What do you expect when you pick up a book and start reading?

Since we are most of us authors here, how do you manage those expectations regarding your books?

To answer the second in part: you begin to manage expectations from the first look. Yes, I’m talking about the book cover. Yes, everyone judges books by their covers, even if they say they don’t. They can’t help it. You see first, unless you can’t see. Then, you are close enough to start reading. If you’re struggling with creating a book cover, check out this compendium of helpful articles and tools.

You, my dear author, presumably know what your book is about. If you don’t, well, may I suggest you do some investigation and find that out? Because it’s very difficult to set a book up for success if you haven’t an idea of what it’s about. I’m being gently facetious here, but I’m also speaking from experience. You have to know what the book is about, because then you can begin to know who might want to read the book. Not every book will be right for every reader. Putting your book in front of the right readers will most likely result in sales, and good reviews, which other readers will use as filters to determine if this book may be what they expect in a book. And so on!

Once you know what your book is about, you can begin the work of finding other books like it. No book is entirely unique. First of all, there are only so many plots in the world, and while you can and should have an individual take on one of those, you’ll also have company. Which is good! Readers like things, and they like to find more books that contain those things. Once you’ve found that niche of books like yours, which we also call a sub-genre, you can begin to determine the signals that successful books are sending to manage reader expectations. In company with Dorothy Grant, I’ve begun making trips to a local small bookstore to look at books (the same one which inspired this article). Most of the books there aren’t my cup of tea, however they are a powerful research tool in aggregate. Yesterday, we went to measure books. Turns out, most romance paperbacks are right about 5×8″ or perhaps as large as 5.5×8.5″ in trim size, but they are emphatically not 6×9″! This is useful information if you are designing a romance novel for print, which I am doing. The signals from the shelf matter, even if your reader is not conscious of them.

Once you’ve identified your niche, you can start to form a picture of the person who might enjoy reading your book. There is no way to identify the reader precisely, and demographics mean less than they used to. What you want is a perception of taste. Take five books that sit next to yours in the niche (always choose books with lots of reviews and high rankings), and this can include books that are off-niche but algorithmically adjacent. You are looking at the promise of the book, not always the category label. Read the five-star reviews and the one-stars. Write down the phrases that repeat: “I needed the comfort,” “I wanted the knife twist,” “too much spice,” “not enough plot.” Those phrases are the reader talking, even if not every reader, and can be used as a free gauge to measure by. Then look at also-bots and Goodreads shelves of people who loved those books. If you have the time, find out where people who read your niche hang out: Facebook groups, BookTok and it’s cousins in the shape of reels on Instagram and YouTube, subreddits. Lurk, observe what’s being said, and make notes. You’ll learn what they want, and what they hate. This can be very time-consuming, so set up timers and manage your time wisely here.

The point of the sketch is not to write a marketing-plan appendix. It is to stop shouting into a crowd and start setting a table for one kind of guest. Once you can hear that reader’s voice, you use it everywhere expectations are formed: the cover, the trim size, the first two sentences of the blurb, the categories, the look-inside. Those are the signals that tell the right person this was put here for me and tell the wrong person keep walking, which is a kindness to both of you. You will still be wrong in places. That is fine. Publish, watch which reviews echo the phrases you collected, and tighten the portrait. Taste is learned in public. Start with five comps and a timer. Write one paragraph about one reader. Then make the next marketing decision as if that person were standing in the aisle with you.