How to Grow Your Readership: Top Strategies of 9 Authors

When I first heard the word “platform” in the context of writerly steps, I had a vague notion of social media followers, email subscribers, and speaking engagements.

And I sort of shunned the idea. I didn’t really know what it meant, why it was important, or how to start and grow my platform.

A platform is any way you can reach your readers and tell them about your books when they come out. It’s a big deal because to be a successful author, you need people to buy your books.

But how do you start a platform? What does that look like and how do you use it to the best advantage?

That’s the question I asked 9 authors: How do you grow your audience and reach your readers?

These authors include writers like C. J. Milacci, award-winning author of YA fantasy, and K. M. Weiland, renowned author of novel-writing how-to’s. In this post, they share their favorite ways to grow their readership–from viewing their audience correctly to ways they communicate with their readers.

Strategy #1: Find Your Target Audience

Would you market office supplies to a construction worker? Or a new washing detergent to a five-year-old? What about a teething toy to a teenager? (Well, okay, that depends if they have braces.)

Each of these items has an important purpose–for specific people. The office supplies for the secretary, the washing detergent for anyone who wants to smell decent (unlike five-year-olds), and the teething toy for babies and the occasional teen.

Books are similar. Below, author and entrepreneur Sarah Mackenzie and young indie author Solomon Schmidt share their thoughts on finding the right reader for their books.

How Sarah Mackenzie Finds Her Target Audience

It’s really important to get clear on who your ideal reader is–what kind of person that would love your book.

I get super clear on who that person is and what kind of thing they need. Then I can make them a lead generator. I’m always thinking about book lists, so I’ll make them a book list that would be perfect for them. If I’m super razor-focused on that, then the likelihood that they’re going to tell other people who are like themselves is much, much higher.

So for me, at Read-Aloud Revival and Waxwing, and as an author through my picture books, the same thing is true. I’m always trying to focus on that exact person: how do I make this their favorite thing so that they’ll want to tell other people about it?

Sarah Mackenzie is the author of nonfiction books for adults and picture books for families to read aloud. She’s also the host of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast, which has been downloaded over 12 million times in more than 160 countries. She makes her home in the Northwest with her husband and their 6 kids. Get Sarah’s favorite read-aloud book recommendations here.

How Solomon Schmidt Finds His Target Audience

As a self-published author, I would say it’s knowing very well who my target audience is. And focusing my advertising toward them.

So if you’re writing for 14- to 18-year-olds, and let’s say you have a Facebook page, you can do advertising on Facebook, which I found very helpful with my historical tours. You can gear your advertising toward certain age groups and people with certain interests, or even people from certain regions of the world.

When he was twelve, Solomon Schmidt was inspired to write a book about U.S. history for children that would get them interested in the people and events that shaped America. This book became U.S. History Bites, which now has seven other books in the series. When he is not researching and writing, Solomon enjoys spending time with his family and friends, playing tennis, and participating in Civil Air Patrol.

3 Ways to Find Your Own Target Audience

Generally, similar books will attract the same audience. While their readerships won’t exactly match, they’ll share age, gender, and genre preferences. With that in mind, here are a few ways to find your own target audience.

1. Find published books that are similar to your stories. Try to match up the genre, the age of the protagonist, and the themes addressed. If you’re online, look at who the reviewers are. If you find it at a library, is it Middle Grade, Young Adult, or Adult?

2. Examine your protagonist. How old is he or she? Chances are, your readers will be around the same age (more true in MG/YA than adult, though). What gender is the protagonist? What struggles do they wrestle through? Readers are often attracted to characters similar to themselves. Although most Lord of the Rings fans aren’t hobbits or elves, many can relate to the desire for justice and peace and courage.

3. Test your story on a few readers. If you’re ready to share, have some of your friends and family read the first one or two chapters. A big family is handy here–ask siblings and cousins both older and younger than you, of various personalities and both genders. Ask them what genres they normally read, and what they liked and disliked about your writing snippet. You can find some very useful information based on what kind of people enjoy your book.

Knowing your target audience is crucial. With that key piece of information, you’ll have the first step to growing your audience and reaching the readers who would enjoy your book.

