Introduction

Welcome! I hope you’re excited, because it’s time to dig in and have some fun! And I’m looking forward to helping you build out your marketing infrastructure.

This page is where you’ll find all of the training materials you’ll need for this cohort and you can navigate between the different sections using the tabs on the left (on desktop) and at the top (on mobile). If ever something isn’t displaying properly, please try refreshing your browser.

You’ll also receive emails most days with instructions and tips.

Remember that you have unlimited email support throughout this cohort. You can reply to any of my emails, or send a new email to support@panopticfoundations.com, or you can also use the Need a hand form in the sidebar.

To get started, please expand and review each of the sections below for your pre-cohort quests.

To get the most out of the cohort, I recommend trying to attend all of the live calls, and completing each task per day as recommended.

That said, life happens. If you can’t make a call, it will be recorded and added to this training section for you to watch at your convenience.

If you’re not able to attend a live call, I recommend sending me an email with your update and any questions you have. I’ll be your voice and share this information during the call and address any questions you submit.

Along the way, please share feedback abundantly. If something isn’t clear, that’s on me, not you. Never assume you’re the problem if something leaves you scratching your head or contradicts what you’ve learned elsewhere.

I don’t have a team of people running things for me. The materials are all created by me, and I’m the one who will read and reply to your emails. Your success is my success, so I really do want you to help me help you. We’re in this together.

I also encourage you to use the Community Discussions section below to leave comments and reply to each other.

In fact, let’s start with that. Drop a comment below to introduce yourself.

Once you’ve done that, move on to the Staying Organized tab.

Staying Organized

Staying organized is an important part of creating a smoothly running marketing engine. These steps are also part of forming good habits that will help throughout your author journey. So before we get started:

🦋 Quest Time! 🦋

To get the most out of this cohort, there are a few key things I recommend doing right away.

→ Block off dedicated time per day (when possible) to work on the materials. If you need to play a bit of catch up now and then, that’s fine too.

→ Use the 15-30 minute rule. As you work through any of the materials give yourself 15-30 minutes to figure it out. If you’re feeling blocked or frustrated, use the Need a hand form to reach out to me for help or clarification.

→ Create your Living Guidebook

You know that cool notebook sitting on your shelf that you haven’t found a use for yet? No, not that one, the other one. No, the one next to that one. Haha. Yeah, we both know you have a few to choose from.

By allocating a single spot for notes and exercises (like a digital folder or a notebook) you create a single source of truth for tracking information and progress. So, grab a notebook and dedicate it to these materials. Some Quests work better on a computer, but many work beautifully in a dedicated notebook you’ll refer back to.

A quick note:
Don’t get hung up on the format. If handwriting works for you, great, put that collection of pretty notebooks to use. But if typing or voice-to-text helps you stay more consistent, that works too. The act of capturing your thoughts is what matters for all of the Quests.

Whatever format you choose, this becomes your Living Guidebook. You’ll be adding information to it throughout the cohort and you’ll be referring back to it throughout your journey.

To get you started:

→ Write one sentence about why you joined this cohort so you can revisit it when you need a boost.

Week 1: Your Ideal Reader

An ideal reader is the perfect person for your book. They’re the one person who will love everything about your book as much as you do.

They’re someone who is obsessed with your book. This is a person who will talk about your book at every possible turn and insist to everyone they know (and don’t know) that they should read your book.

The reason we zero in on one specific person is so you can get hyper-specific in all of your messaging.

Your book is not for everyone. And while this is something we hear often, the reason behind why it’s important to remember this isn’t discussed as often.

The primary reason is specificity.

You may have heard the phrase, “When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.”

And that’s exactly what happens in all of your messaging when you’re not crystal clear about who you’re talking to.

Consider these two examples:

My book is a portal fantasy about a young woman who discovers she’s actually an elf with a hidden legacy. But can she come to terms with who she is in time to save her family?

Versus:

How the hell does someone reach the age of 20 and have no idea that they’re a friggin’ elf? Which is exactly the question Willow asks when her parents go missing and a trek through the woods, an unexpected dip in some quicksand, and an encounter with a freakish mega-lynx lands her smack in the middle of a LARPing convention. Except it’s not. It’s her homeland and her lifelong best friend, Jasper, knew! And to top it all off, Willow has exactly 43 days to learn a lifetime of magic to find and save her parents… and a sister she didn’t know she had.

The thing we’re looking at here is not which of these make for the best book blurb or query letter for an agent. What we’re looking at is the language and specificity. The first example is “accurate”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. But it’s vague, general, and not very interesting.

The second example is intentionally using some very specific language: hell, friggin’, trek, freakish… and specificity: age of 20, Willow, quicksand, mega-lynx, ‘lifelong best friend, Jasper’, 43 days, lifetime of magic, parents, sister…

That language and specificity is what will make messaging like this resonate with the right readers. It gives readers something to connect with and to make assumptions about. It raises questions that they want answers to. It gives them a sense of voice, vibe, and tone.

