Who is your target audience?

The most important question to ask before you submit your book (and some thoughts on how to answer it)

I’ve written before about how selling a book to a publisher will require you and your agent to make a compelling case that a large yet defined audience will be willing to pay $27 or so for THIS book BY YOU.

If you’re writing nonfiction, you will flat-out not be able to get a commercial book deal without making this case well. If you’re writing fiction, you just….probably won’t? And even in your case only the “by you” part above is remotely optional. You will still need to show your publisher that some large, specific audience will buy your book.

If you don’t know who your audience is already, how do you figure it out? READ ON.