Dare to Stand Out From the Crowd
Hundreds of thousands of books are published every year, very few of which most people will know anything about. If your name is not Sarah Palin, J. K. Rowling, or Stephen King, you’ve got a lot of work to do in getting your book to break through the clutter.
Imitation may be the best form of flattery, but let’s be honest. You’re not going to compete with J. K. Rowling by writing the next Harry Potter. Stephen King has a pretty firm hold on the horror market. He’ll sell his next book just because his name is on it. And Sarah Palin is……well, maybe we’ll leave that to the talking heads on TV.
The point is, you must stand out from the crowd and break through all of the noise. And the way that you accomplish this is by focusing like a laser on your target market.
For example at Ecosystem Gardening my target audience is not gardeners is general. Thousands and thousands of gardening books are published every year, and there are thousands of gardening blogs on the web.
The reason that some of these succeed is that they have chosen a niche in the gardening market, and their writing is targeted to an audience specifically interested in that small piece of the larger market: container gardening, herb gardening, organic gardening, native plant gardening, xeriscaping, permaculture, etc.
As you can see, the gardening market is a very large pond, and I am a very small fish. The object is not to give up in dismay in the face of competition, but to define a target market with an interest in my subject, to create a smaller pond.
My target audience cares about creating habitats for wildlife, conserving natural resources, and learning to garden sustainably.
Notice, this is not about me. It’s about reaching this audience, meeting their needs, and providing information that solves their problems.
Who is your target audience? What do they look like? What are their interests?
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