Know Your Audience: How to Write a Non-Fiction Book

"I’m Bobbi Linkemer on behalf of expertvillage.com, and I’d like to invite you to visit my website at writeanonfictionbook.com. We’re going to talk about some of the basic questions you have to answer when you’re getting ready to write a book. The first one is who is your reader? Who is your audience? Can you describe that person? An awful lot of people think their book is for a universal appeal; it’s for everyone. Well, let me assure you that no book is for everyone. Beyond that, we have to know where it goes in the bookstore and while that may sound very prosaic, you have to know who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about before you can put it on a shelf. So can you describe your reader? Is it a male? Is is a sports book that you appeal only to men? Is it a women’s studies book or a women’s interest book? Is is a 18-25 demographic your looking for? Are you writing to older people, which is a growing market? What kind of things is this person reading? What magazines? What kind of movies are they going to? What are they doing for fun? How many things can you think of that would describe this person? You’re only writing one reader at a time, so once you can describe this reader, you can talk to that person when you begin to write. So question one: who is your audience?"