Strategy #2: Word of Mouth

If you see a post on social media advertising a book, how likely are you to read that book? Even if it’s your favorite genre? If you’re like me, you have a colossal To Be Read list with books on it that you don’t even plan to read. Or that you would like to read . . . eventually.

So maybe, if the pitch is compelling enough, you’ll put it somewhere in the middle of that TBR. But will you ever read it? Maybe, maybe not.

Shouldn’t there be a better way for authors to get other people to read their books? Indie authors Sarah Mackenzie, Chuck Black, and S. D. Smith have discovered another way: through word of mouth.

How Word of Mouth Helps Chuck Black

It’s important to understand that the quality of the books is imperative and if done well, will help sell the books by word of mouth. My readers will tell others, “Hey, you need to read these books!” For me, it was the homeschool conferences and the homeschool market that propelled me forward as an author.

Chuck Black, a former F-16 fighter pilot, is the author of twenty-one novels, including The Kingdom Series, The Knights of Arrethtrae, the Wars of the Realm, The Starlore Legacy, and Call to Arms. Chuck’s passion is to inspire youth to follow Christ while equipping parents, pastors, and youth leaders to do the same.

How Word of Mouth Helps S. D. Smith

The best way to market is certainly word of mouth, and that’s definitely been our experience.
We’ve not always been really on top of marketing or sales or that kind of thing, but our audience has done that for us. So I like to say that we have this elite team of salespeople out in the world. And it’s mostly a lot of moms and kids sharing with their friends. That’s probably the number one thing for me.

S. D. Smith is the author of The Green Ember Series, a million-selling adventure saga featuring heroic #RabbitsWithSwords. His newest novel, co-authored with his sixteen-year-old son, is a thrilling fantasy called Jack Zulu and the Waylander’s Key. Smith’s stories are captivating readers across the globe who are hungry for “new stories with an old soul.”

3 Ways to Capitalize on Word of Mouth Marketing

1. Find who your target audience is. As Sarah Mackenzie said, those people are the ones who will market your book best. See the previous section for in-depth tips.

2. Reach your target audience. Aim your pitches, posts, and platforming towards them. You need to gather around you the readers who will be the most passionate about your writing.

3. Encourage your target audience to share about your writing with others. For example, Kara Swanson holds giveaways for her street team, and S. D. Smith runs a quarterly fan art contest. Not only do these methods grow your readership, but they also encourage your current audience to hang in there with you.

Word of mouth is like social proof that your writing is quality. So make sure the people who will appreciate it know about it–and then make sure they spread the good news!

Strategy #3: Email List

So once you have your target audience, and that audience is spreading the word to create more interest in your amazing debut novel, what’s next? How do you let people know that the sequel is coming out, or that you’re visiting a conference near them soon?

There are a variety of ways, but C. J. Milacci and K. M. Weiland prefer the same method: an email newsletter.

How C. J. Milacci Uses an Email List

My primary marketing focus is my email list, but I’ve also found new readers through the Kickstarters I’ve run to pre-release my books. I grow my email list by participating in newsletter swaps with other authors, hosting giveaways, and guesting on podcasts, among other things.

Though social media is a shiny, fun thing, it always drains me and ends up sucking more time from me than I planned to give it. I’ve found my email list to be the best way to interact and connect with my readers, and I know the content I’m sharing is reaching them (something I can’t guarantee with social media).

C. J. Milacci writes stories for teens and young adults with heart-pounding action and hope. As a referee, she’s always relearning the hard lesson that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, and she’s discovered that stories can be found anywhere, even on a lacrosse field. She’s passionate about crafting stories of good overcoming evil, finding hope in the midst of seemingly hopeless circumstances, and true acceptance.

How K. M. Weiland Uses an Email List

SEO has always been huge for me. I put a lot of time and energy into the free resources on my website Helping Writers Become Authors and use it to draw in subscribers to my email list and to market my books from there.

K. M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally published author of acclaimed writing guides such as Structuring Your Novel, Creating Character Arcs, and Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. She writes historical and speculative fiction and mentors authors on her award-winning website, Helping Writers Become Authors.

3 Ways to Milk Your Email List

1. Announce news about you and your books. This is the primary purpose of an email list. Release dates, cover reveals, sales, and conferences–put it all in there for the people who will be the most interested.

