Who Exactly Is Your Book For? ‘Everyone’ Is Usually the Wrong Answer

An author describes her new book as “for everyone”. The editor asks whether the chapter on managing a university allowance is for a student handling money away from home for the first time, or for a parent who wants to understand that student's decisions. The author says both. Then the editor asks what the student would do differently after reading the chapter. That answer is less certain.

“Everyone” often hides a decision the manuscript has not yet made. It sounds generous: why shut anybody out? But a book cannot explain every term, tell every story, solve every problem and speak in every register at once. When an author knows whom a page must help first, the writing becomes more useful. Other people can still read it.

The reader changes the chapter before the cover exists

Return to the allowance chapter. A first-year student in Lusaka might need to think through transport, meals, data and what to do when a planned expense arrives early. The parent might want to know how to talk about money without turning every call home into an interrogation. Both are worthwhile subjects. A chapter that moves between them without warning may leave each reader with half a conversation.

The author could make the student the primary reader and put a short note for families in a separate section. Or she might write for parents, using students' accounts with permission. Each chapter needs to know whose question it is answering.

Try writing one sentence without the word “everyone”: “This book is for a first-year student who needs to decide how to use a limited allowance over a month.” That sentence does not write the book for you. It does give you a useful test when a paragraph wanders into a lecture about national economic policy or a list of motivational sayings. Would this reader know what to do with it?

The reader decision can affect language, length, examples, chapter order and the amount of background you supply. It also affects the title and the promise on the back cover. Our guide to choosing a book title is easier to use once you know whom a potential title needs to speak to.

Describe a situation, not a stereotype

“Women aged 25 to 45” is a group on paper, but it tells a writer little about a chapter. A 29-year-old teacher choosing her first school posting and a 42-year-old business owner trying to keep stock records may both be women. They are unlikely to pick up the same practical book for the same reason.

Begin with a situation: “a new owner of a small shop who knows her daily sales but cannot tell which products actually earn money after costs”. That description suggests questions the book must answer. What does the owner record? What can be done with a notebook if software is too expensive or inconvenient? Which example should come first? What would be too advanced for this stage?

A book can have several relevant readers. A pastor preparing study material might picture the person leading a small group first, then consider the group members who may read it independently. An organisation publishing a commemorative history may want former staff to recognise their work and younger employees to understand the institution's choices. Naming the first reader does not erase the others. It keeps the writing from floating above them all.

Avoid making a “reader profile” so detailed that it becomes an invented person with an invented income, taste and life story. You need the reading problem more than a fictional biography. Write down what the reader already knows, what they want to understand, and what they may reasonably be able to do after reading. Test those assumptions with actual people where possible.

Fiction has readers too, but they are not a marketing formula

A novelist may resist the question because a story should be free to surprise people. Fair enough. The answer need not be “women between 18 and 34 who like inspirational fiction”. A useful answer might be: readers willing to stay with a tense family story in which no one receives a tidy explanation of the past. That tells the writer something about pacing and expectation, without instructing the characters to become likable or the ending to become cheerful.

Imagine a novel set partly in Chipata and partly in Lusaka. Its central conflict involves two siblings who disagree about what their father promised. If the author writes for people who enjoy family stories built around unreliable memory, she can let the evidence emerge slowly. If she promises a fast mystery, readers will expect a different rhythm and perhaps a clearer answer. Neither approach is automatically better. A mismatch between the story and the promise can leave a reader disappointed even when the prose is good.

A poet has a related choice. Is a collection an intimate record that asks readers to spend time with grief, or a set of poems meant to be read aloud at community events? The order and presentation of the poems will affect the experience. Our piece on shaping a poetry collection goes further into how separate poems become a coherent book.

The test for fiction is not “Will every intended reader enjoy every page?” It is “What kind of attention is this book asking for, and does the writing honour that promise?” That helps an author decide what to cut or develop without reducing art to a customer survey.

In children's books, the buyer may not be the reader

A parent may pay for a book that a child is supposed to ask for again tomorrow. A teacher may choose it for a class. A child may see its cover and want it immediately. These people meet the book in different ways.

