If You Build Your Audience Too Soon

What can happen if you build your audience too soon?

Nobody knows. It’s never happened in the history of writing.

Worst case scenario is you build your audience too soon:

You reach out to people, serve them with your words, encourage them, engage with them. But despite all your efforts, your book is never published. So all you get out of it is what? Leaving a positive lasting impression with people who will still turn to you for bits of wisdom, wit, or wonder.

Best case scenario:

Your book project eventually draws the interest of an editor at a publishing house. The editor is intrigued that you have been working on your built-in audience for years. The marketing team dances in the corridors of the publishing house. And your readers are ready to celebrate when you share the news of a book contract.

The core of the problem:

One of the greatest frustrations for agents and editors is writers who have focused all of their attention–thinking they should–on creating a great book. The writers think, “There’s time for platform-building later.” But the problem with that assumption is it may force an agent to turn down a compelling project because there’s no ready audience for it, no potential readers with whom the writer is already engaged and waiting for the book to release, no proven crowd of people who are already listening to what the writer has to say.

It can inadvertently create a delay of years while the platform catches up to the value of the writing. Or the lack of hungry readers already sitting at the table, waiting for the meal you’ve prepared for them means no one is served.

It’s impossible to build your audience too soon:

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, if you intend to send your work out into the world, you will depend on readers wanting to read what you’ve written. That seems obvious. But what is sometimes less obvious to writers is that great writing alone rarely lands a contract anymore. And that editors and agents realize that if the author is not already conversing with people about topics they write about, not already hanging out where their potential readers are and caring about what moves their future readers, the pool of book buyers who will be interested in the new release shrinks.

A book idea about healthy eating benefits from engaging with others who have questions or comments about healthy eating. If you’re providing them with valuable information or inspiring motivation, they are far more likely to purchase your book when it releases.

If you’ve only written the first sentence of your work in progress, your audience-building should already be in progress too. It’s never too soon.

Or is it?

If you’re building your audience without knowing anything about them–who they are, what they read, their core values and their felt needs–you may increase your number of followers but they’re not the people for whom you’re writing. Who are they? How can you connect with them even before your book is more than a sticky note or folder of random thoughts?

It’s not about the numbers.

It’s about the souls. The readers. The lives you can reach with the stories or nonfiction you’re invested in creating. Learn who they are and then start reaching them with hope or insights, joy or connection, wisdom or a poignant thought.

Yesterday isn’t too soon.

 

And now, a moment to reflect on the wonder of this week following Easter. Everything changed on the morning that dawned with a resurrected Jesus. The celebrations and leftovers may soon be finished. But the reverberation of its impact on humanity should never leave us.

Years ago, I was moved by a singular thought. I imagined Jesus telling His story, the story of His last breaths as He gave His life for us. “Some people say that as they near the moment of their death, they see a bright light, or hear angels, or music. I heard the sound of fabric tearing–the curtain that separated my people from the Holy God.”

May this week remain one of deep pondering and even deeper gratitude as you return to the routines of work, writing, and never-ending worship.

May the risen Christ fill your heart to overflowing and your words with resurrection power!