And it will absolutely repel some readers. Which is exactly what you want to do. It does you no good to water down your messaging to be “safe” in the hopes that more people will give your book a chance. Because ending up the wrong hands is how your books end up with no reviews, bad reviews, and no positive word-of-mouth.

When writing that second example, I pretended that I was giving a description to my daughter (who happens to be my best friend and ideal reader too). The act of being able to focus solely on creating a description for her not only changed how I describe things, but also made it infinitely easier.

You can test this theory with just about anything. If you want to experiment, try this exercise:

1. Write a social post draft describing your favourite book to “the internet”.
2. Now, describe that same book to your boss.
3. And then, describe that same book to your best friend who totally “gets” you.

For this to work effectively, you really need to get into the head space for each of the three examples. Try to visualize standing in front of your boss (or some other authority type figure) to describe this book. And imagine being with your best friend, in the moment.

For most people, the way they talk, their body language, their energy… will shift noticeably between those three scenarios.

And that’s exactly what will happen… in the best way possible… when you start talking about your book as if you are only ever talking directly to your ideal reader.

So, an ideal reader profile is a summary of that one specific person. This is one reason why most training taps into the stuff we’re more familiar with such as: age, gender, occupation etc. And yes, you’ll find those fields in the template when you get to it. They help with visualization.

But truly identifying your ideal reader goes much deeper. And going deeper is what we’re going to focus on the most.

Your tasks for this week are broken down into additional tabs on the left. They’re designed to be done in short segments each day, but you’re welcome to approach it however works best for you and your schedule.

My only request is that you listen to your body and mood. This isn’t a race. You’re not getting graded. There’s no “test” at the end. If you struggle with a piece, take a break. If you’re uncertain about something, reach out to me. And if you have an aha moment… also reach out to me, or drop a comment in the Community Discussion section below. I want to be part of the entire process with you and it would really help me to know which pieces “click” for you.

Here’s what this week looks like:

Monday: Introduction and orientation

• Live call at 12pm MT / 11am PT
• Join here

Tuesday: Define your book’s emotional identity

• Write a few sentences that describe the main emotions you want your book to portray.

Wednesday: Gather your research

• Find 1-3 comparable books with reviews.
• Skim read the reviews looking for ones that include specific details (emotion-based words, tropes, themes, character mentions) – copy each review into a Google Doc until you have between 12-24 reviews.

Thursday: Build your reader language bank

• Find the words: Go through the reviews and highlight words or phrases that are describing the reader’s experience and that are relevant to your book (you want wording that reflects both what your book does include and doesn’t include).
• Compile the words: Copy the highlighted text to a separate tab, doc, or spreadsheet (make sure to retain context) and group them into categories.
• Clean up your lists

Friday: Create your ideal reader profile

• Fill out the provided template as much as possible.

The schedule for which days to do the tasks is a recommendation only. Try to do something every day if possible, even if it’s just part of a task. But feel free to adjust things as needed based on your own schedule.

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Note: While not entirely the point of this topic, you might also be wondering about spoilers when it comes to specificity. So, the rule-of-thumb is that nothing in the first act is a “spoiler”. Sure, Willow’s encounter with quicksand and a mega-lynx is meant to create some tension and surprise the reader, but they happen in the first two chapters. Mentioning them like this doesn’t tell us exactly what happened, how, or why, but it does raise the stakes for the reader’s curiosity. Even the mention of her sister doesn’t “wreck” the book experience for a reader.

Define your book’s emotional identity

Step one is to define the emotional identity of your book as clearly as you can. This may be easier or more difficult depending on what stage your book is at, so remember: good enough, not perfect

The task is to write a few sentences that describe the main emotions you want your book to portray. If your book is finished, the most important part is how readers feel at the end of it. If your book isn’t finished yet, work with what you have and what you’re building towards. You can add the ending feeling once you get there.

It helps to keep in mind that people won’t remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. The same holds true for your book.

I’ll be using my own WIP as much as possible for examples throughout the training. I’m only at the end of Act 1 and I don’t have my end-of-book feeling yet, so hopefully my examples will help with understanding how imperfect you’re allowed to be and how much it will still help.

So for my example, I might describe the emotional identity of my WIP as: I want readers to have fun experiencing a girl getting dropped into a world everyone else already knows how to navigate, and to feel her internal conflict when it turns out her best friend knew the truth all along. It should be a witty and light-hearted experience, but her missing parents and the ticking clock need to actually matter.

But other people will probably describe the same concepts differently. Only you will know whether the research you find is aligned, because you understand the nuance and subtext that will be missing from the description you write. This is one reason it’s really hard to get someone else to do this for you accurately.

