Find Your Exact Genre, Find Your Lifelong Book Ambassadors by Shayla Raquel
Hi readers and writerly friends!
This week in Freelancing, Shayla Raquel is taking over the blog to tell you all about how to not only grow your audience but how to transform readers into lifelong ambassadors of your book! This post shows you exactly how to gain a clear understanding of your genre and target audience to grow an enduring, loyal readership! Be sure to leave her a comment and check out her website and other socials!
A best-selling author and public speaker, Shayla Raquel teaches people the ins and outs of writing, publishing, and marketing their books. Her in-person and online classes focus on author branding, self-publishing, book marketing, and the craft of writing.
She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, “The Rotting” (in Shivers in the Night), The Suicide Tree, The 10 Commandments of Author Branding, All the Things I Should’ve Told You, and “Savage Indulgence.”
In her not-so-free time, she studies all things true crime and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband and three fur babies.
Shayla Raquel, best-selling author, public speaker, and book editor.
Why do I need to know my genre and target audience?
Investing time and money into social media, email newsletters, Amazon ads, podcast interviews, and blog posts will net you very little ROI if you do not know your precise genre.
Because if you don’t know exactly what book you wrote, then, my friend, you don’t know your audience.
And if you don’t know your audience, what good is all that time and money you’ve put toward marketing your book?
My goal today is to teach you how to determine your exact genre as a novelist so you can pinpoint your target audience. Once you do that, you can have lifelong book ambassadors: people who fangirl over your book and tell the world about it.
Amazon Kindle Categories. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
So, What Is Your Genre?
If I ask an author, “What book is your genre?” and they reply “Fantasy,” I get a little worried.
Go to Amazon.com and toggle the search bar from All Departments to Kindle Store. On the left-hand side of your screen, select Kindle eBooks. (We don’t need the newsstand or singles or anything like that.)
Next, select Categories. It’s easy to miss sometimes because Amazon doesn’t make it prominent, but it’s usually under the search bar or off to the left-hand side.
Next, for this purpose, select Science Fiction & Fantasy. Narrow it down once more by selecting Fantasy. There are over 50,000 e-books in the Fantasy category alone. That’s a lot of competition.
Now you have to determine where your novel fits in the world of fantasy. Before I explain, I have a very important note: I desperately wish authors would do this exercise before writing their novels. If they did, then they’d ensure their story fit within the expected storylines of, let’s say, Gaslamp Fantasy or Arthurian Fantasy.
Next, select Fantasy. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
My point: Your novel will be difficult to sell if you wrote it without knowing its genre. You can figure it out, but it’s a little bit tougher because there’s a chance there are several genres packed into one story. (I did this with my first novel, so don’t be like Shayla!)
Okay, now that you have a warning to heed, let’s move on to subgenres.
So here you are in the Fantasy genre for Kindle e-books with all this competition. Where does your book fit? If your subgenre is Action & Adventure, that’s more specific than just saying Fantasy, but could you niche it down even more by mentioning the types of characters? (Amazon gives us a handy checklist for various genres.) If you have Elves or Fae, that officially means you’re only competing with 1,000 e-books now!
Elves. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
Your genre would be, let’s say, Fae Action & Adventure Fantasy.
Let’s shift to Mystery, Thriller & Suspense. If you’re going to find your niche, I suggest looking into Moods & Themes (another handy checklist). If I write Crime Fiction (50,000 e-books in this genre), I have several subgenres within that too:
Heist
Kidnapping
Murder
Noir
Organized Crime
Serial Killers
Vigilante Justice
Crime Fiction. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
But I have the opportunity to get super specific by selecting a mood or theme, such as Action-Packed. Therefore, it would be: Action-Packed Heist Crime Fiction.
Action Packed. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
It gets better! I can also look into Settings (beaches, islands, mountains, etc.) and Characters (amateur sleuths, British detectives, gay protagonists, etc.) on the Amazon checklist.
Setting. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
Characters. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
If your story has some love in it, you would go to the Romance category and narrow it down to, maybe, Time Travel. On the left-hand side, take a look at Romantic Heroes and Romantic Themes (originally called Tropes). By narrowing the genre down to Viking Time Travel Romance, I have certainly found a very specific group of readers!
Vikings. Photo by Shayla Raquel.
Now What?
Now that you know some tricks for finding your exact genre, you have a foundation for marketing your book to the right audience. And marketing it well.
But how do you get book ambassadors to see your book?
It depends on the platform, of course. If you label your categories and keywords properly through Amazon KDP and Amazon Author Central, you’ve just made your life way easier. (To learn how to request 8 additional categories and how to find keywords, read 5 Freakishly Helpful Amazon Tricks Every Author Should Use.)
Outside of Amazon, your blurb (back cover copy and Amazon product description) must reflect your genre. In addition to a steller book cover, a blurb helps sell your book. It’s your big flashy billboard: it’s meant to suck the reader right in.
