Target markets
Jan. 25th, 2011 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blamebramptonAt work, I spend a lot of time thinking about target markets. These days I edit a mass-market magazine and my target market is young mums and single women, then nannas. I slip little jokes into craft stories so they will feel that the person on the other side of the magazine wants them to have a smile on their face as they contemplate whether or not they have enough energy to embroider anything this year, or whether they should just turn back to the food pages. As my first editor used to tell me, 'Never underestimate a mass market audience. They're usually not thick, though they may be drunk. God knows I am by the time I get home.' You can tell our offerings because they have bright pictures on the cover and names about homes, families, gardens and food, including adjectives like beautiful, delicious and stylish.
Back in the days when there was more money in print, I worked in news mags. We had a different target audience, and rather than inserting a joke to make your audience feel familiar, we were more likely to insert a pertinent reference (although very occasionally there was a chance to have a comedic pertinent reference, happy days!) This worked though, because the audience was either someone who would nod at the reference and sagely say 'Ah yes, I can see the parallels ...' or a student who would say 'Ooh! I want to learn more about that other thing so I can see how it fits in.' Both of them were made happy by this. These mags had Serious Photographs, or Clever Illustrations on the cover, and names including words such as finance, economics, bulletin, news and journal.
Further back in time, we helped out our target audiences in bookworld with covers. If you wanted something that said 'I'm terribly serious, probably studying formal logic' you would look for our offerings with stylised photographic covers and sophisticated typography and a line of understated support from someone like Salman Rushdie. If you wanted something that said, 'This is not my thinking time!' you looked for something with a lively illustration, loose typography in pink, green or Tiffany blue, and an effusive blurb from Helen Fielding.
The reason that I mention this is that there are few markers for target market in fandom. We tend to do our best in the limited opportunities we have. Warnings are a major trick: Dark fic, NC17 loads of porn, character death, heavily political, Abuse issues ... As a community, fanfiction is also pretty good at leading people in the right direction with our summaries and author notes, where it's not uncommon to read slightly spoilery material such as: full of fluff, considerable numbers of awful puns, significant heartbreak, contains mpreg and I am unashamed!
But for all this, there is little to guide a reader when you compare this medium to print. This sometimes leads to great unintentional comedy in reviews, as the wrong person reads your fic (the 'this fic would be improved by dropping the text speak you use with your young friends' person who read For the Public Good is still my favourite). Some people aren't your target market, and that's fine -- I'm not a lot of people's target market, either. For a start, I'm not really keen on porn, so I have to read a lot with my eyes closed. There's nothing wrong with that -- in fact I am often charmed and delighted when I find that a story resonates deeply with me despite being porny, and when someone who is very much not my target market nevertheless connects with a story of mine.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that while I did have a fit of giggles at the review I received today on ffnet that told me the reader had enjoyed a story 'Even if the chapters were REALLY REALLY long!', I also wanted to give the reviewer a big hug for not running away when he or she saw how long that scroll bar was. Bless!
Back in the days when there was more money in print, I worked in news mags. We had a different target audience, and rather than inserting a joke to make your audience feel familiar, we were more likely to insert a pertinent reference (although very occasionally there was a chance to have a comedic pertinent reference, happy days!) This worked though, because the audience was either someone who would nod at the reference and sagely say 'Ah yes, I can see the parallels ...' or a student who would say 'Ooh! I want to learn more about that other thing so I can see how it fits in.' Both of them were made happy by this. These mags had Serious Photographs, or Clever Illustrations on the cover, and names including words such as finance, economics, bulletin, news and journal.
Further back in time, we helped out our target audiences in bookworld with covers. If you wanted something that said 'I'm terribly serious, probably studying formal logic' you would look for our offerings with stylised photographic covers and sophisticated typography and a line of understated support from someone like Salman Rushdie. If you wanted something that said, 'This is not my thinking time!' you looked for something with a lively illustration, loose typography in pink, green or Tiffany blue, and an effusive blurb from Helen Fielding.
