Reading the minds of the readers
Hello writers,
Are you writing that piece of manuscript with so much interest to evoke the interest of your audience?
The ones that are not interested may discontinue reading it from here. This piece of advice is not for the ones who write only for oneself. Not for the ones who are not passionate enough to tell the world what she/he has in mind. Not for the ones who doesn’t want to be popular and earn hugely.
Well, if you do not belong that category; then you must be mindful of what the readers look for, when they buy a book. Even when they are not planning to buy, they should be tempted to buy.
After all there are millions of books and it will require more than a lifetime to read even a fraction of them. To get your book (out of the trillion others) get into your desired audience’s hands, you have to understand their needs.
So delve deep into the minds of your readers to understand their psychology of buying books.
These are the factors, readers look for when buying a book.
- A beautiful/attractive/bright cover: It attracts the viewer’s attention. So a catchy book cover for children stands out amongst the dull others and pulls the viewer to pick it up.
- The blurb/summary: This gives the readers an idea of what to expect inside. Refrain from giving out too much.
- Award-winning book:
- Recommended by friend/family/blogger
- Highly reviewed book on Amazon or Goodreads
- A review of the book by a noted author
- The word “bestselling” on the cover page
- A renowned author’s name
- A recent release: Readers check the date and place of publication as well. A more recent one sells more.
- Genre: A reader mostly picks up a book based on the genre. So you can do nothing about it unless you change your genre of writing to a more popular one.
- Medium length book: Readers tend to pick a medium sized book more than a very long or very short novel.
- Reasonably priced: The price factor can be taken care of with an e-book.
- Publisher – If a book is published by a renowned book design company. When they publish, the book is worth reading.
- Popularity: Sometimes when a book gets highly popular you tend to read it to find out what is it about or sometimes so as not to feel awkward in social circles.
- Connection factor: Someone may magically feel drawn to a book not of his genre or a well-reviewed one either, but they just feel connected to it intuitively.
- Layout & editing: This also goes a long way in determining the sales of a book. The eyes have to happy before the mind or the soul is because the eyes will lead the mind/brain/soul.
Hence you have to keep these in mind while writing and more so, before you publish a book. Set up author’s website to attract readers and reviewers. Go for book trailers as a book marketing strategy.
Factors to skip a book
A book may be skipped if the above factors are not paid attention to, or if there’s
- Unclear title which indicates confused writer.
- Illogical chapters or structure of the book.
- Summary lacks to create a hook/curiosity.
- Autobiographies unless you are very popular.
Although these could be factors for most of the buys, these may not apply to 100% sale of books. Every writer is unique and so is the reader. So it may be possible that some readers may reject the most popular writers.
Take the help of children’s book illustrators on hire, UK for creating a superb sale-able children’s book.