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Sue Campbell: Hi, everyone! I'm excited to be here. Everyone's so friendly and welcoming in the chat. Thank you.

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Sue Campbell: We have people from everywhere.

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ProWritingAid: Oh, right.

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ProWritingAid: let's get started. It looks like everybody's already knows the drill, and to drop their location in the chat so you can continue to do that.

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ProWritingAid: Oh, a little town outside of Dallas. I love that. I'm from Dallas all right. Hello, everyone. I'm Crystal Creaker from pro writing a thank you for joining us today

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ProWritingAid: before we get started. We just have a few housekeeping items, and then I will pass it over to Sue.

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ProWritingAid: so you'll get replays on the Hub. Page after zoom finishes processing the recording, we have no control over how long that will take. But please trust us that as soon as it's ready we will put it on the page for you. Everyone has access to the replays for one week. So until September 20 eighth. After that, replays are available only for writing 8 Academy members.

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ProWritingAid: You get a special offer for providing aid. And that's 40% off a yearly premium license. You'll get access to all of our premium tools, author comparisons, and all of our integrations. You can improve entire chapters because there's no limit on word counts, and you get access to things like snippets, which are text shortcuts, dictionaries, and custom rules.

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ProWritingAid: You can find out more on the hub in this offer in September 28.

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ProWritingAid: If you want to keep talking about science fiction writing, join our online community using your pro writing aid login. You can access it through this link or on our homepage under learn, just hit community.

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ProWritingAid: Here you can talk with other sci-fi writing fans and keep up to date with most of our writing events.

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ProWritingAid: Reminders for this session include, use the QA. Box for questions for Sue. But if you want to chat, you have comments, or whatever, and you want to engage with other participants. You can use the chat function. Let's keep it friendly and respectful in the chat links to your offers, and from our speakers will be available on the Sci-fi writers. Week Hub, and in our participants guide. You can access the hub from this link right here, and I'll share that again. At the end of this session.

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ProWritingAid: So let's get started today. We're joined by Sue Campbell. Sue has helped hundreds of writers from Newbies to bestsellers transform their inhibitive mindset around marketing and realize their full potential as authors. Her clients have exponentially increased their email lists and book sales, landed articles in prestigious publications, such as the New York Times. Done, guest spots on popular podcasts and more.

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So over to you, Sue.

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Sue Campbell: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. Crystal. I'm gonna start sharing because I have a presentation for you today.

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Sue Campbell: Let me get that pulled up. We are. Gonna talk about the power of knowing your ideal reader. So many things that are confusing about marketing your book are cleared up by knowing the exact person that you're trying to reach. So don't think this is a step that is just like, Oh, anyone from you know, I know I'm trying to reach any man from 35 to 65 years old. That isn't going to help you. We need to get really specific, and that is what is gonna unlock the power of knowing who your ideal reader is.

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Sue Campbell: Crystal already introduced me. So I'm going to keep going past that. I do want you to know that I work with both traditionally published and independently published authors, fiction and nonfiction. And here's what I want you to walk away with today.

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Sue Campbell: You're gonna learn why to create an ideal reader, persona, and how to create an ideal reader persona and how to use it once you have it, and then I like to leave lots of time for questions and responses, and then I'll tell you the next step that you can take.

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Sue Campbell: So what a reader persona is. Let's talk about that. We're gonna talk about why you need one, how to create one and how to use one. But first, I wanna put this into a larger context of book marketing for you. You need to understand where your ideal reader persona fits into the bigger marketing picture right? I hate when I go to Webinars, and they give you one little slice, and I have no idea how that little slice fits into the bigger context. So we're gonna start there.

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Sue Campbell: This is my author platform, quick start framework. This is how I orient folks to the big picture of what they need to do to market their book. So for me and what I have seen again, and working with hundreds, it may even be in the thousands of writers now is. I can give you a list of everything that you need to do to market your book, but if you don't have a mindset that allows you to actually sit down and do it. That checklist is completely useless. So I like to start with mindset and make sure that

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Sue Campbell: my client and the writer really has a clear idea of how they need to think about all of this.

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Sue Campbell: So the first thing I want people to do is identify. What's your goal, and what's your dream? Because a lot of us have sort of been. I don't want to say beaten down. But we've been encouraged to think fairly small, and to think that any big dream we may have is unrealistic.

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Sue Campbell: and it's certainly never going to be within your reach if you won't even admit that it's there. So I like people to really identify their goals, both big and small, and really own their own dreams that they have for their writing career. I can't promise you that it's gonna happen. But I can promise you right. If you set a target for yourself. You're much more likely to land somewhere near the target than you are if you're just sort of being aimless about it. The second thing that we need to do is recognize

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Sue Campbell: what are the harmful stories that we're telling ourselves, that have the potential to block us and sabotage us from the dreams. Just as important as the story that you write and put out into the world is the story that you're waking up and telling yourself every day about what's possible.

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Sue Campbell: and telling yourself an empowering story about building your audience is absolutely essential to getting your book out into the world. So you have to recognize. What am I telling myself about marketing? That's getting in my way

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Sue Campbell: right like? Oh, I you don't hear this from sci-fi writers too often, but I hear from a lot of writers. Oh, I hate technology, or I hate selling myself, or I hate talking about myself, or marketing is really sleazy.

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Sue Campbell: and those harmful stories can get in the way of you wanting to show up and do your marketing because you don't want that.

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Sue Campbell: And then we have to choose a new story to replace the old story that's been getting in our way. Now, we're not going to the opposite of what we said before, so we don't go from. I hate marketing to. I love marketing right? Cause your brain's gonna call Bs on you. Big time. What you're going to do is choose something that you already believe, but is more motivating for you, and gets you closer to being willing to show up and do the work

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Sue Campbell: so you might move from. I hate marketing to. Well, I'm okay with some kinds of marketing, and I'm open to exploring, finding my voice and what I'm aligned with in marketing. But I can build an audience and get this book out there right? You see the difference, big, big difference in the possibilities that are open to you.

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Sue Campbell: When you say I hate marketing, you're not gonna show up and do it. If it feels like marketing. When you say, Hey, I'm open to aligning with what would work for me and what I think my ideal reader wants in marketing. I'm okay with that. So that's adjusting your mindset in a nutshell.