The reason that I mention this is that there are few markers for target market in fandom. We tend to do our best in the limited opportunities we have. Warnings are a major trick: Dark fic, NC17 loads of porn, character death, heavily political, Abuse issues ... As a community, fanfiction is also pretty good at leading people in the right direction with our summaries and author notes, where it's not uncommon to read slightly spoilery material such as: full of fluff, considerable numbers of awful puns, significant heartbreak, contains mpreg and I am unashamed!
But for all this, there is little to guide a reader when you compare this medium to print. This sometimes leads to great unintentional comedy in reviews, as the wrong person reads your fic (the 'this fic would be improved by dropping the text speak you use with your young friends' person who read For the Public Good is still my favourite). Some people aren't your target market, and that's fine -- I'm not a lot of people's target market, either. For a start, I'm not really keen on porn, so I have to read a lot with my eyes closed. There's nothing wrong with that -- in fact I am often charmed and delighted when I find that a story resonates deeply with me despite being porny, and when someone who is very much not my target market nevertheless connects with a story of mine.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that while I did have a fit of giggles at the review I received today on ffnet that told me the reader had enjoyed a story 'Even if the chapters were REALLY REALLY long!', I also wanted to give the reviewer a big hug for not running away when he or she saw how long that scroll bar was. Bless!
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 01:58 pm (UTC)It's actually a maxim that works well in all journalism, because the clearer and simpler you can make something, the better it generally is.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 03:03 pm (UTC)Aww, what a sweet ffnet review! :) Really, it's a precious moment of connection with your audience. :)
You know, now you got me thinking about target markets. Whose target market am I? If I have book needs that are unsatisfied - I want to read a book that has this & this & this but I can't find it - where do I have to look?
For example, I want a book with gay werewolf protagonists, but without sex or romance, about the current political and environmental affairs and with aesthetic references to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Victorian era (I'm not picky). Fairly mainstream writing - not Palahniuk-type edgy, just a book. I don't care if it's a steampunk thriller or a sci-fi whodunit, but it has to be humorous.
So, I know what I want. I come to a bookstore/libary. Search. They don't have it. Ask. They don't have it.What do I do now?
Is there a secret bookcover/key word code to crack? Because so far my blurb search led me only to very poorly written "werewolf monsters eat everyone" pulp fiction and Twilight.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 03:07 pm (UTC)I have to confess that I have a sizable part of my back brain trying to come up with a seminal werewolf origin story: there is a hole in the market for one!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 03:15 pm (UTC)It's a stonking big book that was written in language that allows it to be marketed as YA literature at the same time as being all at once an intense treatise on what it means to be human and an individual; as postmodern romp through genre fiction; and a darkly hilarious piece of social criticism. I am a big Millar fan, though his language is very idiosyncratic, so he is a love of loathe writer for many people.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 03:29 pm (UTC)I liked Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel" and Max Frei's "The Stranger", but I'm looking for something less from the realm of fanciful, mind-labyrinth fantastique and more like sturdy, in-your-face, vigorous fantastique that spreads the message of kindness. Um, like a sandwich where Borges and Ghelderode are the bread, and some inspirational philosophical basis is butter (like in "The Name of the Rose"), and critique of contemporary economy & politics is jam.
(As you have probably guessed, people in bookstores don't like dealing with me. *g*)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 04:11 pm (UTC)I do wish I knew the commenter so I could give her or him a hug. It's a lovely thing to have someone see something they don't like and trust you to make it worthwhile anyway!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 04:45 pm (UTC)Although leopard slug mating is strangely lovely: http://oregonstate.edu/dept/nurspest/Limaxmaximuscourtship.htm
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 08:29 pm (UTC)As for formal logic, I would like to point out (respectfully) that it is not necessarily such a stuffy and serious pursuit as it is sometimes made out to be. The theory of modal realism, for example (which is respected, if not widely supported), supposes that every AU actually really exists. Including, even, the ones where Fathers is finished. And the ones where it is true.