REALITY
CHECK
Your Target Reader Inventory
Use these questions to help you develop a clearer and more complete picture of who will be reading your book and how best to communicate with them.
1. Who is your real reader?
Can you visualize a specific person reaching up to pluck your book off a shelf in a bookstore or sitting down to read it? What does this person look like (age, socioeconomic status, buyer of what previous similar books, education, experience, problems to be solved, and so on.)?
Hint: Even though you may believe your book has broad appeal, you are better off when you sit down to write if you think of communicating to a specific kind of person. Visualize that person sitting there, across from you as you write. What does he or she need from you as a writer so that the content comes across in the most effective way?
Example: Many of the people who bought Ken Blanchard’s classic, The One-Minute Manager, were harried, relatively inexperienced managers who weren't getting enough training to help them feel confident in handling the many conflicts and challenges of supervising employees. If you're writing a book for new managers, you would do well to visualize that person and what he or she needs from you — quick advice, fresh perspectives, clear and short paragraphs, practical tips, little theory, lots of support, great examples, humor.
2. Are you educating your reader?
If you are writing for a general audience, can you write as though you didn't already know the content you want to communicate?
Hint: Most writers, especially those with a deep knowledge of their content (such as academics, physicians, or technical/scientific experts), tend to write as though they assume that their readers are already well versed in the subject. Writers who succeed best at writing for a general audience usually have developed the knack of putting themselves in their readers' shoes — they can imagine what it is like not to have accumulated the information and insights that they want to convey. They can lift themselves out of their own perspective enough to provide enough background and context so that readers can understand them from the beginning and follow them through the discussions.
Example: Timothy Ferris, prize-winning author of The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe Report, writes about complex cosmological questions, such as what does it mean to say that the universe is expanding? Was there really a “big bang”? How do we comprehend the idea of an unbounded universe? He assumes that he is speaking to a generally educated reader more than to physicists and other scientists, and the result is clear, lucid prose that not only conveys the ideas well but makes them accessible to a much broader audience.
3. Is your material well-organized?
Have you made sure you've organized your content so that readers can follow your presentation of it? Do you have an overall strategy for presenting your ideas in a logical, coherent manner (from table of contents to chapter outlines)? Have you made it possible for your audience to slip easily into the book and just read, without being bothered by having to stop to figure out what you're trying to say?
Hint: This goes back to the whole idea of putting yourself in your readers' shoes. They not only don't know what you know, they look to you to shape the content so that they can understand it and, if it's a practical book, apply it to their own lives. Of course, if you're writing a treatise for other experts, this advice does not apply. But if you're writing for a general audience because you want to inform, inspire, entertain, or educate, you need to pay careful attention to how you organize ideas and make sure you present them in a logical, coherent manner.
4. Have you written an enjoyable book?
Have you considered ways to make your content come alive for readers? Have you made it easy for them to find their way through the material?
Hint: Readers are just like you — they like stories and anecdotes, shorter rather than longer sentences, lively headings that point the way, and so on. When you sit down to write and you visualize that phantom reader sitting across from you, think about how you would speak to him or her. That doesn't mean your prose necessarily has to be conversational, but it does mean that you need a strategy for communicating content that makes reading an enjoyable experience.
Example: Bill Bryson's Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, could have been a dry treatise, but it's quite the opposite. The word “informal” signals a different approach — and it is. Bryson tells the story of English through story, anecdote, example, and specific details that delight and amuse — and educate. Many chapters begin with a story about an important figure such as a president or an event that sets up the historical context, but the chapter then goes on to look at all kinds of other topics. Bryson always takes care to keep things lively, sprinkling in quotes from historical documents and plentiful colorful specific details. His chapter "What's Cooking? Eating in America" is one of the most amusing and informative treatments of past and present American eating habits that you can read anywhere.
5. Have you asked yourself these basic questions?
- What do I want readers to take away from my book?
- How would I like their lives to be different from reading my book?
- What will they do with the content I've presented (if this is a practical
book)?
- What need am I responding to? (Am I helping to solve a problem, shedding light on a difficult or particularly salient life situation, evoking a time and place, informing about a new and noteworthy topic, or what?)
- Why should they choose my book — and pay money for it — when there are
so many others available? What reasons have I given them to pluck my book
off the shelf?
- Am I being realistic? Have I avoided the common first-author syndrome of
kidding myself?
- What new light am I shedding on this topic?
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