What is a Target Audience?

How does one develop an author platform?

Topics of Interest

One of the easiest and fastest ways to build an author platform is to choose a “Topic of Interest” that is relevant to your target audience and then create content centered around that topic. For fiction writers, this can be challenging. But not if you put in a little brainstorming effort.

One of my good author friends, Tara Johnson, writes historical romance set during the Civil War. She shares a lot of little-known facts about that era. Her readers are fascinated by the trivia, and her platform is growing. This takes some time to research, create the content, and share it. But Tara has been rewarded by multiple publishing contracts with a major publishing house.

Another author friend, Shannon Vannatter, is our acquisitions/content editor. She writes contemporary romance. Many of her books are cowboy romance novels. She doesn’t blog about cowboys or rodeos or even Texas. Her Topic of Interest is Real-Life Romance.

Shannon began her blog many years ago with a clever idea: grow your platform using other people’s people. Her blog features other writers who share their real-life romance stories. Not only does this topic interest Shannon’s readers, but it also interests the readers of her guests. Readers enjoy learning behind-the-scenes information about their favorite writers. Shannon’s blog provides that, and her platform has grown tremendously since she began her blog.

Your blog is your best marketing tool.

Note that I didn’t say your blog is your best SALES tool. We’ll talk about sales in a later post. Marketing is getting the right message to the right customer at the right time.Your message is delivered via your content, and to be effective, that content will focus around the Topic of Interest that best benefits your target audience.

Marketing is getting the right message to the right customer at the right time. Share on X

Blogs are good at marketing for dozens of reasons, and I’ll write a post about the benefits of blogging shortly. But, the most important thing to remember when creating blog content is this: It’s not about you. It’s not about your books. Your content is and should always be about what your target audience wants.

So, what is a target audience?

Your target audience is that group of people who want to learn more about your Topic of Interest. For Tara, that group consists of readers who enjoy historical romance set during the Civil War. It’s actually a big group.

Some marketers refer to their target audience as their “Tribe.” Most authors refer to their target audience as their “Readers” or “Readership.” The term you choose isn’t important. The content you deliver to them is.

This group will choose to follow you because you provide VALUABLE content that is RELEVANT to their needs. Your Topic of Interest is the foundation upon which you’ll build your platform.

How do authors, especially fiction authors, choose a Topic of Interest?

Think about something you’re knowledgeable about, passionate about, and something that draws a large enough audience to be profitable yet narrow enough to allow you to position yourself as an authority in that topic.

This is easy for nonfiction writers. They write about something they have credentials in, their field of expertise. But novelists also have fields of expertise. Put on your thinking cap. Do you have a recurring theme within your stories? Are your books set in a specific setting? An era? A specific culture? Are you writing while raising young children or homeschooling? Do your characters tend to have similar careers (such as law enforcement, military, healthcare, etc.)? What hobbies are included in your writing? (I once had a protagonist that was a sports photographer, so either sports or photography could have been effective Topics of Interest for my readers.)

Themes, locations, occupations, historical eras, etc., all make great Topics of Interst.

The most popular themes within fiction include:

• Love
• Death
• Good vs. Evil
• Coming of Age
• Power and Corruption
• Survival
• Courage and Heroism
• Prejudice
• Individual against Society
• War

Here are some Topic of Interest examples taken from our Scrivenings Press authors/books:

• Pamela Meyers has a growing audience who enjoy reading about the history of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and the Chicago Fire. Many subtopics can come from that, but that event/location are her main topics of interest.
• Suzanne Bratcher writes mysteries placed in the unique setting of Jerome, Arizona, the country’s largest ghost town. Her audience enjoys learning about ghost towns, Arizona, and mining.
• Like many fantasies, a theme within Erin Howard’s trilogy is good versus evil. She puts a spin on that, however, by forcing a pair of good and evil brothers to work together. Getting along with those we don’t agree with could be a Topic of Interest for creating content. It’s definitely a hot point in society today. Taking a pain point and offering solutions to alleviate that pain is a great marketing tactic.
• Another pain point in our country is racism, which is one of the themes of Amy Blake’s On the Brink series.

Like I said, this will take some thought, but as you can see, even fiction has some serious topics of interest that can be used for creating content around. Once you choose your platform’s Topic of Interest, the next step is Market Research, which will be the subject of my next post.