Do You Know Your Memoir Reader? (Hint: It’s Not Just “People Like Me”)

I don’t know much about birds, personally, other than their genetic ties to dinosaurs which automatically make them more interesting to me. But I could hardly identify the various species in the wild, or, as they sit in my window feeder, entertaining my nearly nine-year-old tuxedo cat. Watching the birds (and sometimes attempting to catch them from the other side of the glass) is one of Leia’s favorite activities. It keeps her stimulated in her otherwise lazy, easy life.

You may be tempted to take a similar approach when seeking out readers of your book. Everyone is welcome. You don’t want anyone to feel like your book is not for them. Universal feed for everyone (yes, I know, I’m comparing readers to birds, but please bear with me). It’s understandable why you would feel the need to appeal to everyone, but this is a mistake.

“If you’re not marketing to someone, you’re not marketing to anyone,” is a phrase commonly thrown around in the publishing and online marketing communities. But what does it mean? It means that, like it or not, your book is a product, and in order to market it, it must be treated like a business. Just as you wouldn’t market say, a special hairspray to “everyone” but rather, individuals with particular hair types that would benefit from that kind of hairspray, you would want to market your book to the exact type of people who would especially benefit from your book. Others might still buy the hairspray, perhaps performers, people who work with wigs, etc. But people with special types of hair will especially buy it because it is a product tailored specifically to meet their particular need; those folks need to find the product first and foremost for it to be successful. That’s what your book should do for your reader.

But I’m writing a memoir, you might be thinking. My story isn’t a product, or a service. My story is a shared experience. Yes, and a product your reader will purchase off the shelf in a bookstore or an online retailer. Even if you think your story isn’t extraordinary or “providing a service,” your reader is still seeking your book to fill a need, ease a frustration, or feed a particular curiosity. Before you can imagine the thousands of readers turning your book into a bestseller, you first need to imagine that person; the one in the bookstore, seeking out your book to fill that ache in their heart.

How old are they? Are they a they, a she, a he, etc.? What do they do for work? What kind of neighborhood do they live in? What are their hobbies? Where do they spend their free time? Where, in the course of their average day, would they learn about a book such as yours? A podcast? A television interview? An article online?

All of this data will be critical to understanding how to meet your reader where they are and how to market your book to them. But your most important question to master, of course, is: what problem is your reader trying to solve?

We’ve established that this is an awkward question. What kinds of problems are memoir readers trying to solve? This feels like a strange reason to pick up a memoir, certainly. So, think about the last time you picked up a memoir, and why you decided to do so. Likely, it was written by a famous person, perhaps a celebrity, or just a writer you trust. But let us think about the unknown writer. When was the last time you read a memoir by someone you did not recognize? What innate need was the book filling for you? Were you looking for someone who had been through a traumatic experience similar or parallel to your own? Were you looking to educate yourself on a life entirely different than yours, in order to better understand your privilege? Were you looking to better understand history tied to your own cultural identity?

Maybe you’re realizing that you don’t pick up memoirs from writers you don’t recognize, or that it’s been a very long time since you have done so. This is the main issue for agents when considering whether or not to sign with new memoir writers. Memoirs are hard to sell. But the selling starts with you, the writer. The more you know your reader and can articulate this to an agent, the higher likelihood you have of catching their interest.

Since initially drafting this post, and a few months into my bird-feeding foray with Leia, we had, up until recently, only seen your standard starlings. But just last week, we had a small pack of much bigger customers…grackles, I think? So, despite our appeal to the generic bird, we do get an exception or two.

In the coming posts in this series, I’ll talk more about the various elements of marketing your book to your reader. In the meantime, grab my FREE workbook on Marketing Your Memoir now to kick start your marketing plan today.

Featured photo by Cottonbro studio.