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Sue Campbell: Next we have building your platform. So this is the nuts and bolts of creating the container that can hold your audience, and the first step of that is really to create an ideal reader. Persona, we need to know who we are looking for in the world, and we'll talk lots more about that.

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Sue Campbell: Once you know the person you're trying to reach. Then you can build a website or update the website you already have, you can build an email list that is really your number one marketing asset as an email list. But that's a whole other webinar. And then you want to plan ongoing content that you can use to relate to your ideal reader and draw them in build a relationship with them once they're in your world.

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Sue Campbell: So that's platform building.

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Sue Campbell: That's a prerequisite for actually going out and finding your readers. So you have to be able to do the research to find out. Okay, where is my ideal reader? Out in the world, both physical and digital. And who are the influencers or the people who've already built an audience full of those people? Who are they? You've got to do. The research can't do the research. If you don't know who you're looking for.

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Sue Campbell: then you've got to pitch influencers right? So you're looking for a win win. You wanna be on a podcast where they're talking about science fiction or they're talking about, you know, current technology that's relevant to your book or current themes that are relevant to your book. You wanna make a pitch that's a win win for that influencers. So you can get in front of that audience that's full of potential ideal readers. And then, finally, once you're in front of that audience, you wanna invite readers to come back and join your audience.

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Sue Campbell: So this is the author platform. Quick, start framework in a nutshell. This is what you gotta do. Gotta rinse and repeat all of the mindset stuff you gotta build, know who you're looking for. Build a container so that you can build a relationship with them. And then you have to be the one going out and finding readers. We can't sit and wait for readers to find us.

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Sue Campbell: Okay, so we're gonna focus on creating the ideal reader persona. So this is, step one in the build, your platform section of the framework. So let's go.

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Sue Campbell: What is a reader? Persona? It is basically a detailed character sketch of the ideal reader for your book. So the kind of person who, if they picked your book up from the bookstore, or somebody lent it to them, or however, they got their hands on your book, they would be absolutely sucked into the story. They would be hiding in the bathroom from their families, trying to finish this book undisturbed.

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Sue Campbell: Right? They would be buying it for their friends. They would be recommending it constantly right. The idea here is, if we get the ideal reader. We get them hooked in to buy the book. They're gonna help us market because they're gonna love it so much they're gonna spread the word

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Sue Campbell: right. My goal as a marketer is actually to get your book into enough of the right hands that you can dial down your marketing for that particular book and focus on the next thing or focus on writing.

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Sue Campbell: In order to do that, we have to be really strategic about who we want to find and reach to read our book.

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Sue Campbell: A lot of writers are really tempted to either skip

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Sue Campbell: talking about their ideal reader and figuring this out, or they are just being way too broad in general about who their reader is like. Oh, anybody who loves science Fiction.

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Sue Campbell: not even close to good enough or detailed enough for that to be useful. It's a starting place for sure, but it is definitely not detailed enough.

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Sue Campbell: So what are the consequences? If you just like gloss over this.

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Sue Campbell: You're going to waste your time. All of the marketing that you do is going to be potentially wasted time because you are not going to be directing your energy well enough.

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Sue Campbell: You're gonna waste money right? If you run ads, or if you go to conferences that are not aligned with your ideal reader or you hire, you know, an agency to do something for you related to this, and you don't give them clear instructions on who your ideal reader is, you are gonna waste some money. You're also gonna waste a lot of energy, right? I know many of you, I would assume, are not in this business, because you wanna spend all of your time marketing

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Sue Campbell: right? So the energy and time that you do have you want to spend it well and be very targeted about who you are trying to reach.

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Sue Campbell: Also, when you are creating from a space of being too general, the materials that you create are really watered down, and they don't really grab your ideal reader, or really anyone, because you're trying to be too broad.

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Sue Campbell: And then, of course, we get frustrated over the results right? My books not selling. Why is it my book selling? I'm so frustrated. I spent this money or I invested this time, and I'm not reaching anyone. I'm so frustrated. Then we get disheartened. And we're like, why are we even doing this?

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Sue Campbell: So if you want to find an audience for your book. You need to know exactly who you are looking for. So your book is not for everyone. I feel like genre writers in general have a better grasp of this concept. Right? II know science fiction. People generally aren't trying to

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Sue Campbell: you know, sell their book to people who only specifically read romance novels, for example. So you probably have an advantage over many writers out there, and that your genre writer and you know that your book isn't for everyone but just to paint the picture for you a little bit. There was a survey, and I should see if they've updated it now. But in 2,018

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Sue Campbell: quarter. Basically, a quarter of us adults hadn't even read even part of one book in the last year, and you don't have enough energy and time and money to convince people who don't read at all to read your book right? That's a waste that's a waste.

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Sue Campbell: So then, what do we do?

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Sue Campbell: We need to find your minimum viable audience. This is a concept developed by one of my favorite marketers and just a really good person named Seth Godin, he calls it. You've heard of minimum viable product. He calls it your minimum viable audience. So what's the smallest number of people who we can get to read the book and create an audience that can keep our career going.

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Sue Campbell: So we don't need everyone in the world to read our book. This is one of my favorite books. It's actually fantasy. It's not science fiction, but it sold over 250,000 copies in Hardcover

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Sue Campbell: who would be happy selling 250,000 copies of their book come in the chat.

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Sue Campbell: Anybody would be okay with that number.

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Sue Campbell: sure, all. Yes, everyone, of course.

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Sue Campbell: So the population of the yeah. UK. Where Susannah Clark is from. And the setting for the book set in Regency, England actually is 67 million people. This book isn't for everyone. The Us. Population is about 330 million. The world population is about 8 billion somewhere in there. Right?

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Sue Campbell: We're not trying to reach everyone. We can have a very successful career selling well short of 250,000 copies of the book, but we have to be strategic about who we're trying to market to.

