Reaching Your Demographic On Facebook

I recently read a study that showed that Facebook is by far and away populated by the young. It made me worry that if other authors read this study, it might discourage them from utilizng Facebook as a social network (unless they are writing for the young themselves, of course.) That's when I thought it might be best to issue a warning to my Sharing with Writers visitors and subscribers.

Look at your own friends at Facebook. They will be comprised of people of whatever age you want to appeal to because you invited them or they found you. Further, Facebook is sooooo huge there will be plenty of people in any demographic you need for your book. You'll never exhaust the possibilities. Further, age is certainly not the only way to look at a reading demographic. No single age groups has dibs on a particular genre. There may be women in their 80s who enjoy a good soience fiction story. If you write science fiction, why would you care how old she is!

I wouldn't care if the 90% of Facebook users were nonreaders under the age of five; if there were 6,000 over the age of five who might be interested in reading my book, those would be the ones I'd go after. Only 6,000? Well, by the time I exhausted that supply, more would have joined up.

And BTW, Facebook limits your friends to 5,000 anyway. There are surely 5,000 among the millions who will want to know what you have to say.

And while we're on the subject of that 5,000 limit...well, that limit is one reason many authors are turning to Fan Pages on Facebook. That's a different subject for a different day. Or for the comment section of this blog. Anyone care to share on that? Just search out the little orangey comments link below.


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.