Readers buy books for the transformation they promise, not because of who wrote them. Julie Broad shows how knowing your exact reader—their 3 AM worries, not just their age or income—makes the difference. Her book More Than Cashflow sold because readers recognized themselves in a Starbucks job comparison.
Chapters
The reader isn't buying that motivation. They are buying what's in it for them. What transformation is going to happen? So even if you're writing a memoir, we're still thinking about what is the reason the reader is picking this book up? Why do they want to know about this particular story? So that means you need to know who your reader is. A lot of people come to me and I get this one all the time. Oh, it's for women between 40 and 60. Okay, I was a geriatric mom. That is a very different stage of life than the majority of my friends that I grew up with that had their kids in their 20s. We're all 40. I run a business. Some work for companies, some work in a shop. Very different. We have different problems. We might have certain universal needs, but there's different things. Knowing what I'm worrying about in the middle of the night versus what one of my friends is worrying about, that's really, really important. If you know your reader so well that you can go, "Okay, it's 3:00 AM. This is what they're thinking about." Now you're starting to know your reader because that dialogue that's happening in their head is really important to know. In my book, More Than Cashflow, I say sometimes I think a job at Starbucks would be easier. And do you know how many people came up to me and said, "Oh my God, that's what I've thought too." When you're dealing with the tenants and the toilets and, you know, all the things breaking down, you know, dealing with all that fun, you think, "Oh, those people at Starbucks, they get benefits." That was me, 'cause I wrote the book for myself, you know, a few years prior. But if you can write something that somebody comes up to you and goes, "Oh my gosh, I've thought that too," like, that is when you know you know your person.
