I’m finding that the most frequently omitted factor in an author’s publishing plans is startling: it’s the readers. Of course an author needs readers, and writes for them — in fact, writes only for them — so how could this be?

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that all authors write for the readers they think will be reading their books. And the problem is that  authors don’t always have a clear idea of who the readers are. Especially for non-fiction books, this becomes an obvious problem.

Is the reader a sturdy home do-it-yourselfer? a faint-hearted teen needing encouragement? someone with illness or loss and a short attention span?

Usually the author starts out knowing at least as a general category who the reader is. But what information or advice is that group of people most interested in? What types of problems are they trying to solve?

Better find out. And also find out  what kind of book they’ll read: the length and design your audience prefers (workbook or lots of text, photos versus drawings, casual, technical, etc.)

The way to find out is to survey the readers, or people like them. One writer I know has done a fair amount of talking with 10-year-olds to find out what they’d like best in a middle-grade chapter book. That’s a great foundation for  writing for that age group.

In a very switched-on and quickly-changing world (it’s as noisy as a stock exchange out there; have you noticed?) communicating is hard if you don’t know who’s at the other end. Even a book editor, who assists an author from the “ivory tower” of a quiet room, has nail-biting moments when s/he reviews a document that seems to be written with an unclear or unreal idea of who the readers will be.