Authorpreneur Forum Authorpreneur Challenges

The journey to become an authorpreneur is not an easy one, it takes time, creativity and staying power. We have most of it laid out for us; we are writers so we know what it is to look at a blank piece of paper or screen and fill it with hopefully beautiful, inspiring, exciting stories, novel, poems or whatever it is we love to write.

In order to get you thinking in the business side of your profession I decided to create this thread. You'll receive challenges that will help you exercise your mind into what is necessary to be able to promote and sell your work. I assure you that if you participate more ideas will come to mind and put into practice will help you become a succesful authorpreneur. I hope all of you join me in this important journey and most of all have fun. :)

Clary Lopez
My Official Site
Free Book Promotion

Challenge #1

One of the most common problems with authors promoting their own work, specially self-published, is that they don't know who their audience is. Knowing your audience is an integral part of the book promotion. Usually you analyze this before you write the book as you prepare your book marketing plan.

So here is your first challenge:

Tell us who is the audience of your book. Be specific.

I believe that the audience for my book is women between the ages of 18-35 who have have a love for romance books, poetry, or neo soul music..all of that's intertwinged within the pages of my book GHETTO TO COFFEE SHOP on sale right now at barnesandnoble.com by the way!

I�m a multi-genre writer, so my audience is broad. I have a large female fan base of romance lovers, but my paranormals seem to appeal to men, more so than the women. My poetry tends to attract a more mature audience and is perhaps a bit too maudlin for today�s hip culture.

Although I understand the importance of creating a platform, I don�t write to target a specific audience, I simply write whatever comes to mind and flows from my fingertips and so far it�s working well for me.

I don't have a book so I don't have an audience and I think I don't need to be in this group.

LOL thank you Clary for make me realize this.


Cade

I write gay erotic/romantic fiction. My target audience is gay men and straight women, ages 18-45 (some older most most fall in their early 20s & 30s).

J.M. Snyder
Self-published author of gay erotic/romantic fiction
Free fiction, excerpts, contests, and purchasing info on my site!

Website:
Blog:
Egroup:

"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." = Qui-Gon Jinn

I write inspirational nonfiction. Simplicity-Richness of Life's audience are women raising a family. The book helps you find ways to get control of your life in today's society while still maintaining a level of sanity to it.

There is no need to live life on someone else's terms, you ultimately hold the key to your life's destiny but only if you know your purpose and protect it.

Interesting. I write Inspirational fiction with a western flair. Most of my fiction so far has been set in the late 1800's, but are not traditional westerns. Although I've hoped to reach out to the male market, most of those buying my books are the ladies. My agent says a publisher wants my new one, a contemporary light mystery with a romance thread ( if you can imagine an old cowboy writing that) assuming I make some revisions to suit them. I'm sure I can. Earlier books were non-fiction aimed at the business market, but I'm not writing that much any more.

You are absolutely correct in this exercise. As an agent, I look at writing credentials and whether or not the person writing the proposal knows their market and has plans to market and promote before I read any of their writing. Good job.

Terry
www.terryburns.net

My autobiography focuses on all the non-glamorous parts of life that people don't usually talk about in public. This makes my audience anyone who's been through these things. It's a pretty wide range of people rather they may be male or female. Anyway who's ever been molested, adopted, treated like s**t by their dad, or had a crazy group of friends with a weird sense of humor will (hopefully) appreciate my book.

The question of who our audiences might be is a good one. When I began writing the first draft for my first novel, Burritos and Gasoline, I thought it might have a fairly limited audience. The story at least superficially appears to revolve around two long lost friends who once played in a band together, 20 years or more prior to the start of the book. So I naturally thought the story would primarily appeal to middle aged men who had dreamed big but settled for a more pedestrian reality in the long run.

Instead, I found the book took on a much larger scope over the course of writing it. Since it ultimately came to deal with life, death, personal redemption and defining what an individuals purpose might be in life, it's potential appeal has grown. Consequently I've been pleased to hear compliments from readers in their 70's as well as readers in their 20's. I'm feeling particular satisfaction at finding readers of both genders with something to say about the story.

So in the end, who I thought the book would appeal to turned out to be a much slimmer slice of the book buying public than I ever dreamed would find the story interesting.

In retrospect, I'm thinking that experience must be more common among writers than I had initially expected. Or at least I hope it is.