When writing a blurb, follow these steps:
Drop the Hook — A hook is meant to entice the reader to bite. I love this hook from The Martian by Andy Weir: “Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.”
Dangle the Characters — Reel them in with intriguing characters.
Dive into Conflict — Show them what this book is all about. What’s the plot? Why should the reader buy this book?
Determine the Consequences — What hangs in the balance for your characters? Formula: Conflict (“Character must do this”) + Stakes (“Or this will happen”) = Consequences.
Dine on the Big Question — End your blurb on an intriguing question or a point of tension—something that will convince the reader to take a chance on buying your book.
For the complete how-to, read Writing Compelling Book Blurbs.
If you’ve got these things down (genre, Amazon, and blurb), you need to spend quality time putting your book in front of people on various platforms to determine where you get the most bites (from readers who want to chow down on your genre). It could be through any one of these avenues:
Social media (especially TikTok)
Email newsletter (your own)
Podcasts (interviews specifically)
Book promotion newsletters (Book Gorilla, Many Books, Book Rebel, etc.)
Amazon ads
Social media ads
Book reviewers (YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are full of reviewers)
Blogs
Some platforms work better than others for a variety of reasons, but you won’t know until you try and stay committed long enough to determine if it’s worth the ROI. If you write sexy stories, there is a community with 4.2 billion views on TikTok called SmutTok just waiting for you. If you want your book to be reviewed, there are loads of BookTubers on YouTube ready and willing to geek out over your book.
If you will do the hard work of determining exactly what you write, it will be smoother sailing when it’s time to find your readers.
Best of luck!
Thanks for reading Shayla’s guest blog post! I hope you enjoyed it and found her advice useful and actionable! If you liked this post, please leave us a comment below and don’t forget to check out the other posts on the blog!
Bibliography:
Further reading:
Related topics:
Book Marketing 101: Everything Writers Need To Know About Literary Agents and Querying
Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them
Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue
Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters
Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)
25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas
Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing
Check out my other Book Writing 101, and Freelancing posts.
Recent blog posts:
—Payton
Info-dumping in Sci-fiction and Fantasy Novels by Breyonna Jordan
Hi readers and writerly friends!
This week in Freelancing, Breyonna Jordan is taking over the blog to tell you all about info-dumping in science-fiction and fantasy novels! Leave her a comment and check out her website and other socials!
Breyonna Jordan loves exploring new frontiers—underground cities, mythical kingdoms, and expansive space stations, to be exact. As a developmental editor, she relishes every opportunity to help world-builders improve their works and learn more about the wonderful world of writing. She enjoys novels that are fresh, far-reaching, and fun and she can’t wait to see your next book on her TBR list.
Breyonna Jordan is a developmental editor who specializes in science-fiction and fantasy.
What is info-dumping?
When writing sci-fi or fantasy, there’s a steep curve on how much the audience needs to know—a world of a curve in fact.
You may have pages and pages of elaborate world histories that readers must be filled in on—the current and past ruling monarchs, failed (or successful) uprisings, how natural resources became so scarce in this particular region, or why a military state exists in this country, but not in the surrounding lands.
Alternatively, you may feel the need to include pages of small details concerning the settings and characters your readers are exploring. While it’s important to include specific details in your writing—the reader can’t possibly know that the night sky features four moons unless you convey these details—oftentimes, the excess exposition can be overwhelming to readers.
This info-dumping can be a pervasive problem in fiction, maybe even the problem that stops you from finding an awesome agent or from obtaining a following on Amazon.
So, below I’ve offered some tips for spotting info-dumping, reasons for and the potential consequences of info-dumping, as well as several tips for avoiding the info-dump.
How do you identify info-dumping in your manuscript?
A section of your work may contain info-dumping if you find:
you are skipping lines while reading (Brotzel 2020),
the paragraphs are very long,
there is little action and conflict occurring,
your voice (and not your characters) has slipped in,
that it looks like it was copied directly from your outline
To help you get a better idea of what excessive exposition can look like, here are two examples of info-dumping from the first chapter of a sci-fantasy manuscript I worked on:
“Hawk was guarding the entrance to the cave while Beetle went for the treasure. These were not their real names of course but code-names given to them by their commander (now deceased) to hide their true identities from commoners who may begin asking questions. Very few people in the world knew their true names and survived to speak it. Hawk and Beetle knew each other’s true names but had sworn to secrecy. They were the youngest people on their team. Beetle was seventeen with silver hair and had a talent for tracking. Hawk was twenty-one with brown hair which he usually wore under a white bandana. He was well-mannered and apart from his occupation in burglary was an honest rule-follower. Beetle and Hawk had known each other since they were children and were as close as brothers.”
“It is one of the greatest treasures in the entire world of Forest #7. This was thought only to have existed in legend and theological transcripts. This Staff was powered by the Life Twig, a mystic and ancient amulet said to contain the soul of Wind Witch, a witch of light with limitless powers.”