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Sue Campbell: James says, I will only be happy with 1 billion sales. Then, James, you really need to tune it. So what we're talking about today. So we gotta figure out. Oh, Karen says she hated the book. Oh, interesting! Sometimes people find the beginning a little slow. I'd be curious, Karen, if you read the whole book, or just a little bit

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Sue Campbell: hopefully, you'll still listen to me, even though we have differing tastes. So who's it for

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Sue Campbell: the questions to ask yourself to figure that out? What's your genre? And in sci-fi like, what is your sub genre? Right? Tell me in the chat. I'd be curious to see what subgenre as everyone is writing in in sci-fi.

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Sue Campbell: Okay? So we've got someone writing steampunk, military sci-fi, sci-fi romance dystopian

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Sue Campbell: cosmic horror, biopunk thriller romance, a portal story, Lgbtq. More dystopian spiritual erotica. Right? So look at all of these Sub genres, comedy. I love it comedy, satire, sci fi

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Sue Campbell: sci-fi Western.

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Sue Campbell: Oh, my God, this is so good! You can see right like we can't try to market our sci-fi book to everyone who reads sci-fi. If someone is only in their steampunk phase, for example. So we need to know our genre. The other thing that we need to know is our story type.

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Sue Campbell: and if you saw Ann and Rochelle, my colleagues at pages and platforms, are doing a presentation today. I think they went already they might have been before me. But, if you want to catch the recording, I highly recommend it if you didn't see it live. So your story type is. It is a crime story, is it a love story?

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Sue Campbell: Is it a horror story, is it? You know? A a world view. Story. You want to know the kind of story that you're telling, because different readers they might want a genre, but they also want to know they want like love story was a great example from the chat.

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Sue Campbell: So, knowing those 2 things is going to help you sort this out, you also want to know what are some comparable titles. What are some other books out there that are much like your book? Where, if someone really enjoyed that book, they're really going to enjoy your book. We really really want to know that kind of thing, and it doesn't have to be exactly

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Sue Campbell: right. We don't want it to be exactly. But what is it that Seth Godin actually says? What does it rhyme with right, and often will say, Oh, it's you know this meets that. So sometimes your comp titles, you'll be picking 2 different stories, and you'll be treating them like a mashup. So that's another great question to ask yourself

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Sue Campbell: if you wanna tell me the answers in the chat that's also fantastic. And then we want to pinpoint. How is our book actually different from those books? Yes, it's alike in some ways, but it's also different in other ways.

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Sue Campbell: And Frank points out, yes, comps are important for approaching an agent for traditional publishing, for sure. And they're so helpful in your marketing as well. So this is important work to do, no matter what. So how is your book different from those comp titles that's really important to know and cause that can actually be a tasty incentive for readers like, Oh, it's like this. But it has this difference in this slant.

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Sue Campbell: So let's look at answers to this question for Jonathan. Strange, Mr. Norris. So sorry, Karen. The genre is fantasy. and it's actually like historical fantasy. It's this weird mashup of historical fiction and fantasy

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Sue Campbell: and comparable titles would be things like His Majesty's Dragon sorcery and Cecilia, or the Enchanted chocolate pot.

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Sue Campbell: Who reads those books? Lovers of fantasy, historical fiction, people who love reading about the Uk. How is it different? There are no dragons right? Jane Austen style pros, and it's a very, very long. It's a very long book.

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Sue Campbell: So those other books are not quite as long. So that is positioning Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell against within the genre, and against other books in the genre.

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Sue Campbell: and then to build our reader persona, we want to do some slew thing. We're going to do a little detective work. So for those comp titles that we looked at. Let's go read the reviews.

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Sue Campbell: Let's go find out. What did people love about the book that is going to tell us quite a bit?

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Sue Campbell: What do people hate about the book? We can visit the website of that author. And we can see, okay, who does it seem like they're talking to? What tone are they using? Who do we think they're trying to attract. By the way, they're setting up the website

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Sue Campbell: and just a caveat here, not every writer is doing a great job with their website. So if you go to the website and you're like this looks really outdated. And

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Sue Campbell: you know, it doesn't really look like this is burning up the Googles and getting a lot of visitors. Then you don't want to use that as an example of what to do. You want to use it an example for yourself of what not to do. But you can learn a lot by looking at other writers websites.

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Sue Campbell: You can also look on social media and see what kind of fan following they have. How interactive are their fans. You can do a little I call it benevolent stocking, right? So you're not gonna mess with the person you're just trying to learn about it.

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Sue Campbell: So, for example, I am a big rainbow, Raoul Fan, so I can go and look at all of the people who are interacting with Rainbow Rowl and I can go look at their profile. And they're talking about other books, or they're talking about other movies that they like or podcasts that they listen to. So you can learn about about your ideal reader by tracking down the Fans for the comp titles of books that are like your book.

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Sue Campbell: Okay? So that's one approach. You can start to sort of build the picture for yourself. I highly recommend going through all of those steps. But then we start getting into some nitty gritty. So one of the wonderful things that you can do

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Sue Campbell: is interview an actual reader who has loved your book and told you they loved your book, and is not your best friend, or your cousin or your mom right? You want to interview an actual reader who is maybe a beta reader. You don't know very well you could tell. They're being really authentic, and they don't really have a reason to not tell you the truth.

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Sue Campbell: Right? They don't care about hurting your feelings or any of that. So if you know of someone who is an actual reader of your book who really really loved it. You can interview them right? You can chat them up on Zoom. You can meet them for coffee in real life, whatever you want to do. But here are some things that you can ask.

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Sue Campbell: So what are your favorite, your other favorite books? And why. how do you decide what books to read? Right? Where do you learn about what books to read? Do you go to bookstores? Do you look on Amazon. Are you in a book club? All of those questions you need the answers to.

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Sue Campbell: where do you spend most of your time online is a very helpful question.

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Sue Campbell: So many writers think they have to be on all the social channels, and we don't want you doing that because you're gonna waste a lot of time and social media is crap at selling books.

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Sue Campbell: with the current exception of Tiktok. Okay? And for certain certain ideal readers. So yes, maybe they're on tic tac all the time. Great, then that makes sense for you. But you know, if you think you need to be on Linkedin, the chances are pretty low for sci-fi that you need to be on Linkedin. There might be circumstances if you're big into AI, and that's your career as well. There might be a great place for you.

