Researching SF&F Audience

[Lance816]

Hello I am Andrew and I am on a journey to write a book series. I currently know the genre the series will fall under, Epic/High Fantasy with Hard Fantasy and Hard Science Fiction for the magic and technology within the series. This also puts be under Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as speculative fiction which is why I writing this post. I am trying to figure out my audience and what they like to read.

Tina Dubinsky was a huge insight as to my future audience and what they want. My own survey is a copy and paste of her survey for the first half while the second half of my survey has questions about themes I wish to include. Her survey can be found at the bottom or her article at Science Fiction and Fantasy Readers: more fantasy, less romance | Tina Dubinsky . While I can get updates on her data I wish to have my own data and my own questions answered which is why I created my survey. My goal is to also get around 200-300 respondents.

My survey can be found at Survey on Science Fiction and Fantasy Readers and I would like to make the additional request that those taking my survey also take Tina’s. Again since the first half of my survey is her own I want to help her out since she already helped me greatly with her article. I would also like to thank you in advance for taking your time helping me out by taking my survey.

 

[Malik]

Don't write what people want. Write what you want. In the end, you're the one you need to make happy. So, write unrepentantly. Write to shatter expectations. Approach every novel as if you want it mentioned in the first line of your obituary; as if this thing, right here, that you're typing, will change the world. And if you don't think it will, STOP. Then find something that will and write that.

Your duty is to the story that’s inside you.

Asking people's opinion before you create is the exact opposite of making art.

 

[CupofJoe]

Asking people's opinion before you create is the exact opposite of making art.

Malik isn't wrong but on the off chance you aren't writing art...
You could end up with an Edsel... Some that everyone says that they want but no-one buys...

 

[Malik]

on the off chance you aren't writing art...
You could end up with an Edsel... Some that everyone says that they want but no-one buys...

Also this.

 

[Russ]

Writing a book can contain a boat load of decisions. Some of those are artistic decisions, and some may be commercial decisions.

Depending on what your writing goals are, understanding your audience and what they want can be very important information for you. Most of the people I know who make their living at writing are always interested in this type of information.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

I get Malik's point, that if your heart isn't in the writing, you might as well not bother. No survey can tell you where your own interests lie.

But I also think a survey can be helpful to those who have many ideas and a desire for a target audience to help in narrowing down the field for their next project. I think the survey might also help with potential reader engagement, especially if you can use it to build an opt-in email list. The onus is on the author to use the survey results wisely.

I don't have time to take the survey right now, but I'll check it out later. Break time is over now.

 

[skip.knox]

I have a prejudice against surveys in general. To quote myself: if it can be summarized in numbers, it's probably not interesting. Or, to quote something even more obscure: surveys show that surveys show.

That said, one benefit of exploring genres and reader opinions (notice how I didn't say survey?) is to discover possibilities one had previously not considered. I have heard of genres I've never encountered. And I'm always interested to hear how people express their reading preferences. I don't look to them for guidance, but I have discovered in them possibilities.

 

[FifthView]

So I noticed that 40+ is all lumped together in the survey. Makes me feel really, really old.

 

[pmmg]

I think enough people said you should not look to a survey to tell you what to write, so...moving on from that.

I took the survey. Use it as however you find value. I found on some of the questions I could only pick the best of, and not all of the things I might have chosen, so...there is that.

 

[skip.knox]

So I noticed that 40+ is all lumped together in the survey. Makes me feel really, really old.

My favorite in various online forms is the dropdown list is Year of Birth. *scroll* *scroll* *scroll*

 

[Steerpike]

There's no requirement to write art. A lot of discussion on writing forums is directed (intentionally or not) to producing a commercial product first, and an artistic product second. If you're primarily looking at a commercial product rather than an artistic work, market research seems to me to make a lot of sense.

 

[Chessie2]

So...you're looking for hippies who like reading fantasy.

The best way to find your audience is to engage as one of the readers of the type(s) of books you're writing. This is something I'm still struggling with so I don't have any specific advice, but think of yourself as one of the readers of XYX type of fantasy books. Malik is a perfect example of that. Listen to him.

 

[skip.knox]

If you don't like reading fantasy, you were never a hippie. ;-)