Attitudes Sell Fiction
L et’s talk about demographics and psychographics . Demographics deal with such things as sex, race, age, income, education level and location, among other things. Psychographics deal with personality, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. There’s a fuzzy line between the two, since things like sex, race, age and education level can indicate some things about a person’s attitude, but it is helpful to think of them as separate. If you are trying to sell a how to book, demographics are likely more important than psychographics. If the book is about how to write a device driver for a new piece of hardware, your target audience is like to be highly educated in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science. That could also be considered a firmographic (dealing with a person’s firm). But when we move over into the fiction world, demographics aren’t as important. If we write a story that takes place in New York, we can’t assume that someone in Los Angeles won’t be interested. Just becau...