For example, for me my research might look like this:

• A girl dropped into a world everyone else already knows:
  • Aligned: Being capable of figuring out a new world on the fly.
  • Not aligned: A clueless MC who struggles to figure it out as she goes.
• Conflict over her best friend knowing all along:
  • Aligned: A best friend you want to be mad at, but just can’t.
  • Not aligned: The betrayal from her best friend hurt so good.
• Light-hearted, with stakes that matter:
  • Aligned: This nailed the banter and light-read vibe but still made me care about what happens.
  • Not aligned: Fun and a bit ridiculous, but still stressed me out.

Only I know which of those are aligned or not because of the additional context in my head. Some of what you find will sound different from your description but mean the same thing, and some will sound similar but mean something else.

Documenting your understanding of your book’s emotional identity, in your own words, is how you’ll recognize it when other people say it differently.

If you’re not really sure how to describe the emotional identity of your book, there are a few ways to approach it. Scan the exercises below and work with the options that make the most sense for you.

For any of these exercises, don’t look for the “best” polished or perfect wording. This exercise is for you. So make the lists and answer the questions in your own words so that you understand them.

If you’re writing for younger readers where you’re dealing with a split audience between kids and adults, start with a focus on the reader’s experience (the kids). Adjusting for the ‘adult buyer’ segment later is easier when you have the right picture of the emotional identity based on the reader first.

Audit your book’s tropes, themes, and emotional promise

Readers self-select heavily by vibe and trope. Seeing this on paper makes the connection clearer.

Write out a quick list of the following components that your book includes (and doesn’t include, if that specificity is relevant):

• Tropes (enemies to lovers, chosen one, power of friendship)
• Emotional tones (comforting, dangerous, romantic, whimsical)
• The “experience” your story delivers (what does it look and feel like to experience your story?)

Analyze your writing patterns

We often unintentionally write for people who share core emotional patterns, even if we weren’t intentionally writing for a specific reader. This is as much about who we want to enjoy our books as about who actually does enjoy them.

There are no right or wrong answers here. And this isn’t about getting prose-y or clever, just make the raw notes as they land for you. If you’re drawing a blank, step away and come back to it when you’re more focused and really in the mental frame of your book.

• What do you always come back to in your writing? (A type of character, a relationship dynamic, a kind of setting, a moment you keep writing toward)
• What themes sneak in no matter what? (Belonging, redemption, found family, second chances)
• What does the emotional journey usually look like? (Someone learning to trust again, an underdog earning respect, a slow burn toward connection)

Identify the emotional wounds your book heals

Readers often choose fiction that gives them something emotionally (comfort, validation, catharsis). In some cases, this might be something within your book that you’re not even aware of.

It’s also possible that your book is pure escapism or more of a fluffy read that isn’t intended to go deep. Which is totally okay.

If it is relevant and you can answer this question, it points straight at reader identity. But it’s not required information. A book that exists purely for fun still tells you who it’s for.

• What emotional gap does your book fill? (Feeling overlooked, wanting proof that things can turn around, feeling like an outsider, lacking trust in others or themselves)
• If it doesn’t fill one, what does it give the reader instead? (A fast escape, a good laugh, a puzzle to solve, a world to get lost in, a low-stakes comfort read)

Create a “gut instinct” reader profile

Trust your instincts here. If you overthink this, you’ll get stuck. Take a minute to think about your book, then answer these questions about the reader who would love it:

• What vibes should the book give them?
• What might they be obsessed with?
• What tropes will light them up?
• What do they likely avoid? (This is about what your book doesn’t include, like graphic violence, cliffhangers, or love triangles)

🦋 Quest Time! 🦋

→ In your Living Guidebook write out a few sentences that describe the main emotions you want your book to portray.

Remember, aim for good enough, not perfection. Some of these exercises are hard to do for many writers, so don’t beat yourself up if you struggle with them. Each time you revisit this information, you’ll get better at the process.

To start with, a lot of this information might be more about your own personal preferences. That’s okay too. We often write the book we want to read, and as unique as you are, there are people out there who align with you. The point is to bring all of this front-of-mind so you can make it tangible by writing it down, understanding it, and using it to guide your reader research.

However you approach this step, the output here should be a few sentences that describe the main emotions you want your book to portray. Written in a way you understand, so that when you’re doing the research that comes next you have a clearer idea of what you’re looking for.

Gather your research

Step two is to just gather the research you’ll be working with. There are many different ways to do research, and at the end of this topic I’ll provide some additional resources that you can use throughout your journey, if desired.

But for this cohort, I want to focus on the option that is the fastest, easiest, and most useful, which are reviews. Ideally, the reviews of your own book are the best source for this research. But I know reviews can be a touchy subject for authors. So for the sake of learning and understanding the process, while keeping the task safe and still useful, we’re going to work with the reviews of other authors’ books.

There are two steps for this task:

• