What Publishers Expect You To Know About Your Audience
I was in a meeting with a client and their future literary agent when the agent said something that made my ears perk up.
The publisher is going to expect you to take leadership of how to reach your audience.
And this reminded me, instantly, of a question I recently received.
Do traditional publishers expect me to know all the contours of my intended market/audience?
The short answer is obviously yes. But here’s a more complex breakdown of that.
When you consider your book’s audience, you’re actually thinking of three different audiences.
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
Your primary audience is exactly that. The main folks who will buy your book. For most of you, that’s your direct fans and followers. This could also be a broader demographic — i.e., educators of color, senior leaders in management roles, runners in their 40s.
To be clear: You need to be able to reach these people directly, have sold to them successfully in the past, and have the ability to market your book to them in the future.
Your secondary audience is an extension of your primary. For example, my client Ellie Diop teaches business principles to brand-new Black entrepreneurs. But a secondary audience for her could be entrepreneurs who aren’t Black or who are more experienced.
And lastly — a tertiary audience is a bit of a stretch. It’s like a “maybe these folks will buy” audience. For example, if you are writing a book on navigating gender transition — like my client Rae McDaniel did — your primary audience would be people going through it, a secondary audience could be the people helping those people like parents, therapists, etc., and then your stretch audience would be cis, het folks who are curious about non-binary and transgender folx. In other words, a tertiary audience could happen, but you wouldn’t bet a ton of money on those folks showing up in large numbers.
But wait, there’s more. For each of these audiences you want to know both quantitative information (i.e., how many people that is) and qualitative data (how these folks feel). All that combined shows that you know your stuff — and is part of what my team and I deliver when we work with entrepreneurs and experts who are ready to become traditionally published authors.
