If you try to please everyone, then you’ll end up pleasing no one.

It’s helpful advice in life, sure, but it’s especially true when writing a book. In fact, this is why we recommend so much up-front planning before you start the actual writing process. And why defining your audience remains one of the pillars of any book journey.

In fact, here’s my advice: get niche.

Books without specific audiences are criminally boring, run of the mill affairs that are quickly forgotten. They sit on the fence until they get splinters. They become bloated and meandering, trying to satisfy everyone.

But a book that knows who it’s talking to, and knows where it stands, gets noticed. Let’s see why.

The challenge of trying to please everyone

Some might challenge the idea of narrowing down a market so much, saying that it’s cutting their audience down.

A year ago, we started a book project with a client. They had a long history of success and learnings from their industry, and they wanted their first book to provide value for prospective readers no matter where they were on their own journey. After a decade in their industry, they felt – and quite rightly too – that they had a lot of wisdom to impart, and that their book should be read by as wide an audience as possible. So far, so good.

Their target audience was everyone. Industry newcomers and established experts. Young up-and-comers and older business people who still had much to learn. Everyone in between. The idea, at that stage, was that our client had fresh insights that anyone could learn from, including some fundamentals that they felt should be re-established in the minds of readers, no matter where they were on their own business journey.

But what we realised was that a book with industry basics would be patronising to those readers who were well established in the industry, and a book with complex insights risked alienating newcomers. A book that tried to cover basics and explore deeply would be colossal, and readers would have to sift through too many pages to find the information most relevant to them, quickly alienating anyone – and likely sending it to the “started but didn’t finish” pile.

This would not do.

Questions to define your audience

Many writers will encounter the challenge of audience along their own journey. Of course, you want as many people as possible to read (and rave about) your book. But you’ll get far better returns – and make your writing life a lot easier – if you know your specific audience and how you intend to engage them.

So, just as you need to have a purpose in writing a book – a Big Impact you want to have, yes, but also personal and business goals – you also need to know your audience and how to best connect with them.

Who are you writing this book for?

Demographics are less helpful for these sorts of things today, so instead imagine a psychographic profile – a group who share a set of beliefs, attitudes, values and likes/dislikes. Remember: your ideal reader might not be your psychographic neighbour, so consider what you’re trying to convince them of too, and what it’ll take to get them thinking differently.

What do your readers already think? What beliefs do you need to shift?

Your readers will already have some knowledge of your subject. Consider what expectations they already have, and whether you want to agree with the status quo, or if you’re going to go against the proverbial grain and prove others wrong.

In addition, a well-written book will both tell your reader something they don’t already know, and hold their attention with a new perspective. Virtually every book on mushrooms will point out that fungi are neither animals nor plants, existing in a part of the kingdom of life that’s poorly understood. You probably don’t have to repeat that if you’re writing about mushrooms – especially to readers who are on their own mycological journey.

Instead, how can you surprise and delight your readers with fresh material? What else can you say about your subject that readers won’t know? What story can you tell that puts a uniquely you spin on this subject? What mushroom expertise still urgently needs to be shared?

What triggers would help them need your book?

Your ideal readers will already be on their own journey – but where on their journey are they? Are they starting out in the subject, or are they needing a deep dive into one particular aspect? With that in mind, what material is going to draw them to your thinking? What feeling, circumstance or thought is going to push them to want your thinking?

What questions do they have as readers?

Sometimes your readers will have a specific itch that needs scratching, like Does Anything Eat Wasps – the title of a paperback by New Scientist Magazine. Or consider Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? You know what’s being promised; the book will answer this and other questions. That’s a relatively easy deal, and a good reason to pick it up off the shelf.

Most books are more subtle than that, answering questions that are deeper within us. The pavlova is a subject of ongoing debate for Kiwis and Aussies alike. So when you see Helen Leach’s The Pavlova Story on the shelf, you expect it to shed some light on our proud pud and who can – or should – lay claim to the dessert.

Your book is your chance to demystify a subject and answer any pressing questions your readers might have – or show why readers’ most obvious questions (like “Who invented the pavlova?”) might not be the right ones to ask at all.

What pain points are you hoping to address and solve?

Michael Pollan’s excellent The Omnivore’s Dilemma points out its challenge in the subtitle: “The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World”. If your reader is food- and/or health-oriented, then that pain point will immediately connect. Once you know what your reader wants to achieve – and what might be preventing them from getting there – then you know your hook and how you’re going to get your readers where they need to be.

If you had just one ideal reader, who would they be?

Imagine for a moment that you’re writing for just one person, and you want them to adore your book. What would you like to say, and how would you say it, to get the best response? With this kind of laser focus in mind, you’ll find that your book takes on a clear niche that’s hard to deny.

Making the promise

When working on the above client’s book, we developed a specific persona that we could talk to and a psychographic profile that became our litmus test. With a focus on readers at a specific part of their journey in that industry, we could refine the author’s insights to where they’d be the most relevant and shelve anything that didn’t fit.

We saved ourselves a lot of time and wrangling.

It also meant that we knew how to address our reader – the assumptions they already had and what (imagined) way they’d respond to the writing. At every point of the writing and editing process, we were able to consider that target audience and whether what we were doing would matter to that reader.

That author is also now working on a new book – one that uses their first book as a starting point and as a reputation leverage tool to build a bigger profile. Now they can focus on speaking to a different reader at a different part of their journey, funnelling the relevant insights and saving them from the generous but flawed idea of trying to do everything.

Your audience is as important to your book as the ideas you want to share. They’re the other reason (other than yourself) that your book exists – so the better you know them, and the more clearly you speak to them, the bigger an impact you’ll have.