The market for your book is definitely not everyone. No matter how much you’ve convinced yourself this is the case, carrying that philosophy over into the arena of marketing is the kiss of death.
Understanding the genre itself is also vital to your success. Getting either of those two things wrong is a costly mistake, and authors often lose a small fortune in advertising dollars and book sales when they make either of these errors along the way:
Genre Matters
Genre is all about reader expectations, and your story will crash and burn if it doesn’t meet those expectations. The loveliest prose can’t save it. I realize these are tough words, but they are truthful words. You wrote your story for a reason, and the way to make it shine, is to write it appropriately for the genre it’s in, and to market it appropriately to the audience that looks for that genre. You never convince someone to read your book because you are such a wonderful author, you convince them to read the book because it offers what they want in a story.
Image by Gabor Adonyi
It’s All About Expectations
If you’re in the mood for a seafood platter, the waitress can bring you the most delicious steak in the world, but nothing will make it seafood. It’s not what you were in the mood for, it’s not what you were expecting, and you’ll end up disappointed.
Make a definite choice about which genre you're writing in, and don’t blur the lines. It’s all about reader expectation. For any novel to be successful, the reader, marketer, and author must understand the genre and the market to which it will be promoted.
If you’re confused about the genre you’re writing in, your readers will be confused too.
Use the five leaf clover and follow the outline for content, structure, style, reality, and time. It doesn’t mean your novel has to follow a boring, dull formula. But you do need the components and elements of the genre you’re writing in to show up in the book, or you will disappoint your audience and spoil your career. You can bet the farm on that.
(I know, I know, J.K. Rowling didn’t use the clover. Neither did Stephen King. However, they both began their writing careers in grade school, and turned out two decades of non-starters before getting picked up by publishers. That option is certainly available to you as well. But I don’t think you want to take it.)
The bottom line is, people come back to the same genre time and again because they know what to expect from it and that’s what they like. It’s that simple. Even if someone reads five different genres, that person still expects the one he or she picked up at the moment to fit the category it claims it is in.
Don’t try to make a political thriller politically correct. That’s obviously not what a person is looking for in a political thriller. You also can’t put a modern flair to historical fiction without your story sounding amateurish and nonsensical. For example, the phrase “No worries” doesn’t belong in a novel set in medieval times. Similarly, if you’re writing fantasy, no one wants to read long chapters that sound like everyday life in the real world. That’s not what they read fantasy for.
I happen to write historical fiction. I’ve been immersed in it for 40 years. It may even be an obsession, but I won’t visit my personality quirks on my blog readers. (Insert voracious laughter.) Anyway, historical romance lovers are looking for the agony and ecstasy of love, with all the uncertainty and frustration it brings to all of us…only they want it on steroids with full throttle, can’t-live-without-you, I-will-do-anything-to-make-you-mine drama and pageantry. If you write that part “lite” or, God forbid, make that leading male a properly mannered individual whose goal is to "communicate effectively" with the leading lady through politically correct dialogue, you’ve just taken your book out of the genre, and if you market it to historical fiction lovers, they’re going to return it.
The point is, everyone expects SOMETHING from their favorite genre.
The Other Step You Can’t Afford to Miss
It is also imperative to market properly. We're all in love with our work, but the worst mistake any author can make is to say “the market for MY book is EVERYONE.”
No it’s not. Trust me it’s not.
The market for your book is people who love that genre. Period.
When I was self-published, I got offer after offer from people who could “promote my book” for me. As soon as I saw the price tag I knew it was not targeted marketing because targeted marketing doesn’t come cheap. They would start their cute little ads with “I’ll tweet your book link to 500,000 followers.”
My response would be “WHO are they?”
“Huh?” was usually the answer.
These marketers were typically surprised to find out that I wanted to know which audience I was paying money to advertise to. Well, of course I did. Writing web content for a living means you know just a pinch about marketing, and tweeting a historical fiction novel written for a 35+ female demographic to 500,000 college girls and boys is called wasting money.
They would usually try to educate me with lines like, “Well, we market to EVERYONE, to ensure the highest possibility of success.” In other words, lines that mean nothing to a person with experience.
Don't get me wrong, these marketers aren’t bad people. They’re just well-meaning amateurs, and they will drain your marketing budget in a hurry if you don't watch out.
“Yes, but a 90-year-old man may see the link to your historical romance novel and decide to buy it and end up liking the book!”
That’s true. And if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a wagon.
The problem IS, why pay for your book to be tweeted to 500,000 people in the general population in the hopes that someone who actually likes the genre might stumble over the link, rather than just market properly to begin with? Why take a financial gamble that someone who never read the genre may suddenly get interested in YOUR book and read it and like it, when you could target the right people in the first place? Overly-general advertising is just a bad way to spend money.
You could do that kind of poor marketing another way: get ten boxes of your books and go across the country, propping one up in every waiting room you come across and eventually a historical fiction lover will notice it, read it, and maybe even review it. Sounds great! Except that the money that you lose from all the books that sat there in waiting rooms collecting dust isn’t worth the one needle in a haystack reader that you found with that method.
Social Media-An Author's Favorite Way to Waste Money
Social media is another double edged sword that many self-published authors waste a lot of money on because they don’t know how to properly market on those platforms.
You still need to find your demographic.
If you’re writing young adult fiction, you need to head over to Instagram as fast as you can. If your target market is 40+ adults, especially females, Instagram is a waste of money. There are no good or bad social media platforms, there’s only good or bad CHOICES. It all depends on who you’re looking for, and who’s looking for your kind of book!
Ultimately, targeted marketing is expensive, whether you do it on social media or elsewhere, but it also yields results, and it’s the only kind you should consider. I feel the burning question, “but what if I don’t know my market?” I understand. A lot of people don’t know their market and they feel silly asking, so they never find out. My next blog post will be dedicated to how you figure out who your target market is, the difference between a target market and a target audience, and most importantly, who NOT to market your novel to. Write on!