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Sue Campbell: Also, you wanna ask them, what podcasts do you listen to? If any because you can get on those podcasts and talk about your book. Maybe. So, then we got to take all of this research that we've collected from potentially interviewing people from, you know, digging through Comp. Tit titles and researching other people's fans, and we want to write it up.

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Sue Campbell: You can do this a couple of different ways. I want you to think in terms of demographics. Right? So this is basic information.

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Sue Campbell: Write this up like you're gonna put this character into a novel.

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Sue Campbell: right? We need to know how old they are? How do they identify with gender? What's their ethnicity? What's their religion? Where do they live? What's the what do they do for work. What's the all of these things, all of these basic demographics? Because we want to pretend like, this is a real person.

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Sue Campbell: And then we get into psychographics. So this is probably even more important than demographics. What is this reader's biggest problem?

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Sue Campbell: What is their favorite book, their favorite movie? What are their goals? What's their political affiliation? What are their favorite media outlets, their hobbies, their values, their habits, their social media use? All of those things are going to inform how we find this person out in the world, and that's really the biggest hurdle is to try to find this person.

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Sue Campbell: So I just invented an ideal reader for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norreal right? So her name's Heather she's in her early fifties. She's agnostic. She lives in Seattle. She's a business analyst. She's single. She makes about $120,000 a year. She doesn't have any kids. She has about 20 h of leisure per week, cause she doesn't have any kids.

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Sue Campbell: Her biggest problem is, you know, and biggest problem, maybe something different outside the realm of marketing. But for this purpose her biggest problem, when it comes to reading is, she devours fantasy books, and she always needs more in the line of what she likes. So, and her favorite books were the Gorman gas novels and Pride and Prejudice.

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Sue Campbell: and her favorite movie is Pride and Prejudice. Anybody can tell me in the chat if they want to geek out on what is your favorite movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? You can tell me in the chat her goal is to read 52 books per year. So it's a book every single week.

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Sue Campbell: And then we have all of these other sort of psychographics, her hobbies, her values, her habits. What social media platforms. Is she on? Most frequently

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Sue Campbell: Casey says, only 52. I love it. Yes.

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Sue Campbell: Okay. So

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Sue Campbell: that is one like, I will give you a template crystal will pop in the chat. I'm going to give you a free template so that you can populate a spreadsheet for your ideal reader. You can also take a narrative approach to writing your ideal reader. I'll show you an example. This is a non-fiction example from one of my clients.

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Sue Campbell: And

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Sue Campbell: I want to, just. I'm not going to redo the whole thing, even though he wrote it really, really. Well, it's brilliantly done. But I'll show you kind of. What are the pieces that you would want to do if you're writing this up as a narrative, as if this person's going to go in a book.

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Sue Campbell: Everyone's fighting in the chat about Pride and Prejudice. I love it so much. So first is the snapshot. Right? So Ryan is a 40 year old man living in in West Seattle. He's been married to Megan, who's a family physician, right? Wikita sort of snapshot. It's actually pretty detailed.

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Sue Campbell: On who Ryan is okay. And Rob's book, by the way, is a nonfiction book called The way we write is wrong. That's still under development.

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Sue Campbell: But he's basically trying to solve for common writing mistakes that cause relationship level problems and stop you from moving forward with your goals and dreams.

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Sue Campbell: So we need to know the challenges that Ryan is facing. So a lot of his communication with his clients and and colleagues is asynchronous right? He's sleeping while correspondence are working, etc. So we're gonna talk about all of the challenges that he's facing.

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Sue Campbell: Here's even more challenges that Ryan is facing. Really important to understand those especially, maybe even especially in nonfiction, but still important for fiction.

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Sue Campbell: And then we get into attributes. So he has a growth mindset. He's a lifelong learner. He reads lots of books. He's into pop psychology, all of those little nuances about the kinds of things Ryan is into, and then we know how to align the book to appeal to Ryan and be like, okay. Ryan would definitely read this, and we got to tell Ryan why he would read it

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Sue Campbell: right? So this becomes very valuable when we get inside of Brian's head, because then we can use language that immediately is going to be a magnet for Ryan when he's doing it.

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Sue Campbell: Then we get into some buying habits he's willing to invest, to get things done rather than you know, weighing all the pros and cons. He's definitely gonna like, buy a book to solve a problem.

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Sue Campbell: He reads physical books and kindle books even a lot more than he used to. Right. So think about his buying habits.

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Sue Campbell: I had a client one time write up a draft of their ideal reader, and they came back and said, my ideal reader only ever read books from the library. I'm like.

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Sue Campbell: Okay, I love libraries. Librarians are actually a great resource for doing this kind of research. If you need to know what kind of a person reads, what kind of a book? Fantastic. But why would we choose an ideal reader who never buys a book right? That's a little bit of sort of subtle sabotage on how many books that we want to sell.

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Sue Campbell: So remember, you have some. You have some

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Sue Campbell: room for imagination. And you definitely want to pick an ideal reader who's actively involved in places where you could find them and who is definitely also willing to buy books.

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Sue Campbell: Okay? Then we list some of Ryan's favorite authors. Again, this is a really valuable exercise for fiction.

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Sue Campbell: You want to know what this ideal readers. Other favorite books are, you can, then this is kind of a little dip into outreach, but once you know the comparable authors, and if they've done a good job of selling. You can be like, okay, well, where has Steven Pinker been on podcast i'm gonna pitch those podcasts? Right?

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Sue Campbell:  then we have Internet habits. So what are the podcasts? What are the social channels? How much screen time do they do a day or a week? Those are all important things to know about Internet habits as well.

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Sue Campbell: And that is like a beautiful narrative. Write up of your ideal reader, does it take time, or sure, will you have a much better

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Sue Campbell: reference point for making decisions about your marketing? What are the images that should go on my website? All these things. Let's talk about, how do we use the persona?

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Sue Campbell: So in this case Rob took all of the information that he put together about his ideal reader, and he developed the perfect reader magnet for the person he was trying to reach.

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Sue Campbell: So he developed basically an audio class called Silent Influence, a free training.

