What Do Target Audience and Genre Have in Common With Your Novel’s Success?

Defining your target audience and genre is essential. But what do target audience and genre have in common with your novel’s success? This blog will help!

When you set out to write your manuscript, you expect people to read it. It’s rare for an author who wants their book to exist in a vacuum (I mean, no one does that, right? I hope?) So it behooves you to figure out who will be reading your book so you ensure as many people as possible read it.

That’s where defining your target audience comes in. By researching and reflecting on who’s most likely to enjoy your story, you can narrow down their age, how they live, what they do for a living, and all sorts of factors contributing to how you can write your book so it will attract them.

Alternatively, sometimes you find your genre and audience as you write, though that can mean some more work on the backend with revisions to ensure it meets the standards of your prospective readers.

Why Do You Need a Target Audience?

A particular group of people will inevitably latch onto your story, as a book rarely speaks to all walks of life. When you know who will likely read your novel, you can structure your writing to best suit their tastes, making for a better experience for everyone!

Take what I’ve said in other blogs, for example; you don’t write fiction for adults with the same pacing or word choices as you do for young adult readers. You keep your novel snappy, with more teen-centric dialogue and lighter dramatic themes and tone.

Your intended audience also influences the length of your book. So, you’ll need to define who will read your book so you can ensure that they will read it!

Nailing Down Your Genre

Clearly defining the theme or genre of your book is less necessary prior to writing but will have a massive influence on who reads your book. If you’re not too concerned with mass-market success, you don’t need to put much planning into what you want your novel classed as when it’s on shelves.

Should you wish to write a zombie dog romance, go for it. However small, there’s likely a market for it. But if you’re looking to attract significant numbers with a commercial piece of writing, you’ll want to study the genre you seek to write for and plan out how to capture the attention of its readership.

Genre carries expectations from its audience, and if you miss the mark by diluting the themes or mixing too many genres, you risk alienating your readers.

A Literary or Commercial Success

Diving deeper into marketable writing, you must narrow down your personal goals to define your audience and genre. A way that divides most writing is whether they’re literary or commercial novels.

Generally, most consider literary stories to be written for writing’s sake, for the love of the art and the craft, to weave prose into a way that could make history. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always guarantee financial success (though maybe after you’re dead).

Commercial writing, on the other hand, tends to be more (arguably) generic and average, intended to attract as many people to read the book as possible and therefore sell lots of copies. They’re produced faster and cheaper than literary works, with a quantity-over-quality mindset.

When you know the purpose for writing your book, you can cater how you write a novel to suit your needs. Writing commercially for a genre will carry particular demands from publishers, such as requiring your story to hit proven, market-researched beats that will all but guarantee it to sell.

Putting Your Finger On It

So, when you want to figure it all out, there are a few things to consider about what target audiences and genres have in common:

• Make notes and illustrate your ideal audience member. Figure out what they like to read, how they go about their day, and how your story can fulfill their needs.
• To figure out how your novel can connect with your audience, reflect on what you have in common with them, as chances are, if you’re excited about what you’re writing, they will be too.
• When you know the above, you’ll likely have an idea of how you can write in a way that will engage them through symbolism, word choice, imagery, story length, and the other factors I mentioned.
• If you still need to decide what you want to write, look to your inspirations and their style, structure, and genres to determine how best to attract a similar audience.

The science to attract the best readers for your novel is there but remains inexact. But you can increase your success by putting in the legwork of researching your primary, and even secondary audience, of your chosen genre.

While mindlessly writing yields its rewards, you will have to eventually adjust your manuscript to ensure it’s a cohesive read for those most likely to enjoy it. Otherwise, your novel is going to sit in solitude, collecting dust.

When I started to write Getting By, I didn’t know it would be a YA novel. But I discovered this as I progressed, allowing me to focus on who this book would be for and how to reach them best. I hope this helps you answer the question of what do target audience and genre have in common. If you have more questions about anything, please contact me at jsims@jairesims.com or on social media.