THE FOCUS GROUP: Market research for authors
This article by Michelle Halket appeared, originally, on Deborah Riley-Magnus’ blog.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of market research? Eight people taste-testing crackers in front of a one-way mirror? Irritating telephone calls from pollsters at dinnertime? A four-page, check-box survey that arrives in the mail boasting of free coupons if you’re one of the first 500 people to return it?
You’re right, these are all tools that researchers use to find out more about their customers. Most of us believe that this element in the product development cycle is only for manufacturers of cars, the staff of politicians, and producers of cleaning products. However, this little post is all about market research for the author.
Most authors balk at having to promote themselves. After all, they are ‘Creators’, not salespeople. Promotion is the job of publicists or agents or publishers. But in truth, however one might feel about it, the responsibility for marketing one’s book is the author’s. How they go about that is really up to them, whether they hire someone or take it on themselves. The importance of building an author platform is paramount in the selling of the book—and any author worth her weight knows this.
This article is a simple primer on market research. Whether you like it or not, your book is a product.
Simplistically speaking, the goal of market research is to determine the market demand for a particular product. By determining demand, one is then able to determine how to best sell. The traditional product development cycle follows this narrative: research the demand for the product, go build it, then go sell it. For the author, this might mean checking out bestseller lists, libraries and online networks to find out what people are reading and buying, and then write a book on something that’s in high demand.
But does that really work in this arena? My opinion is no. The minute you write for someone else, and not for yourself, you lose all credibility as a creator. And what you create will be lacking, aerated, and void. Readers will see that. And they won’t buy it.
So, remain true to yourself and create something from your heart, soul, and intellect. Go through all the steps necessary to get to your finished product—a manuscript. Then, once you’re done, you’ll try to sell it. For some authors this means self-publishing. For others this means shopping it around to publishers and agents. If you take the latter route, you’ll soon find out that most of these people are looking for authors with an established platform.
No matter which road you take, developing a platform means getting yourself out there, marketing yourself and your book. You might tweet, start a Facebook page, join author’s groups, hold readings, get a webpage, a blog, etc. It means doing anything to get yourself or your book in front of customers, whether they be readers, agents or publishers.
But, if you take the time to do a bit of research before you start all your platform-building efforts, you’ll find that you can cut down on the costs and time you spend doing sales and marketing, thus maximizing your efforts. While some might say that these tasks only apply to those authors who self-publish, I would argue that this is the duty of all authors.
1. Know Your Product
Being the creator of your product, one would assume you know it well. However, getting a second or third opinion would be prudent. Get your friends to read it—if you trust them as critics—and ask them to give you a “product overview.” Ask them to describe the book as though they were telling someone who knows nothing about it, regarding subject matter, length, writing style, etc. You’re not looking for reviews, per se, just a description. Both you and your colleagues should write down your “product overviews” so as to avoid any misinterpretation in trying to remember what people said. Then, from these, compile a final description of your book, including all the details from ISBN, to title, to genre, to word count, to synopsis.
2. Know Your Customer
You likely have a pretty good idea of who your target reader is. However, it’s a good idea to get some second and third opinions, via your colleagues (as mentioned above). I have seen several authors surprised that a demographic group, different than the one they originally thought they were targeting, enjoyed their novel. Therefore, don’t confine yourself to standard demographic particulars like age, income, and whether they have kids. Think about their life stage. Are they young urban singles, suburban stay-at-home-moms, mature professional men, etc? Then, think about what those groups might enjoy doing. List their possible hobbies and pasttimes. Think about their reading habits, and the frequency with which they read. Think about the visual accessibility of your book. I hate to bring up Dan Brown, but one of the keys to his success are his short chapters chapters. No matter what you think of his style (and readers of this blog don’t think much, I’m almost certain), but his books fit today’s harried and hurried, multi-tasking lifestyle; and fitting in a short chapter on a coffee break makes for easy reading that many people find attractive. Cutting a long chapter in half doesn’t detract from your art, but it may increase your salability.
One might read this and wonder how we can group individuals into static, uniform groups of readers. I’m not proposing that it’s totally possible—but generally speaking, people in similar life stages share similar interests. In no way is one trying to exclude any particular demographic, but having a sound idea of who your target readers are will better enable you to reach them.
If you’re shopping your book for publication, then you need to identify another customer segment: publishers and literary agents. Take the time to research these people and companies and get to know them the same way that you are trying to get to know your reader.
3. Know Your Market
You need to know the marketplace you’re jumping into. Make yourself familiar with the trends in reading, publishing and bookselling. Brick and mortar bookstores aren’t going anywhere for a while, but paper book sales are down, but the industry is seeing moderate growth in eBooks. If you don’t know anything about digital publishing, make it a priority to find out the basics. All authors want to hold a tangible copy of their published book, but the marketplace is going digital. If you fight against the current, you’ll drown.
4. Know Your Competition
Get to know who else is out there. By knowing which authors and books are selling (or not selling, as the case may be) will help you figure out where your book belongs, and perhaps what kind of sales you can expect. The web is full of independent marketing strategies. On the publishing side, check out what HarperStudio (or Flatmancrooked!) is doing. On the self-marketing side, you might be able to learn from SHya Scanlon, whose web serialization led to a book deal. Glean ideas from people who have more experience than you. Watch, listen, and learn, then get out there and put your own spin on it.
This might all sound a bit daunting, but once you start writing these elements down in an organized format, you’ll realize that you likely know a lot of this already. This isn’t so much about creating tables or graphs or demographic pyramids as it is about cementing in your mind where your book fits in this mass of new titles released daily.
Of course, now comes the hard part: how to find creative and effective ways to reach your readers. But now that you know who your audience is, who else is out there, what kind of market you’re in, and what you have to offer that market, you’ll have a framework in which to develop your marketing concept. You’ll be astounded how that constraint catalyzes your creativity.
Michelle Halket is the Creative Director for ireadiwrite Publishing, a digital small press that specializes in literary fiction, poetry and selected non-fiction by new authors. To learn more about her, check out www.ireadiwrite.com.
