Determining Your Audience

As I mentioned in my last post, most of our books--Current Events, Business, and Self-Help--are being sold primarily to the authors' respective communities. This means that if you are writing a book intended for CEOs and Consultants and Coaches to CEOs, then you had better already have a network of people of these professions who are interested in your product. If you are writing a book for sales executives, but you yourself have no connections to sales executives, then there is a very small chance that any one from your intended audience will even consider buying your book.

This is a symptom of a bigger, largely unnoticed phenomenon: filtering. As Cass Sunstein writes in his book Republic 2.0, consumers of media are constantly gaining the ability to filter the information they receive. As general interest news sources are on the decline, personalized media websites are on the rise. Part of the problem is an overabundance of information--far too much for any one person to read. However, this ability to filter can lead to increased polarization; as a person gains the ability to choose what to include and exclude in her daily readings, she is automatically denying herself exposure to certain types of information.

This is what authors are up against. As publishers we're not worried that people who see your book will not buy it. We're worried that people will never see your book. Period.

More and more, people are seeking out what they want and ignoring what they don't. Publicity campaigns, in the traditional mail-blast sense, are on the decline. What is working these days is specialized, targeted campaigns, to carefully compiled networks. Just like finding a job, it's best to know people who know people.