Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1219:
I have never wished to “write to market,” which usually means to shape your fiction to address what is trending and popular among readers. Instead, my guide has always been to write what I would want to read. Which does make my job as a writer all that much more fun because I am, in fact, my first reader. That doesn’t mean, however, that I am not curious about who reads my books and my newsletter posts.
And it doesn’t mean I completely ignore thinking about why others like my work so that I can improve what I do write. The reason I have beta readers is to ensure I’m not doing something that might turn off a reader unnecessarily, or bring them out of the story. For example, I often end up cutting out some of the kinds of historical detail I like, because I am a professional historian, but that most average readers might find tedious or distracting.
I also pay attention to reviews, not to beat myself up over negative ones, but to see what I am getting right, and if there are any particular tweaks I can do to improve the pacing and plot. When it is clear that someone is looking for something like more steamy romance, or more hard science or more literary language, I can just shrug and say that isn’t the kind of book I was writing.
Yet, as I said above, I do think about who my main audience is, particularly as it relates to those who then go on to follow me on Facebook or subscribe to my newsletters. First off, I have generally assumed that most of the people who have read and then become fans of my work are, like me, female, older, possibly retired, and that they have been voracious readers for all of their lives.
On the other hand, I remind myself that I was only in my teens and early twenties when I fell in love with the authors and their work that inspired me to become a writer, such as the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer, the thriller suspense novels of Mary Stewart, the Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Whimsey mysteries of Dorothy Sayers, the science fiction of Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey. That means I shouldn’t assume that there are no younger people who have discovered my books and enjoy them, and I am certainly always delighted when I get an email from a fan who is male. And, in fact, one of my first and most valued beta readers is male, and a couple of my female beta readers are not senior citizens!
Yet, my assumptions about who reads my books are that…just assumptions…and are based on fairly scanty evidence, as are my assumptions about those people who subscribe to my daily and my monthly newsletters.
The one scrap of data I have is that the demographic breakdown that Facebook gives of the 2,605 followers for my author page says that 90% are female and 70% are 45 and older, with the single largest group (30% of total) 65 and older. But then, these are the people who follow Facebook, a notoriously older and female audience, so I can’t be sure this is really a reflection of my total audience for my books.
And, since I am pretty sure that a good number of my early subscribers to my daily newsletter came from those people who followed me on facebook, I would expect them to mirror that demographic. What I don’t know is if the more recent subscribers confirm to that older, female demographic.
On the other hand, a couple of weeks ago I read a very fascinating piece that looked at a survey of people who bought books in the UK between 2013 and 2022. This study supported, to a degree, my assumptions about my readers. The data collected showed that the largest single genre that UK book buyers bought were books in the crime and thriller categories. When the study goes on to look at a breakdown of the age of these readers, what sub-genres they prefer, it is clear as well, that the people who prefer that genre as whole skew older, and that people who read historical mysteries specifically, skew even older.
30% of UK book buyers are 55 and older
45% of UK book buyers who read crime and thrillers are 55 and older
61% of UK book buyers who read historical mystery and crime are 55 and older
I would love to see similar data on US readers and for the sub-genres of science fiction, although from other articles about science fiction (versus fantasy) readers, the general implication is that this is an audience that skews younger and male than the readers of crime and mystery genres.
As for who reads my science fiction, while this is certainly a smaller audience for me, this might be the result of the fact thatI have been publishing my mysteries for longer (and have many more books in that genre) than is true for my science fiction series. And if I can judge by the reviews where people mention coming to the science fiction series after first reading my mysteries, I assume there is a good deal of cross-over between the two sets of readers. What I don’t know is if there is a particular kind of reader that is more likely to do this cross-over between genres.
Which brings me back to the question of why I should care about figuring this sort of information out, since I am am not interested in writing to a specific demographic. Well, again, the short answer is I’m curious about who is actually opening up my daily newsletter, and, part of the reason for that curiosity is that I would like to get a better idea of what topics you all would like me to write about. For example, I did do a poll that suggested that although very few of you are authors, that most of you still found the posts about being an indie author journey interesting. That was helpful.
That’s why, going into this new year, I am going to be putting out a number of polls, asking some basic questions of you. The more of you who respond (anonymously) the more I can can satisfy my curiosity and make some decisions about where to spend my time in terms of these posts. So, I really will appreciate it if you would take the time to click on the answers below.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to click on the poll!
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Keep up the good work/writing!