Before you spend money on ads, social media or promotion, it helps to know the reader you are actually trying to reach.
When people ask who your book is for, the easiest answer is usually everyone. It is also useless.
I have done it myself. You spend months or years writing something and, naturally enough, you want as many people as possible to read it. But everybody is not your reader.
And if you try to market a book to everybody, you usually end up marketing it to nobody in particular. That was something I had to learn.
When I started trying to sell my own books, I thought the important thing was getting them seen by as many people as possible.
I thought I needed the most views, followers and reach. But reach on its own means very little. If ten thousand people see your book and none of them are interested in the kind of book you have written, what have you actually achieved?
You need to have some idea who might genuinely want it. Forget the imaginary customer I am not talking about those marketing exercises where you invent a fictional customer, give them a name, decide what coffee they drink and what car they drive. I have never found much use in that. I mean something much simpler.
Your Reader
What kind of person reads books like yours?
What else do they read?
Where do they hear about books?
Who do they listen to?
Where do they spend time online?
That is the useful bit. If you have written a crime novel, there are already readers out there who love crime. If you have written fantasy, romance, horror, children’s fiction or local history, the same applies. The audience already exists. Your job is not to create them.
It is to find them.
Finding Your Reader
Look at books like yours, one of the easiest ways to start is to look at books that sit somewhere near yours. Not because you want to copy what another writer is doing, but because their readers might also be your readers.
Look at where those books are being talked about.
Look at the people reviewing them.
Look at the podcasts those writers appear on.
Look at the festivals they attend.
Look at what readers say in reviews.
You may just start to see patterns.
The Raven Chronicles
When I began marketing The Raven Chronicles, I had a fairly clear idea of who I thought the reader was. Then the books went out into the world and, as books tend to do, ignored me completely.
Adults were reading them. Parents were reading them after their children. People interested in Irish folklore were finding them. People outside Ireland were reading them because they wanted something rooted in Irish mythology. That taught me more than any imaginary customer profile ever could.
Your readers will tell you who they are
Your audience can change.
You might discover readers you did not expect.
Pay attention to that.
Look at who buys the book.
Look at who messages you.
Look at who signs up to your mailing list.
Look at who comes over to speak to you at an event.
They are telling you who your reader is and once you know that, marketing becomes a little less random. It also means you can stop trying to be everywhere.
Social Media
Writers are constantly told we need TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, newsletters and whatever platform somebody has invented this week.
You don’t or least I don’t think you necessarily do. What you may need is to be somewhere your readers are likely to find you. There is a big difference.
If you write children’s books, schools and libraries might be far more useful to you than spending hours making videos.
If you write local history, local radio or newspapers might do more for you than chasing followers online.
If you write crime, there are crime readers, reviewers, festivals, podcasts and book groups already talking about crime every day.
Go where the readers are. That sounds obvious, right? I wish I had understood it earlier.
Try this
A simple thing you can do is write down three books that you think share some of your audience. Then spend an hour looking at where those books are being discussed. Not just where they are sold. Where people are actually talking about them.
You will probably learn more from that hour than you will from blindly boosting another social media post. Your book does not need to be seen by everybody. It needs to be seen by the people who might actually want to read it.
That is where I would start.
(c) J.M. Lane
About the book Why the Curlew Cries by J.M. Lane:
Former Garda Jack McLane has come to the Ox Mountains looking for a quieter life, or at least the remains of one. He has left the job behind, but not the things the job left in him. Grief. Guilt. The memory of an old friend who spent years thinking about the women who vanished from the west of Ireland and were never found.
When Jack is given access to that friend’s private notes, he expects obsession, loose ends, maybe the sad remains of a case that defeated better men than him. Instead, he finds a pattern. The trail leads him through lonely roads, abandoned farms, half-forgotten families and a landscape where people know more than they are willing to say.
In the shadow of the Ox Mountains, the past has not passed at all. It has only settled into the walls, the fields and the silence between neighbours. And somewhere in that silence, a killer has been waiting.
Where the Curlew Sings is a dark Irish crime thriller about grief, loyalty and the secrets rural Ireland keeps when no one is asking the right questions. For readers of atmospheric crime fiction, cold case mysteries and slow-burning rural noir.
Where the Curlew Sings is published on 11th October, 2026. Pre-order your copy of the book online here.
About the book Setanta and The Lady by the Water by J.M. Lane:
A mythic coming-of-age novella rooted in Irish folklore and shadowed grief.
If you loved Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls this one’s for you
Setanta knows only this: his mother vanished, his father is a ghost of a man, and something ancient is following them. From haunted towns to forgotten hills, they chase the Lady by the Water, a banshee whose song marks the doomed. But when a cursed hound spares Setanta’s life, everything he thought he knew begins to unravel.
Trained in silence. Forged by loss. Marked by a name older than Ireland.
As his scar deepens and the veil between worlds thins, Setanta discovers a truth stranger than any bedtime tale: he’s not just a boy. He’s a weapon. And the monsters remember his name.
Perfect for fans of Patrick Ness, Susan Cooper, or folkloric dark fantasy, this lyrical Irish novella blends myth, memory, and the weight of blood into a powerful modern legend.
Order your copy of Setanta and The Lady by the Water by J.M. Lane online here.
And read more from J.M. Lane on Writing.ie here.