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Sue Campbell: And he used imagery that he thought would appeal to Ryan. All of the copy that he used on his opt-in page. He developed specifically to speak to all of the Ryans out there.

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Sue Campbell: so you can use it to design a reader magnet briefly, for anyone who's like what the heck is. The reader magnet. A reader Magnet, is something that you are offering to someone who visits your website in exchange for getting them to sign up for your email list.

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Sue Campbell: Right. So, reader, Magnet isn't gonna bring people to your website, remember, with a magnet, right? You got to be within range of the magnet for it to have the poll on you.

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Sue Campbell: But once someone arrives on your site. Or if you're on a podcast and you're saying, hey, come and get this free, get this free download. It is something that you're offering in exchange for someone signing up for your email list. And again, your email list is really your number one marketing asset

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Sue Campbell: for reasons I don't have time to go into, but maybe in the Q. And A. If someone wants to ask me about it, we'll make some time for that

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Sue Campbell: when you're sitting there thinking. Okay, now, I have an email list. What the heck am I supposed to write to these people in the newsletter that I send, or the email that I sent to them pretend, like you are in a conversation with your ideal reader. If you are going out to copy with that person. What would you want to talk about? Right? What would be interesting to that person? It's gonna help you write very specific copy.

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Sue Campbell: And then you can solve that person's problems when you are crafting articles. When you're crafting any kind of content. If you have a podcast to promote your work. You can use it to think of topics for that or for your newsletter.

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Sue Campbell: and then you can also find out where that person hangs out online so that can guide where you're going to show up.

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Sue Campbell: You guys remember you've got to go out and find your readers instead of waiting for them to stumble upon you. So, knowing where they are out, there is going to really help you pinpoint your

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Sue Campbell: efforts, and then you can talk to that person directly when you're on a podcast or you're at a speaking event, or you're trying to pick something from the book to, you know, read for a reading. What's the best passage you can think? Okay, what would my ideal leader most get sucked into and love to hear?

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Sue Campbell: So these are just some of the ways that, knowing exactly who you're trying to reach is going to come in very, very handy. Basically, all major decision points for your marketing are going to be driven by your ideal reader.

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Sue Campbell: So remember, as writers, we know this right.

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Sue Campbell: When we get feedback from a critique group or an editor, they'll be like, Oh, show, don't tell. Or I want more detail here. Right? We want, we know that there is power in specificity.

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Sue Campbell: So when we're really specific about who our ideal reader is. It doesn't mean we're leaving a bunch of other people out.

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Sue Campbell: It means that we're painting such a clear picture, and we're talking to that person in such a potent way that it's actually magnetic even for people who don't fit your exact ideal, reader. Profile, because what you've written is so compelling and specific.

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Sue Campbell: So you want to reach that ideal reader, because then they start doing your marketing for you.

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Sue Campbell: and you can have 2 to 3 ideal readers right? And you want to work them one at a time, because once you saturate ideal reader number one, they're gonna spread word word of mouth with all the people in their network. Then you can move on to ideal reader number 2, who someone, ideal reader, number one would never hang out with

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Sue Campbell: right. So then, you saturate all of the space for ideal reader number 2, and then they start to spread the word.

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Sue Campbell: And we've seen, you know, examples of books where they ended up having a very, very wide appeal, but started with a very, very narrow focus. So let's do a quick review of what we've talked about today before we jump into questions and responses.

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Sue Campbell: So we talked about the author platform, quick start framework, and where building your ideal reader, persona comes into play there. We talked about what your reader persona is.

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Sue Campbell: Yeah. Again, very detailed

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Sue Campbell: character sketch, very detailed. We talked about why we need one, because we need to figure out how to answer these questions. Of what should I write about? What should my website look like? What should the tone be?

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Sue Campbell: Where are the people who already have an audience full of people who would love my book? We talked about a couple of different methods for how to get at creating your ideal leader. And we talked about what do we do once we have it?

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Sue Campbell: Also, I think it's important to note that this is a really iterative process. So you're gonna take your best guess. And it's something that you can refine over time. As you build a bigger email list, you start to hear from your audience. More, you go to live immense, more, and you really get a sense of who's digging your book. That, reader. Profile is something that you can absolutely refine over time.

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Sue Campbell: So this is the free template that I talked about hopefully, crystals dropping a link in the chat for you. It's pages and platforms.com slash free hyphen, persona, hyphen template.

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Sue Campbell: and let's move into questions and responses.

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Sue Campbell: I'm gonna stop sharing. I see something's in the QA. Box already. If you wanna ask me a question and you put it in the chat, move it over to the QA. Because that chat is huge, cause you're all wonderfully involved, and I'm not gonna be able to find it. So I'm gonna hop over to questions and responses and start

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Sue Campbell: there.

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Sue Campbell: So anonymous asks if a writer has a first book as sci-fi genre, and a second in a different genre, say fantasy. Well, the marketing tactic change

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Sue Campbell: probably. Now that said, if you know

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Sue Campbell: right as a writer that you are going to write in multiple genres.

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Sue Campbell: you can look ahead of time and look down the road and be like, okay, is there a Venn diagram overlap between my 2 books and the kind of reader who would like both of them?

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Sue Campbell: Right. Oftentimes there is sometimes no, sometimes the genres are so different. Right? If you're writing romance and children's books, you can't put those 2 things together. Your tactics have to change. But if you are writing sci-fi and fantasy, you may be able to find an ideal reader that loves both sci-fi and fantasy. Another thing that you can do is look for the thematic thread

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Sue Campbell: that goes across your work. And then you're looking at an ideal reader who is ideologically or thematically interested in what you have to say. Right? So if you are always writing really strong female protagonists.

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Sue Campbell: that might be a thread, or if your work always has a really strong social justice component, or always talks about the complexities of war, or whatever it is. If that is present in your work, and for a lot of us it is right. We're kind of

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Sue Campbell: dealing with the same themes. You can find an ideal reader who really cares about that theme, and is willing to read across genres. So that's one way to handle it. But often will I, if that's not possible, or you want for a very good reason to work them separately.

