The Best Way to Build an Audience (For Fiction Writers) Yeah. You need a blog.
If you’re a fiction writer, you might not want to hear this.
And I don’t blame you. It can be hard to hear. Because what we want is for our fiction to stand on it’s own. What we want is to believe that if we’re good enough, we don’t have to do any of that icky marketing stuff.
But it’s not true. Not for you. Not for me. Not for Stephen King or J.K. Rowling or anyone.
Finding your audience is your responsibility.
Trust me when I tell you that your publisher won’t do that for you. They’ll support you as best they can, but it is your job to let readers know about your book.
And since you’re you’re good at the whole stringing words together thing, one of your best available tools is blogging.
Writing a blog (on your own website, on a free WordPress blog, right here on Medium, wherever) is a way for you to build a bridge between yourself and your readers.
Let’s assume I’ve convinced you that if you’re a fiction writer, you need to blog.
Your instinct might be to blog about your awesome fiction work. Behind the scenes pieces, cover reveals, posts begging readers to buy your book (for the love of God), posts that share your process.
I’m going to break this to you as cleanly and quickly as possible.
No one cares.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this. How many blogs do you follow that are written by relatively unknown authors (or even bestsellers) that are all about their process?
None? Hey. Me, too.
But you’ve got all kinds of interesting things to say. Or teach. Or share. Write mostly about those things and then, when you have a book to market, you’ll have an audience happy to listen.
Here are a couple of posts I’ve written on this subject:
The Basics
Think about these four things:
- What are you good at?
- What do you want to be good at?
- What interests you?
- What is interesting about you?
Here are my answers.
I’m good at writing, books, reading, gardening, taking care of people, understanding body politics, teaching.
I want to be good at playing the guitar, camping, Iron Man triathlons.
I’m interested in politics, family dynamics, stories in all their forms (books, TV, movies), systems, productivity.
What’s interesting about me is that I’m a published author, I have eight siblings, my dad was in prison when I was a kid, I’m a full-time writer.
Now do that for yourself.
You’ll have a goldmine of blogging ideas. Pick one and start writing. You can either teach something or learn something and share what you’re learning.
And with every post, seek to connect with readers. Try to remember that you’re writing for them, not yourself. Write to teach, to share, to give your readers something.
If you only write about your own fiction writing, you’re writing for you. And that might feel good, but it’s unlikely to gain much traction.
Put your readers first. That way, when you have a book to sell, you’ll have people willing to take a look.
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