* Where are they most likely to be when they are online?



* What web sites do they visit?

* What discussion boards do they frequent?

* What support/social groups do they belong to?

Asking each of these questions will be useful when developing your marketing plan.

Finding your target audience can be as simple as searching for keywords and phrases on the Internet or as detailed as doing research offline at the library. Either way, here are a few ways to make the process easier for you to determine if a market exists for your book idea.

Finding Your Audience Online

The Internet has become THE place go for information on any and everything. If your target audience exists, you'll find them there. The best place to locate your target audience is on bulletin boards, forums, and newsgroups. This is where groups of people come together to share ideas and stories, or to ask questions on a particular topic.

To quickly find your target audience online go to any search engine like Google and type in the keyword your target audience is most likely to use and add the word forum to the end. For example type "web design forum" and you will get a listing of web sites that have some type of forum that discusses web site design. For better search results put quotes around the keywords you're searching for and the results that come.

Here are a few combinations you can use (replace keyword with terms used by your target audience). Visit these places and find out what people are talking about. You will surely determine what to write about when you walk in the footsteps of your target audience.

"keyword message board"

"keyword bulletin board"

"keyword forum"

"keyword community"

Finding Your Audience Offline

An association is made up of groups of people who share a passion, interest, hobby or common characteristics and can be reached through the means that the association uses to communicate with its members such as newsletters, mass email, meetings and conferences.

There are hundreds of thousands of associations in the United States alone, and when

you factor in the International associations the research shows that there is an organized group for just about every special interest you can imagine.

The Gale Encyclopedia of Associations can be found in the reference section of most libraries and contains a vast amount of information on just about every association that exists. It is a great resource that few authors take advantage of when planning their marketing and promotional campaigns. Used consistently, this resource could help you to regularly identify new audiences to target with your book.

Another great resource is the Oxbridge Dictionary of Newsletters this resource not only confirms that a viable market exists but also offers a marketing outlet to share information about your book.

Plan a time when you can visit your local library, you will have full access to these and many more resources that usually sell for hundreds of dollars per volume and are updated often. The library is not only a no-cost way to find your audience, but it will also give you access to a librarian who can help you find the information that is best suited for your needs.

As an ongoing way to connect with the audience that you want to write for you can plan to attend live events that are sponsored by social groups and associations. Your local Chamber of Commerce generally has a list of events that it hosts as well as a calendar of events promoting other organizations events and meetings.

If your target audience is Moms, you might want to see if churches in your area have local Mothers of Pre Schoolers (MOPS) groups or maybe Missionettes meetings for adolescent girls and Royal Rangers meetings for young boys.