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Sue Campbell: I will often say, you know, pick a period of time where you're gonna work on your sci-fi, reader, persona and saturating that market right? 6 months, a year, 18 months. And then you're gonna Flip, and you're gonna go all in on the fantasy book and really switch gears so you can do it multiple ways. It is easier on you, and you're more likely to keep going if you can find a way to map it to the same ideal reader with a little tweak.

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Sue Campbell: Okay? Whoops

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Sue Campbell: alejandra says you mentioned looking at the marketing strategy and reviews of comparable titles as a first strategy to build our own.

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Sue Campbell: What is your opinion on marketing through Tiktok? Considering what an impact it's making on the book industry. Do you have any tips on how to tackle that particular platform. Yes, so first step is, is your ideal reader on Tiktok? I'm assuming Alejandra. In your case the answer is yes.

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Sue Campbell: or you like, because your question is savvy enough, that it looks like you pretty much know that.

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Sue Campbell: But just verify this is for everyone. Is my ideal reader actually on Tiktok. If your ideal reader is, you know, in the Boomer generation, they may or may not be probably lean towards, may not be on Tiktok, so that wouldn't be a good option.

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Sue Campbell: So the best advice and it's, you know, fairly, General, that I can give on Tiktok is you want to look for

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Sue Campbell: again. Comparable authors on tik tok. What are they doing? What's working? What's not working? And you want to be consistent, right? So like any of these social platforms. The more consistent you are, and the higher quality of content

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Sue Campbell: you make, the more often you'll get organically served up to readers. So study the hashtags, look at examples of what other people are doing, play to your strengths, and what makes you unique and different. Don't try to be exactly like everybody else.

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Sue Campbell: But play to your strengths. And what? What are the things that will make you stand out right? Because tick. Tock's very, very hot right now, but it also is getting harder and harder to sort of stand out and get attention.

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Sue Campbell: They did a, you know, really big push to get people over to the platform in terms of creators. So they were very generous with the algorithm about how people quickly developed an audience.

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Sue Campbell: And it was a great for quickly building a social following. I think that's happening less and less. It's getting a little harder. And that's what happens with these algorithms right? They do something to serve their own goal. And then that goal changes over time.

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Sue Campbell: So stay on top of it. You might even want to take. I know there are a couple of authors who are doing book talk classes or webinars.

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Sue Campbell: I think Mark Dawson worked with a couple of women who forget their names. So I'm very sorry. Who were really doing well on book talk. There's an author called Jessica Cage, who's in the romance space who does well. But look for what is working for sci-fi and your specific niche on sci-fi? And really think about okay, how can I add to this conversation. How can I stand out?

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Sue Campbell: Jim says, so you could have different ideal readers for different books. Yes, it that is entirely possible.

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Sue Campbell: And again, same applies if it's possible for you to have the same ideal reader for multiple books that is going to be an easier marketing lift for you. But the muse doesn't always go that way right? Sometimes we gotta write. Well, we gotta write and we're gonna have to shift our marketing a little bit to to sell that book and build an audience for it.

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Sue Campbell: So I'm never gonna be one of those people who says only right in the same thing and always keep your ideal reader, and you'd be a fool to write differently like I want you to exercise your creativity. So yes, sometimes you do have to have different ideal readers for different books.

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Sue Campbell: Anonymous says, I would love to get more of a breakdown on finding comparable titles. Do you pick it on genre writing, style, characters, or all of the above, or any other parameters. I also get a little lost on this phase, and I guess how comparable do they need to be to each other. So this is where it would be super nice to have a super straightforward answer. But there's room for creativity here.

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Sue Campbell: so

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Sue Campbell: I can't give you the perfect formula for finding a comparable title, but there are a couple of little sort of hacks that you can use.

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The main thing is just detach from the idea that there's a right and a wrong way to do it

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Sue Campbell: right, because I think sometimes behind those questions it's like, oh, I know there's a right way to do this, and your brain will be like, well, you're not doing it right. so don't worry about that. There's no absolute right way to do it, and your book may be so

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Sue Campbell: such a mashup that it's gonna be different for you than a straightforward process would be for somebody else. So one of the tricks you can do is look for the also box on Amazon. That is obviously very helpful. Thank God! They put the also box back right? So

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Sue Campbell: you could do that and put your book in. You can use a tool like publisher rocket and look at comparable titles that way. It can be on a couple of different things. Right? You can find one comp tit title that's based on genre, and you could find another comp title that's based on characters, and you can learn something from each of those. Each of those is, gonna add a different flavor to how you end up writing your ideal reader.

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Sue Campbell: See if there's anything else I can.

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Sue Campbell: and how comparable that they need to be to each other. Another thing is, I don't recommend finding a comp that is really old, because one of the things, at least for marketing purposes, not necessarily like

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Sue Campbell: when you're talking to the reader, you can be like, oh, it's like pride and prejudice right? Like my editor that I work with Anne Holley. She wrote a book, and her Tagline was Pride and Prejudice meets broke Pack Mountain

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Sue Campbell: right? So that could speak to the reader, even if it's an old book. But when you're looking to sort of latch onto another author and figure out what they did for marketing to get ideas. You do want it to be fairly recent, just because things change so quickly. So you might want to consider that

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Sue Campbell: one thing that I actually find very helpful because you, this task can go on forever right? We can always be looking at comps.

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Sue Campbell: Give yourself a time limit.

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Sue Campbell: right? And be like, okay, this week I'm going to look at all the comp authors, and I'm only gonna spend half an hour a day and give yourself a very specific task going in that you're looking for. So then you're kind of building a box around the task that allows you to just move forward with what you've actually learned. So try not to get too hung up on doing it exactly the right way.

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Sue Campbell: Alejandra says, is there a way to calculate the effectiveness of the different channels of marketing, or to translate traffic interaction into sales.

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Sue Campbell: Say, for example, is it possible to calculate somehow whether our newsletter is less or more effective than our interactions in Tiktok or on our website? So yes, there are a couple of ways. There's again. There's no like

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Sue Campbell: I. Maybe this is coming. But no one's made like a here plug. Everything into this one software program and it will analyze for you and spit out a result. But if you want to get geeky, you can definitely get geeky. So

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Sue Campbell: a couple of the things that you can do

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Sue Campbell:  When you go on a podcast for example, you can give when you do your call to action to come and get my reader magnet, you can give them a very specific landing page

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Sue Campbell: to download that reader magnet. So then, you can track how well that podcast appearance translated into subscribers. And you can also see, did this landing page like, if 30% of people or more landed on that landing page and became subscribers. There's really good copy on that landing page.

