Guest Post: Attracting Readers - Understanding Your Author Brand

Attracting Readers - Understanding Your Author Brand

Thank you LaToya for this weekly feature. I thought it would be best to introduce what I write, but also share some of the book marketing tips. Today, I’m going to talk about understanding your author brand.

For anyone who says, “My book is for everyone,” my question for them is, "Are you sure?"

If we think about our own reading habits, we know that there are genres or book we will not read. An author can’t write for everyone because of people's diverse reading habits.  A millennial may simply not be interested in what appeals to a baby boomer. Vice-versa.

In order to for word-of-mouth marketing to start for your book, it's really important to know your genre as well as your target audience. Knowing the reader most likely to be interested in your book will define your book marketing goals.

Defining Your Genre

There are readers who read across multiple genres, but generally most readers have a favorite genre they may enjoy reading more. Whether you are a traditionally published author or an independent author, you need to understand how books are categorized.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

Do you write fiction? If you write, fiction what is your genre?  Genre are categories like romance, historicals, suspense, fantasy, etc.

Do you write nonfiction?  This genre can include many categories like a business, biography, memoir, poetry, self-help, and more.

Know Your Target Audience

Being a writer, means being a student so it helps to study what books are already selling well in your genre.

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●       What other authors share the readership that you’re looking for to purchase your books?

●       What can you do different to appeal to those readers and keep your stories unique?

Other questions to consider as you narrow down your target audience are demographics.

●       ️What are the age ranges of readers?

●       Does your book appeal more to women or men?

●       Does your book focus on a ethnic, cultural or religious experience?

Focusing on a specific demographic is not a bad thing. In fact narrowing your focus may help you easily find readers that would benefit from your book.

If defining your audience is new to you, plan to spend some time researching. You can easily start this process by searching on Amazon.com's Bestseller's List.

My Genres

I write Romantic Suspense and Cozy Mysteries under the Christian Fiction genre. That seems like a mouthful, but that’s how I specifically find my readers. In fact I go a step further with my Cozy Mysteries.

My main character in the Eugeena Patterson Mysteries is a baby-boomer, retired, a grandmother and a Type II Diabetic. Those are features are often my selling points and I have found a wide-range of readers who are drawn to the character even before they check out the back book cover summary.

Here are my book series. I hope you can check them out.

Romantic Suspense

Reed Family Novellas

Serena Manchester Series

Victory Gospel Series

Cozy Mystery

Eugeena Patterson Mysteries

About the Author

Tyora Moody is the author of Soul-Searching Suspense novels in the Reed Family Novellas, Eugeena Patterson Mysteries, Serena Manchester Series and the Victory Gospel Series. She is also the author of the nonfiction book, The Literary Entrepreneur’s Toolkit, and the compilation editor for the Stepping Into Victory Compilations under her company, Tymm Publishing LLC.