Writer thoughts: Knowing your audience

[rainwaterspark]

Today on "I'm definitely failing the bar exam tomorrow and filled with anxiety about taking a 3-day exam" writing thoughts: Knowing your audience as a writer.

On Twitter, I saw an author, whose book I haven't read but have passing familiarity with, say they had no idea whether their book was Young Adult, New Adult, or Adult.

My immediate reaction: "No offense, but you're doing the author thing wrong."

As an author, it's really important to know your target audience. Why? For several reasons:

1. It helps with marketing your book optimally.
2. It helps to create the right expectations for your readers. Readers may be willing to cut more slack for a book marketed as YA (not saying whether that's right or wrong, but I believe that's often true). Readers may be less willing to criticize a book for not being "steamy" enough if it's marketed as YA. Potentially avoidable negative reviews can and do stem from readers not having to right expectations for a book's tone or execution.

(Also, if you query agents for your book, you're definitely required to know whether your book is YA, Adult...or NA, but that's kind of a dead genre to traditional publishing right now, unfortunately.)

Important to note is that classifying a book as YA does NOT mean adults can't read it or won't enjoy it.

I remember being confused that this author's book wasn't being marketed as YA, actually, because the main character was 18 years old, and the style of writing struck me as "YA-like." And, glancing through the Goodreads reviews for the book, I do think some of the mixed reviews might've been higher if the book had been marketed as YA—plus, it could've attracted the attention of YA book bloggers (who are numerous and fairly influential).

So, anyway: Knowing whether your book is YA, NA, or Adult is important.