Suppose an author writes a picture book about a child who misplaces a school sweater. Adults may admire a closing page that explains responsibility in several paragraphs. The child may be waiting to find out whether the sweater turns up before the next morning. If the story pauses for the lesson just as the search becomes interesting, the young reader has been forgotten.

Choose a child at a particular stage of reading and test the story aloud with children around that stage, where appropriate. Notice where attention lifts and where questions arise. Then ask the adults who select books whether the story and format suit how they will use it. A teacher may need a copy that survives repeated handling; a parent may care about the length of a bedtime reading. Those are production and use decisions, not reasons to turn the child's story into a lecture. Writing a children's book calls for different judgments from writing an adult book.

The same reader-buyer split appears elsewhere. A school may order a student workbook, but students must be able to use it. A church may buy copies for a group, but the pages still have to hold the members' attention. Do not mistake the person who approves the invoice for the only person the book needs to serve.

Ask people what they tried to do with the pages

It is tempting to show friends a draft and ask, “Would you read this?” Many will say yes to be kind. A more useful test gives a reader a short chapter and asks what they expected, where they hesitated and what they would do next.

For the shopkeeping guide, show a chapter to two or three people who have dealt with stock in the sort of setting the book addresses, if you can. Ask them to explain the method back in their own words. Where did they stop? Which example looked familiar, and which assumed resources they do not have? Do not claim those few responses represent every shop owner in Zambia. Use them to find problems in a draft and improve your understanding of the audience.

For a memoir, ask a reader outside the family what they understood about a relationship without the private background you already know. If they cannot follow a conflict, the book may need a scene or a clearer sequence. If they are curious but not confused, you may not need another three pages of explanation. For a novel, ask what the reader believed each character wanted, rather than whether the characters seemed “relatable”.

When someone who is not the primary reader enjoys the chapter, that is welcome. It does not mean you should abandon the reader who first gave the chapter its shape. A useful book can travel beyond its intended circle precisely because it has a clear centre.

The wrong audience can make an honest book look weak

An author finishes a detailed guide to classroom assessment and posts it with a general message: “This book will change your life.” People congratulate her; few can tell what the book contains. A teacher looking for assessment examples may never realise the book is meant for them. The problem here is the description, not necessarily the manuscript.

Now reverse the situation. A cover promises a practical manual for new teachers, but the pages mostly tell the author's career story. That story may be valuable. The promise sends readers to the wrong shelf. The author can either strengthen the practical material or describe the book honestly as a memoir about teaching. Audience work helps align the book itself with what the title, cover, excerpt and later publicity say.

This matters when planning a first print run, too. “Everyone needs this book” is not evidence that a large number of people will buy it. An author may have a clear primary readership but no way yet to reach them. Our article on finding a first 100 readers deals with those sales routes after the book's purpose is clear. The present decision happens earlier: write the book someone can recognise as useful or compelling before working out how to put it in their hands.

If an institution might buy copies, ask who chooses, who pays, who uses and who can decline. Those may be four different people. Selling books to organisations requires understanding that chain, but no purchasing contact can rescue a book that fails the person asked to read it.

Make one reader decision on a real chapter

Take a chapter you have already written. At the top, write: “This chapter is for a reader who is trying to…” and finish the sentence with a concrete task, question or experience. Then mark each paragraph that serves that reader. Put a question mark beside the paragraphs written to impress an unspecified crowd or answer a different book's question.

Do not automatically delete the marked material. A short explanation may give necessary context. A secondary audience may deserve its own section. A digression may be the most alive part of a literary work and reveal that your first description of the reader was too narrow. Let the manuscript argue back. Revise the sentence at the top if the stronger book is pointing elsewhere.

When you are ready, say the book's purpose to a real person who resembles its likely reader: “I am writing for new teachers who need examples of assessing a class without spending hours marking every exercise.” Ask whether that sounds like a problem they recognise and what they would need the book to show. Listen for the question you had not thought of. The answer may change a chapter, not merely an advert.

A book for someone in particular is not a book against everyone else. It is a book with enough direction to make choices on the page. Readers can decide for themselves whether they want to come along.

Who was the first person you imagined reading your book, and did your manuscript change when you thought about what that person actually needed?