reader who warned, “Okay, but I tend to like the more literary stuff,” and my personal favorite, a reader “who doesn’t read.” (I think you’ll know who you are.)

Judging by the encouraging reviews, any of these people would qualify as my “ideal reader.” Maybe we’re programmed to set up artificial boundaries on what we choose to read. I know we all have to narrow down the choices somehow, but a good story can go a long way to cross those flimsy barriers.

I guess what I’m saying is this: Hey, it’s 2021. What’s the same as it used to be? Nothing, that’s what. Take a chance. Try a bit of fantasy, a touch of romance. Let Cupid show you your own world through new eyes. Let the magic happen.

Big Brother is watching

From the moment my book goes live (with any luck on the planned release date of January 26th), the giant Amazon algorithm machine and – to a lesser extent – other booksellers are going to make their best effort to recommend my book to the “right reader.” This is not some magnanimous gesture on their part; this is because when they sell my book to the right reader, all three of us win.

How do they do figure out who might want my book? The gremlins are constantly analyzing our previous purchases and our browsing histories in order to make projections about what kind of things they can persuade us to need next. They look at what other people who have bought these same things have then gone on to buy next, and they suggest those things to us. The same goes for books. Good luck getting decent recs if your taste is eclectic.

While Amazon’s methodology is a bit of a black box, Facebook outright allows for direct input from advertisers. I was asked to input between six and twenty authors whose fans might also enjoy First Quiver. This turned out to be a pretty fun activity, made all the more enjoyable when a friend shared this super cool “literature map” for finding authors similar to those you enjoy.

The literature map

Look what happened when I searched on authors similar to Audrey Niffenegger:

So many of my favorites (those lined in blue) turned up as close neighbors! As you can see, the authors appear around the searched author’s name in some kind of logical array, but I leave that to your curiosity.

Maybe you’ll find some new authors to explore. Maybe you’ll be shocked to find some you hadn’t ever considered reading before. Tell me what you discover!

So where would I find you, oh perfect reader?

Now remember, please, I’m an indie publisher who doesn’t have a direct line to the NYT Book Review. So tell me, if you were my perfect reader, where would I find you? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know!

Happy 2021, everyone. Everything crossed…

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