It’s a question that all independent publishers have to think about at some point in the process of writing a novel: when it comes to time to publish, who should you be targeting with your book?

There are a few different issues to think about here, and they can all affect who you eventually decide to aim your book at. For example, the type of story you’ve written will undoubtedly have an impact on the age range you target, as well as the genre. How you publish your book might also have an impact. Something else to think about that’s linked to this is how people read – does your target audience tend to go for print books, or are they more likely to read e-books?

An interesting finding to come out recently is that if you’re looking to self-publish an e-book, you might want to seriously think about targeting older readers. It can be tempting to think that it’s more likely to be the younger readers out there who have e-readers, but in fact, people over the age of 55 are currently more likely to have them than younger people.

Mintel, a research group, found that 22% of people under 55 have an e-reader, while 29% of people over 55 have one. This might not seem like that much of a gap, but it’s still significant and definitely worth taking notice of when you’re planning things such as how to market your book. And, when you think about it, it sort of makes sense that older people would be more likely to have an e-book, if only for reasons such as the fact they can enlarge the text and they’re easier to hold than many print books.

So it’s important to do our research when we’re independently publishing an e-book; they’re read by a wide range of people, and we need to make sure we cater to all of them.

You can read more about the findings of Mintel’s research here.