Defining Your Genre
When it comes to your book, there’s one big thing that will define where it ends up, as far as marketing: your genre. Well, okay, there’s two things. Your genre and your age market. I know there are some genres that seem to cover both of these, but today, I’m going to break down why each is important to the market and why you ought to define both (even if you do it just for yourself).
Genre
Your genre is your niche, the type of book you write. For instance, I write mystery books, so my genre is mystery. Genres are used to bring books together that are similar. It helps people find books they like. I’m not a big sci-fi person (just not my thing), so by bundling books together under “Sci-Fi” (I know that’s not the real term), this allows me, the reader, to not waste my time looking for books I’m not ever going to read.
It also lets the Sci-fi reader easily find them in a book store, allowing the person to quickly pick their books and get to reading. And as authors, isn’t that what we want? People to enjoy our books?
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Target Audience
I use target audience as something different than genre. Target Audience, at least for me, is more of the age demographic. I know there are some age demographics that are treated more like genre (specifically Young Adult and New Adult), but these aren’t really genres! A Young Adult romance book is completely different from a Young Adult Fantasy book. They aren’t going to catch the same readers (for the most part – some people like all of them).
When it comes to Target Audience, you need to be smart about marketing. You don’t want to market a teenage romance book to an eighty year-old man. You want to target it to the age group you’re writing for. If you’re worried about people outside of your audience not being able to find your book if you don’t market, here’s my advice: write the best book you can. People in your audience will pass it on if they believe the book deserves it.
Tell me, what genre are you writing? Who’s your target audience?