Defining Your Audience. Who the Heck Are They?
As writers, we ultimately write for others. We hope (theoretically anyway) that people will pick up our books and read them. We really hope that some of them will like them, teach them, and write about them. Our readers are our audience.
However, audience is something that many academic writers don’t think much about when we are crafting our books, especially when we are writing our first academic books. This was a mistake that I made with my own book. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about my audience; it’s that I didn’t deliberately think about my audience. So in this post, I’m going to share some tips that will help you to reflect on who exactly your book is for and how to begin thinking about how that might shape your writing of it. Note I’m talking about books here, but these ideas work for articles and other forms of scholarly writing as well!
First, let’s talk about why scholarly writers sometimes neglect the question of audience. One big reason is that in grad school most of us don’t have to define who we are writing for. Our audience is clear. Generally, we’re either writing papers for one professor or we’re writing a dissertation for a small committee. In the case of the latter, we often (if we’re lucky) really know those people. When I was writing my dissertation, I distinctly remember thinking, “I better deal with [some subject] here because committee member A will ask about that.” Or, “I’ve had so many discussions about [some subject] with committee member B and so I know she really loves [some scholar’s] work. I better cite her.” Knowing your audience members’ interests and what they want to read is a real luxury that can make the writing process easier.
So it’s not actually true that graduate school doesn’t train us to think about audience. It’s just that it trains us to think about an audience that is very, very small. The challenge in transitioning to thinking about the audience for your book is that, ultimately, you hope your book’s audience is larger than four thoughtful people! So what do you do to make this transition?
My first piece of advice is to evaluate your goals for the book. Where are you in your career? What do you need or want this book to do for you? If you are in a tenure-track position, you may feel pressure to publish a particular kind of book with a particular kind of press to achieve tenure. If you are in a more secure position or writing from outside of a faculty position, you may be aiming to publish a book that will reach readers outside of academia itself. Thinking through why you are writing this book and what you need it to do will help you evaluate who you are writing for.
Second, be sure to think about other people’s expectations for this book. Such interested parties could include your department chair or tenure committee. Again, how much these other interests matter depends on your position in academia. Some institutions have particular ideas about the kind of press you should publish with and/or the kind of audience your book should be appealing to (i.e. scholars, not the general public). So work to suss this information out. Have conversations with multiple people whom you trust at your institution, including your chair, about what the expectations are for achieving tenure (or promotion or retaining your position). While this kind of feedback doesn’t have to completely dictate what you do with your book, it’s really important information to have.
Third, challenge your goals. Many academics, especially those who are writing first books, often define their audiences quite narrowly, choosing to write primarily for academics whose research interests are closely related to their own. There can be real advantages to this method, one of them being that these scholars likely aren’t so different from writers’ dissertation committees, meaning that they can produce work that is fairly similar to what they have already done. Such books may thus be easier and faster to write. There are some big disadvantages to this method, however, including that university presses do need to sell books and their editors may avoid taking on manuscripts that have narrow audiences. Also, I don’t know about you, but my dissertation wasn’t the most gripping reading!
So think about how you might expand your audience. Are there scholars in adjacent disciplines who might be interested in your work? If so, what would you need to do to draw them in? Doing so could mean expanding your book’s emphasis on a particular topic to broaden the appeal. Can you imagine writing a book that undergraduates would want to read? Think about what kinds of classes your book might be taught in. Be specific! What are some introductory-level undergraduate classes where it would be of interest? What about upper-level classes? Then think through the kinds of revisions you might need to make to make your book more teachable. Perhaps you need to more thoroughly explain key concepts and offer examples to illustrate their meaning. Perhaps you need to insert more gripping examples from your data and portray them in a way that helps them come to life for readers. Finally, what about the broader public? Again, think specifically. Are there members of particular organizations or professions who might be interested in your book? For example, in writing my book on Mauritanian women and how they were negotiating meaningful lives in the aftermath of slavery, I could make an argument that development workers who focus on Africa or gender issues as well as members of World Affairs Councils might be interested in this topic. Similarly, are there issues that your book deals with that might resonate with broader topics that are catching the public’s attention (subjects like race, climate change, or reproductive rights, but also topics like the impact of social media on youth or China’s evolving role in the global economy)? Note that if you have trouble figuring out who you want your audience to be, a developmental editor might be able to help.
I ask you to consider a lot of possible audiences above, but remember my suggestion to be specific. Publishers frankly won’t believe you if you suggest you are writing for everyone (or the general public broadly). Rather, clearly define who you are writing for and be able to make a good case that your book will be able to reach these people. Then figure out how to do that. A book that you hope will be teachable and able to be read outside of academia can’t sound like a dissertation. It needs to be readable, it mustn’t have jargon in every sentence, it must find ways to engage the reader. These can include employing vivid language, engaging examples, and moving stories to help catch and hold the reader’s attention. It can also involve developing a compelling argument and structuring the book in a way that makes readers want to know how things turn out. A really wonderful book that can help you begin to think through how to reach particular audiences is Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing. (Watch for a coming blog post on some of the highlights of her book).
Finally, remember that decisions you make about audience can come with tradeoffs. A book that is highly readable may not be seen as rigorous scholarship by some scholars (whether that is fair or not). This is why I urged you to start with your goals for the book as well as other people’s goals for your book. It may be that you are in a position where your book has to be published with a particular kind of press that requires a particular kind of prose. So if this is the case, make sure your audience is in line with that. But also don’t assume there is no wiggle room. Can you write a serious scholarly book that is still pleasurable to read? Yes, you most definitely can. But you won’t have as much leeway with your writing as you might without those constraints.
Once you have identified your audience, I recommend sticking post-it notes up near your desk that remind you of who these people are (scholars of slavery studies and gender in West Africa; undergraduates in upper-level classes on gender, economics, and development; NGO workers with a focus on Africa etc.). As you write, keep them in mind. Try to ask some potential audience members (especially those outside of your discipline) to read parts of the manuscript; their feedback will help you access if you are, indeed, reaching them. Your audience may change as you get feedback from your press and other readers; be sure to revise your manuscript accordingly if it does. Most of all, remember that readers very much appreciate writers who think about them and that writers who thoughtfully envision their audiences have an easier time producing the books they want to write.
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