The surprisingly easy way to write for the readers who dig you

You’re writing a business book because you want people to read it.

‘Doh! Tell me something I don’t know’, you say.

Which is fair enough. Except it’s so easy, when you start planning your book, to lose sight of what your readers really want from it. We can get so carried away with the content – seeing our books as vessels for all we know – that we forget people have a choice about whether they pay it any attention.

If they don’t want it, they won’t buy it. And if they don’t buy it, they won’t read it.

So you need to know who you’re writing for before you begin.

The truth is, there’s a science to picking the right readers for your book. And it all starts here, in this, the third post in my series of the six essentials to get right before you type a word of your book. (You can read the first two here and here).

The cool thing about having a target to aim for

If you go back to my first post in this series you’ll learn why it’s so important to understand what you want to achieve with your book right from the start.

But it’s no good knowing what you want to achieve, if you don’t hang all the other decisions you make about your book off that one goal. And deciding on your readers is the first one.

The other reason is – and this is a cool one – it’ll make it easier for you to sell your book. Here’s how it works: when your readers and your business audience are aligned, you have a ready-made audience to promote your book to when it’s done.  Seriously, make life easier for yourself and take this into account – it could make the difference between you speaking with ease to a willing list of potential purchasers, and shouting into the void. There’s more about this in one of my previous posts, How to Streamline Your Book Marketing.

It all comes back to your Why

Let’s look at linking your audience to the reason you’re writing this book in the first place. Why does this matter?

Bob Bestseller wants his book to top the charts. It’s really important to him he gets his name in lights: this was his number one goal when he decided what he wanted to achieve with his book. So he’ll need to write a book aimed at a broad audience about a topic many people can relate to, such as how to be an effective leader in a small business. It would be no good him writing a book aimed at brown poodle owners, for instance (now there’s a tight readership).

Clare Credibility, on the other hand, is writing a business book to raise her authority in her niche. So for her, aiming her book at the specific group of people she wants to influence is key. Given she’s a start-up consultant, she’d have great success with a book written for new entrepreneurs. If she were to target her book at all entrepreneurs, though, she’d find it harder to market and it wouldn’t resonate with her audience.

You can see how easy it would be for Clare, for instance, to get distracted by the lure of becoming a bestselling author (which isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, by the way), forgetting her main aim is to gain more clients in her existing business area. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a bestseller, of course – but it would be an added bonus for her rather than the main aim.

How to pick and choose

So how do you go about choosing which readers to target?

First, work out what you want your book to do for you and your business. This is essential.

Second, decide who to aim it at, given your goal.

Finally, create an avatar of your ideal reader so they become clear in your mind. What gender and age are they? Where do they live? What do they do for a living? How do they like to spend their free time? What’s their motivation for buying your book? Where and when might they read it? All this will help you write for them in a vivid and personal way.

If you’ve got an actual person in mind, all the better – it will help to make them real.

How to make your readers feel special

Now you really know your readers, how do you ‘speak’ to them in your book?

It’s actually really easy.

You just write directly to that one person. In each paragraph. In each line.

Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what they would want to learn, how they would like to be spoken to, and what would be memorable for them.  Keep coming back to them, especially when you’re not sure what to write next.

This makes writing your book so much easier. And it’ll get you the results you want, which is a crowd of happy readers, eager to recommend your book to others and maybe even to work with you.

Which is what it’s all about, right?