The Reader Profile: How to Identify Your Audience

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Well-crafted stories can be magical, but the writers behind them aren’t magicians who can simply wave to make a fully-realized book appear in front of them. In fact, it takes a lot of time and effort to create a single story that people will enjoy.

And more often than not, writers face many failed attempts before arriving at a finished product they’re happy with. Sometimes it’s because of terrible pacing, stiff dialogue, or unimaginative settings. But sometimes, the problem is that they’re writing for the wrong audience.

Fortunately, there are strategies you can use to create better stories even before you begin writing them. One of these is the reader profile. It’s a short, written persona meant to describe the type of reader you’re aiming for, or who already reads your works.

Before You Write A Single Word

It seems strange to focus on the reader first rather than the story you’re trying to write, but most stories are written with the end goal of satisfying an audience. If you intend to have your work be read by others, then you’ll also need to think about how they’ll react.

Many elements of a story give potential readers preconceived notions of what the experience would be like. For example, you can think of genres as basic formulas from which stories are grouped. By labeling your work as one particular genre, you’re giving people a hint of what to expect.

If you’re unsure about who your readers are, you can easily stray into a completely different genre. Understandably, this can confuse readers, and they may stop reading altogether.

You can prevent this by creating a reader profile to form a general picture of your audience and why they would want to read your work. Knowing your readers also helps you negate writer’s block as you know what their possible likes and dislikes are.

In short, it’s a nifty tool to properly identify your target readers, learn how to market to them, and hook them into your work.

How To Create A Reader Profile

Here are a few guiding questions on how you can build a proper reader profile:

  • What is their age, gender, and location?
  • What is their social, educational, and professional background?
  • What are their hobbies and interests?
  • What challenges do they face? What are their needs and wants?
  • Why do they like this genre? What’s in it for them?
  • Where do they buy their books? What format do they prefer? How often do they buy?
  • What do they look like? What’s their name?
  • Why would they pick up your novel?

Start off with general information, such as their age and gender. As you add information, aim for progressively more specific details, such as their educational background. This will form the foundation of your reader profile.

From here, you can make reasonable assumptions about their daily routines, thought processes, and worldly experiences. Start thinking about their hobbies and interests. What activities do they do that might contribute to their curiosity about your book?

It’s like you’re making a character sheet, but for your readers. The goal is to get into your reader’s minds and learn what makes them tick. What concerns them right now? What are their needs and wants in the genre you picked? Why do they like this genre in the first place?

Discover where they are likely to buy their books and in what format they experience them. Sci-fi enthusiasts might come from technical backgrounds, and so may prefer electronic formats. This is important as different mediums can affect the writing and editing process.

Give your reader a name. This will help to focus on a clearer picture them in your mind’s eye. Writing for “Jenny” is easier than writing for “a mom who loves reading romance.”

Finally, what is it about your book that your readers will enjoy? While you can label it with a certain genre, if it’s something they’ve already seen a hundred times, your audience is likely to put it down.

Example of a Reader Profile

Let’s say you’re writing a romance novel. It’s about a middle-aged, workaholic woman who has finally realized she needs someone in her life but fears she may be too late. But a chance connection with a free-spirited librarian has her clinging to hope.

Following the questions above, here’s what I came up with:

Jenny is a 30-year-old mom of two children under the age of eight. She also works as a social media manager for a local business. As a result, she’s online—a lot. Between being a mom and a part-time worker, she barely has time for herself. But her husband’s new work schedule permits him to work from home and have more time for the kids. Now Jenny frequently finds herself with more free time. She’s always been a bit of a reader, so while purchasing some drawing books for her kids, she also bought a few romance books she’d like to read. Most of them were books she saw in BookToks. She chose romance for two reasons: First, she likes how she’s able to relate to the protagonist’s problems. Second, reading them reminds her of the love stories she watched when she was younger.

This is only a basic version of the reader profile. I based this on research from the Romance Writers of America. You can definitely create something more detailed than this. If you want, you can add a picture that you feel represents the type of reader you’re writing for.

Avoid Stereotypes

It’s easy to fall into the trap of building reader profiles that are based on stereotypes. But while most stereotypes do have some truth to them, keep in mind that readership changes according to movements in literature, society, and other factors.

For example, science fiction and fantasy are usually seen as dominated by male readers who are often portrayed as zit-ridden social outcasts (their own words). But the truth is, there’s always been a strong female presence in these genres. Not to mention that the perspective about geeks and nerds has had a positive change.

If you followed through with writing a story that’s targeted to only men, you’ll be losing a huge percentage of these genres’ audiences. See how basing your reader profile on stereotypes can lead you astray?

Try to find information that can support the profile you’re building. While you can easily get lost in your audience’s personal habits and oddities, you can always have empirical data to go back to.

Importance in Marketing

Knowing your readers is a great step toward creating a strong author brand. It shows that you’ve done your market research and know what it takes to reach your audience.

Remember that you need to build your platform before your book is even complete. Accumulating support from the right readers gives you a higher chance of success when you’re finally ready to publish your work.

For example, social media is currently the best place to establish your presence. These platforms utilize hashtags to categorize similar topics, which makes it easier for people to find the things they’re interested in. If you’re using hashtags for the wrong audience, the right ones will find it hard to discover you.

Why You Need a Reader Profile

The best thing about reader profiles is that they’re dynamic. They work for any kind of story, whether they’re blog articles, novels, or even social media posts. The details may vary, but the focus is always the same: your reader.

As you write, always check that the needs and wants of your target audience are satisfied. Stray too far and you’ll be writing an entirely different story—one that your readers probably won’t like.

Of course, there’s a conversation to be had about what you want to write versus what people want to read. Sometimes they match, but most often they don’t. It’s an ongoing dilemma that writers need to confront. But if you’re sure about the latter, then having a reader profile is a good way to stay pointed in the right direction.

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