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Sue Campbell: So yes, thumbs up. If only 5% of people who landed on that landing page opted in, you probably need to tweak that landing page. Right? So you can track for every podcast you could build a separate landing page. And then you also get an idea of, oh, this kind of podcast outperforms that kind of podcast

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Sue Campbell: so that's one example of how you can set up the data another example, speaking specifically to sales, is, and again always read the current Amazon rules and regulations because things can change. But if you're on the affiliate program at Amazon.

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Sue Campbell: they will let you develop custom links that you can use for different channels. So let's say, for example, you send out something on your newsletter. You can put in a specific Amazon tracking link for that newsletter. And then you do something on Tick Top to promote the same book. You can create a different Amazon tracking link. And then you can go and look at the data and see which one did better in terms of sales. So that's a sales specific example.

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Sue Campbell: you're much gonna have a much easier time tracking this kind of thing if you're an Indie author than if you're a traditional author. If you're a traditional author. You have very little real time data about your sales. You're basically just track tracking like your Amazon rank

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Sue Campbell: in the Amazon store.

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So yes, there are ways that you can geek out and do it. The best way is to use different tracking links.

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Sue Campbell: When you're doing different promotions, same if you're doing like a a book funnel promo

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Sue Campbell: or if you're doing like a fussy librarian promos and things like that, you can use special links to really track the traffic and see what gets the most traction.

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Sue Campbell: Great question. Wish I had, you know, a longer time and more definitive answer for you.

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Sue Campbell: Chad says, how can you be sure your ideal reader is a person who actually exists and not just in your mind.

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So because you're gonna put it into action chat, and there's a little bit of imagination here. So the easiest way to do it is to interview a real person who, you know, has read and liked your book and use that. Then, you know, it's a real person.

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Sue Campbell: Otherwise you've got some imagination, and you're gonna be checking some of your assumptions.

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Sue Campbell: Right? So if you think, Oh, my ideal reader listens to this podcast and you get on this podcast and nobody cared something's wrong with my ideal reader, and I need to tweak that a little bit. So you're acting on your marketing, based on your ideal reader, and sort of checking some of your assumptions, so that may shift over time.

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Sue Campbell: I've also had people who thought their ideal reader was one person, and then all of a sudden, like their book, catches fire with a completely different kind of reader. And they're like, Okay, well, I'm gonna take the path of least resistance and jump over and change my ideal reader, based on the kind of reader who I know is actually loving the book and try to get more of that

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Sue Campbell: alright. So very good question to keep in mind because you don't just wanna blindly create one and then never check if it's working. So you're going to make decisions. And you're gonna sort of look at. Okay, what happened when I did that? Did that seem to work? Did that get me traction or not?

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Sue Campbell: Anonymous says, How do you know you're going the correct direction in creating the persona, especially in the details. So it's basically the same question as chat. So same answer there is, you have to be willing to pivot and change based on what you've learned.

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Sue Campbell: Marilyn says. Do you recommend interviewing your ideal readers? Yes, if you can. That is a great accelerator. It takes out some of the guest work. One of the ways you can find those people is, if you already have a newsletter, or you already have a decent social media following?

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Sue Campbell: You can ask people right like, Hey, have you read my book? If you read my book and loved it. Would you be willing to, you know, have me interview you so I can learn more about you.

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Sue Campbell: So yes, I absolutely recommend that.

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Sue Campbell: Neo-ec! I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. If you compare a title, and you don't have something they love about that book. how can you turn it into a positive like if I want to do a story like Star Wars, but without the force, I do think the force is an important appeal of the series. So how

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Sue Campbell: can I make not having it appealing? So you want to look for what you do have? Right? So don't focus on the negative thing like it's like Star Wars without the force.

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Sue Campbell: Right? Because then you're focusing on a negative. And people have a hard time imagining Star Wars without the force.

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Sue Campbell: You can say it's like Star Wars, plus.

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Sue Campbell: you know, I don't just make it step up, Star Wars with dragons, right? So you wanna say or instead of the force it has blank. So what's the replacement? Or just pull out the piece of Star wars that it is most like?

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Sue Campbell: Right? So it's like the rebel alliance. But in this different setting.

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Sue Campbell: so don't focus on what's missing from the other book. Just focus on what the what is the same. And then what is your ad hope that makes sense?

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Sue Campbell: Anonymous, says, do you think science fantasy is a real genre mostly. Yes, but I'm trying to tell a guru that says it's not real that it exists.

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Sue Campbell: Okay, why. why are you trying to change that Guru's mind? Right? Just go do it. And if you can find a books out there. The best way is just to look at comparable authors is it's an example of science fiction, fantasy mashup.

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Sue Campbell: Great, that's all I need to know. Don't waste time trying to convince the Guru. I mean, you may have valid reasons for doing that. I'm sure you do. But after I really really need to do that. I know it's a thing I know. There are people who read both science fiction and fantasy. So even if it's not a thing

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Sue Campbell: I know I can find someone who would want to read that.

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Sue Campbell: Next question, is it a good idea to make a persona based on yourself to flesh out that fictional persona? Or is it always better to create it for others than yourself? This is such a good question, so yes and no, and let me tell you why. Oftentimes we are writing these books

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Sue Campbell: because we're writing it for ourselves, or we're writing it for the person we were 5 years ago, or the books we couldn't find when we were a kid.

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Sue Campbell: So yes, you can definitely be the basis for your ideal reader

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Sue Campbell: that said there are some pitfalls that can happen, because then we're like, Oh, I never sign up for author newsletters.

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Sue Campbell: So I'm not going to build a newsletter because I'm my own ideal reader, and I hate those right. You're shooting yourself in the foot

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Sue Campbell: because there are people who are like you and have the same taste and would enjoy that story, would be willing to sign up for an author newsletter, or do listen to that podcast or do go to that conference. I see a lot of the clients I work with will get very hung up on what their personal marketing preferences are, or their personal channel preferences are.