2. Grow your audience by encouraging your subscribers to spread the word. This may be through giveaways for the people who post about your book on social media, or even just encouraging them to share one of your blog posts with a friend. It’s like word of mouth, but online.

3. Promote other author friends. As C. J. Milacci mentioned, you can hook up with another writer and advertise each other’s works on your respective platforms. Not only does this grow both email lists, but it builds relationships with other writers in the industry.

Strategy #4: Conferences

This past summer, I had the opportunity to attend a few conferences near me and meet quite a few of the authors featured in this post. They had booths set up in the shopping center displaying all their pretty books and merch. Sometimes, they would disappear to give a presentation or do an interview. But if you were lucky, you’d see them smiling from their booths, taking pictures, signing books, and talking about their stories.

Were these writers’ conferences? No, actually. They were homeschool conferences. Does that confuse you?

These authors knew a large part of their target audience were homeschooled children or parents. And as it happens, their families homeschooled too. So they could go in and talk about the benefits of incorporating reading and writing into your homeschool curriculum and promote their books in the process.

One of the authors I got to talk to there was Chuck Black, whom you’ve already heard from today. Another was Solomon Schmidt, a nineteen-year-old homeschooled author who self-published his kids history series.

How Chuck Black Promotes at Conferences

My journey’s been unusual. I self-published to start with, and then a publisher picked my books up. They did some publicity campaigns to help me get launched. But the truth of it is that almost all of my success from a publicity and marketing perspective has been through homeschool conferences.

My publisher loves that because they know that any of the efforts that I make here will spill over into their markets and then they get sales from that. But it is just a lot of hard work of going to conferences, meeting with people, setting up booths, and getting the word out.

How Solomon Schmidt Promotes at Conferences

If you’re able to, it really helps to attend an educational conference or homeschool conference, set up a table, and be ready to talk to people. Pass out flyers, be ready to accept no, and just share your story. Even when it’s not as successful as you hope, just realize that if it helps some people, then you did your job. If you wrote it and some people enjoyed it, then that’s good.

3 Steps to Promoting at Conferences

1. Find a conference containing your target audience. It doesn’t have to strictly be your target audience, nor does it have to contain all of your target audience, but make sure the time you put in will be worth it. For example, not everyone at the Teach Them Diligently homeschool conference that Chuck Black attended were allegorical fantasy readers, but he knew that there would be a good chunk of Christian tweens (or parents of ones), who had a good chance of being interested in his books.

If your audience is children from conservative families, homeschool conferences might also be right for you. Or if it’s Christian nonfiction, try a Christian retreat that will allow you to display your books (if you have any).

2. Find ways to get in front of your target audience. Oftentimes, this will be a speaking arrangement or teaching opportunity. At the same homeschool conference mentioned above, several YWW instructors led a writing class for a few hours. This let people know that they were authors and gave them a chance to advertise for the Workshop.

3. Be ready to talk. Your words are meant to reach people, and it’s your job (plus God’s) to help them do so. Set up a booth, if you can, and let people know who you are and what you have to offer. Strike up conversations, whether it’s at the booth, before a session, or eating lunch with a random family.

Remember–the point of going to a conference is to connect with more members of your target audience. So find them, and then reach out.

Your Next Steps

You have now heard platforming strategies from 9 authors. Remember, growing your readership is essential to reach your target audience with the words they need to hear.

Through word of mouth and speaking at conferences, you can build up interest and gain email subscribers. Those email subscribers will eventually turn into some of the first people to buy your books when they come out.

But . . . where do you start? Do you just tell your friends to spread the word and sign up for random conferences? That doesn’t sound super efficient.

The first thing to do is to find who your target audience is. Who is that person who will appreciate your books best for what they are? The one who will leave rave reviews because your stories or articles meet their needs, drawing in similar readers?

We’ve created a simple questionnaire to help you nail down some basic characteristics of your target audience and jump-start your platforming. You can click the button below to access it.

Find that target audience. Then target them!

How to Grow Your Readership: Top Strategies of 9 Authors

Strategy #1: Find Your Target Audience

How Sarah Mackenzie Finds Her Target Audience