When I first decided to write books, I had to make a lot of decisions, including who my target audience would be. Now I’m starting to think writing books for older children and teenagers might not be the most profitable idea. You see, in order to sell more copies, I need reviews; in order to get reviews I need people to read my books, all the way through.
Fortunately, some of my readers are adults, and I have got a few reviews from them. These are very welcome because my target audience is averaging about one chapter a week.
I’m not seeing this as a reflection of my skills as a writer. I know getting kids to read anything other than texts and gaming pop-ups is a challenge for many parents. I have tried all sorts of reading material to engage my son; magazines, product descriptions, instruction booklets, cook books, guide books, puzzle books, biographies – you get the idea. None of these has really captured his interest.
Yet we have a conversation each week about what he thinks of my blog; this blog, that I write mainly for adults. He always has an interesting insight, too, which suggests he is not only reading it but also understanding and thinking about the content.
Perspective
Whilst I worry that the fiction market may be saturated, he feels it is not supply that is the problem but demand. If I stop writing books, and start writing game play or screenplays, my sales may increase. I can’t argue with that. Surprisingly, we found common ground on the subject of physical books being something you can treasure. Apparently, you don’t have to actually want to read books to appreciate owning them.
I wrote a post about Goodreads, and he enjoyed learning how that works. I wrote the post from a usability perspective; he read it from a technological viewpoint.
I guess what I’ve learnt from this is that I can label my work with genres, categories, age ranges and tags, but readers are individuals and will choose to read whatever they want. What they take away may not necessarily be what I intended. But as long as somebody is reading what I write, and finding something worthwhile in it, that works for me.
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Deborah Grant-Dudley 