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Sue Campbell: and it will prevent them from having access to people who are pretty much a match for their ideal reader. Except for this one little, you know eccentric preference that you may have.

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Sue Campbell: So yes. use it based on yourself so that you can look for people, and you know where to find people.

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Sue Campbell: But no, don't use it to shut down potential opportunities

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Sue Campbell: so super good questions.

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Sue Campbell: As a writer, what can you give the potential reader so that they want to come back to the website, give their email, read the emails, and eventually buy the book episodes, scenes that you took out from the book. Nobel's from the universe. Okay? Another great question.

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Sue Campbell: I'm going to answer this in a couple of layers. So

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Sue Campbell: I don't want you to count on people coming back to your website.

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Sue Campbell: Right? Gone are the days when people really like check compulsively a website again and again.

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Sue Campbell: right? We, your number one goal of your website is to convince a fairly new visitor or a new visitor that day to subscribe to your newsletter. That is how you're gonna reach them again because you're gonna show up in their email inbox. We can't count on them to keep visiting our website again and again.

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Sue Campbell: Right? So that's the first layer that I want to give. So your website number one goal of the website is to provide enough of an information, enough of a imagery, enough copy that resonates with that ideal reader that they immediately want to become a subscriber. And so, your reader, Magnet, is very important, right? That free thing that you're offering them in order to get them to sign up, for the email is very, very important.

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Sue Campbell: So that's the next layer is having that ideal reader Magnet. And that's why, knowing your ideal reader is so important because for one type of ideal reader it might be episodes for another type of ideal reader. It might be novellas. We don't know until we can get inside that ideal reader's head and kind of figure it out.

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Sue Campbell: Okay? And for your reader, Magnet, you don't know if a reader magnet is working. If all you've done is put it up on the website

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Sue Campbell: you have to go. Do the outreach get it in front of enough people.

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Sue Campbell: right. People say, Oh, I have a reader, Magnet, but it's not working. I'm like, Okay, well, how much outreach are you doing? If you're just waiting for people to stumble into your digital spider web. You don't know that the problem is the reader Magnet. The problem is probably that you're not driving enough people to your website to even get the offer for the reader. Magnet.

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Sue Campbell: that's a little parenthetical there.

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Sue Campbell: And then reading the emails.

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Sue Campbell: we get to. Really important to have good subject lines. I have a client, and I signed up. I sign up for my clients newsletters all the time, and every time she would send out a newsletter, she would just say, July Newsletter, August newsletter, September Newsletter, and every single time I reply back, and it'd be like, Please give someone a subject line that they care about right? Nobody cares that it's a July newsletter. They wanna know what is the benefit to me opening this

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Sue Campbell: right? Why would. I want to read this? What is interesting, appealing, entertaining about it. So your subject lines to get people to open your emails are very, very important. And then, of course, the content, once they do open it, you want it to be compelling and adding value in some way to their day.

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Sue Campbell: and then, when you do all of that well, and they're loving all of that. You're building a relationship because you're continually providing value to that reader. You're making that day a little brighter, a little funnier, a little more informed, whatever it is.

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Sue Campbell: And they're gonna want to buy the book because you're speaking to them. It's not about you, the author, and hey, great! Look how far I've come. And this is the book that I need you to buy. It is about serving value to that specific ideal reader. So you have to know who that is?

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Sue Campbell:  So I get really annoying when I start answering questions, because so much of it is, it depends on your ideal reader, and all of those are good ideas, right? So the episodes, the scenes you took from the book, novellas, those can absolutely all work.

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Sue Campbell: Just put it through the lens of. Would this work for my deal reader, this next layer to that question? This will be the final layer is you can test it right? So if you create one ideal, if you create one, reader magnet

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Sue Campbell: and you go on, you know, do a bunch of outreach for it. Get in front of a bunch of people.

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Sue Campbell: And it's not really hitting right? You're not getting a 30% or better conversion rate on that landing page. So 100 people visit the landing page. We want 30 of them to sign up.

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Sue Campbell: and we're always looking to optimize that page to get to that number. So if that's not happening, okay, we need now. We tried the episodes. That doesn't seem to work. Now we need to try the Nobel, and then you try the same thing for the Novella, and then the data will speak for itself

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Sue Campbell: again. If you already have an email list of readers. You can do a poll and be like, Hey, I'm gonna offer these 2 things. You're a subscriber, you'll definitely get it. But if you were just learning about me. Which of these would you be most likely to want to have to download?

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Sue Campbell: So you can test it out that way, too, if you already have someone of a following

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Sue Campbell: anana says, what advice would you have to overcome shyness? I'm very introverted, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I love this question, and I live in a house with with introverts. Everyone except me and my youngest are introverts

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Sue Campbell: build first important thing to understand is you need recovery time

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Sue Campbell: right? It's great that you're willing to get out there and do it. But if you don't give yourself the grace to build in recovery time. After whatever it is you're doing, your brain is not going to want you to do it again. Your nervous system is going to say, No, no, no, no.

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Sue Campbell: So whatever you're doing, if you're like, okay, I'm going to try to go on a podcast after the block of time, where you're recording that podcast take the rest of the day off right? Or do some other activity that is restorative to you.

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Sue Campbell: So that's number one is, make sure introverts can be, you know, in front of people and be front and center and in the spotlight. But they really do need to have that recovery time.

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Sue Campbell: The second thing that I would say is Podcasts are great because it's kind of, just like, if you can go on a zoom call. You can talk one to one with with that person, and it feels like you're not in front of a big, huge audience. I think Crystal's giving. This is the zoom equivalent of the hook.

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Sue Campbell: Alright. Thank you so much. Everyone for joining us, and thank you, Zoo, for giving us so much of your time. I have. I will share one more time the links in the chat and then you can visit the hub or join us on community to talk more.

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ProWritingAid: and I'm sorry I still have not inserted Sue's name into this template. I apologize so. Thank you for joining us, Sue. Everyone have a wonderful day.

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Sue Campbell: Thanks everyone so much. Join my list, and we can talk more bye.