Analyze your Audience, Part I - by David Farland

From David Farland’s wonderful Daily Kick in the Pants Newsletter
Analyzing Your Novel's Audience:
 
I’m going to encourage you to learn to do your own audience analysis. Why? Because if you do, you might well begin to see things that others have missed.
Here is a list of the 20 bestselling novels of all time. The information comes from Wikipedia, is dated just a bit, and the list is obviously wrong. It shows Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows high on the list but doesn't show the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone anywhere at all. Since the first books in a series will always outpace the last books in sales (because there is always some falloff), it is obvious that we've got a problem.
Furthermore, sales of the Harry Potter books hit over 400 million for the series as a whole a couple of years ago in July. With seven books in the series, that means we have average sales of near 60 million copies, not the 44 million that was listed as the top sales figure here. In short, all seven books in the series should be on this list, not just the last book, and the numbers should range higher. But I’m not going to correct this list, because the truth is that I want to talk about more than just Harry Potter. Oh, and Twilight should be on here, too.
Title Author
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
And Then There Were None Agatha Christie
The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
She H. Rider Haggard
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco
Harry Potter / Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling
Jonathon Livingston Seagull Richard Bach
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
The Godfather Mario Puzo
Jaws Peter Benchley
Shōgun James Clavell
The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
Perfume Patrick Süskind
The Horse Whisperer Nicholas Evans
Now, given this list, I look for patterns in order to determine the elements that make a bestseller.
Settings
Let's start with the settings. How many of the books distance the reader from current time and space?
You'll notice that the first book on our list takes place six decades before the readers of the 1860s were around. Most of the readers wouldn't have been alive. It would be like me writing about JFK. Also, the book is set in two countries – England and France. In other words, no matter where you were living, the book offered some escape from the contemporary setting.
As you scroll through the list, you'll notice that about 35% of the novels are set in complete fantasy worlds. Most of the rest had historical ties. In each case where the novel doesn't distance the reader from the modern world, most of the novels take you someplace that you would like to go – a seaside resort, an island retreat, and so on.
So offering your reader escape seems to be something that most bestsellers have in common both in books and in movies. In Writing the Blockbuster Novel, Zuckerman says you should look to set your tale in places where the reader might want to go – exotic destinations like New York, Bombay, and London abound.
But what if you don't want to set your book in one of those places? That's all right, too. You can still entice your reader into your setting. For example, if I were setting a novel in Rigby, Idaho I might consider talking about the things that make Rigby one of the great destinations in the world – clear sunny skies, neighbors with high values, wild elk bedding down on the banks of the Snake River, and so on.
This is a key even in my genre of fantasy. Tolkien sold a lot of books, but one of the real reasons why is that Middle Earth is a great place to be. The Shire with its gentle Hobbits, its bounteous gardens and its innocence is a great place to go if you want to get away from real-world stress.
Beyond just the initial setting though, there are other questions to study. For example, does the setting move about? Or does the novel span dozens or even thousands of years? It's an easy thing for an author to talk about how glacial ice sculpted a present-day valley, or to throw in a story told by a grandmother to help set a scene. All of these techniques can expand the world that you're creating.

(Look for Part II Monday)