Why do writers info-dump and what impacts does info-dumping have on their manuscripts?
As a developmental editor who works primarily with sci-fi and fantasy writers, I’ve seen that info-dumping can be especially difficult for these authors to avoid because their stories often require a lot of background knowledge and world-building to make sense.
In space operas, for example, there may be multiple species and planetary empires with complex histories to keep track of. In expansive epic fantasies, multiple POV characters may share the stage, each with their own unique backstory, tone, and voice.
Here are some other reasons why world-builders info-dump:
they have too many characters, preventing them from successfully integrating various traits,
they want to emphasize character backstories as a driver of motivation,
their piece lacks conflict or plot, using exposition to fill up pages instead,
they are unsure of the readers ability to understand character goals, motivations, or actions without further explanation,
they want to share information that they’ve researched (Brotzel 2020),
they want readers to be able to visualize their worlds the way they see them
A Hobbit house with wood stacked out front. Photo by Jeff Finley.
Though these are important considerations, info-dumping often does more harm than good. Most readers don’t want to learn about characters and settings via pages of exposition and backstory. Likewise, lengthy descriptions:
distract readers from story and theme,
encourage the use of irrelevant details,
make your writing more confusing by hiding key details,
decrease dramatic tension by boring the reader,
slow the pacing and immediacy of writing,
prevent you from learning to masterfully handle characterization and description
Think back to the examples listed above. Can you see how info-dumping can slow the pace from a sprint to a crawl? Can you spot all the irrelevant details that detract from the reader's experience? Do you see the impact of info-dumping on the author’s ability to effectively characterize and immerse the reader in the scene?
Info-dumping is a significant issue in many manuscripts. Often, it’s what divides the first drafts from fifth drafts, a larger audience from a smaller one, a published piece from the slush pile.
What techniques can be used to mitigate info-dumping?
That said, below are three practical tips to help you avoid and resolve info-dumping in your science-fiction and fantasy works:
Keep focus on the most important details. You can incorporate further information as the story develops. This will allow readers to remain engrossed in your world without overwhelming them. It will also help you maintain a robust setting in which there’s something new for readers to explore each time the character visits.
Weave details between conflict, action, and dialogue (Miller 2014). This will allow the reader to absorb knowledge about your world without losing interest or becoming confused. An expansive galactic battle presents the perfect opportunity to deftly note the tensions between races via character dialogue and behavior. A sword fighting lesson can easily showcase new technology (Dune anyone?). A conversation about floral arrangements for a wedding can subtlysubtely convey exposition. Just make sure to keep the dialogue conversational and realistic.
Allow the reader to be confused sometimes. Most sci-fi and fantasy readers expect to be a bit perplexed by new worlds in the earliest chapters. They understand that they don’t know anything, and thus expect not to learn everything at once. Try not to worry too much about scaring them off with new vocabulary and settings. They can pick up on context clues and make inferences as the story progresses. handle it. If you’re still concerned about the amount of invented terminology and definitions, consider adding a glossary to the back matter of the book instead.
Of course, this all raises the question…
Is it ever okay to info-dump?
You might think to yourself, “I want to stop info-dumping, but it’s so difficult to write my novel without having to backtrack constantly to introduce why this policy exists, or why this seemingly obvious solution won’t end the Faerie-Werewolf War.”
If you’re a discovery writer, it might be downright impossible to keep track of all these details without directly conveying them in text which is why I encourage you to do exactly that.
Dump all of your histories into the novel without restraint. Pause a climactic scene to spend pages exploring why starving miners can’t eat forest fruit or how this life-saving magical ritual was lost due to debauchery in the forbidden library halls.
Write it all down…
Foggy woods illuminated by a soft, warm light. Photo by Johannes Plenio.
But be prepared to edit it down in the second, third, or even fourth drafts.
Important information may belong in your manuscript, but info-dumps should be weeded out of your final draft as much as possible.
Additionally, as I mention often, I am a firm disbeliever in the power and existence of writing rules. There are novels I love that use info-dumping liberally and even intentionally (re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams). Most classics use exposition heavily as well and they remain beloved by fans old and new.
However, what works for one author may not work for everyone and modern trends in reader/ publisher-preference regard info-dumping as problematic. Heavy reliance on exposition is also connected to other developmental problems, such as low dramatic tension and poor characterization.
If you are intentional about incorporating large swaths of exposition and it presents a meaningful contribution to your work, then info-dumping might be a risk worth taking. If the decision comes down to an inability to deal with description and backstory in other ways then consider reaching out to an editor or writing group instead.
What are some techniques you’ve used to avoid info-dumping in your story? Let us know in the comments!
Bibliography:
Finley, Jeff. “Hobbit House.” Unsplash photo, February 28, 2018.
Plenio, Johannes. “Forest Light.” Unsplash photo, February 13, 2018.
Miller, Kevin.“How to Avoid the Dreaded Infodump.” Book Editing Associates article. April 14, 2014.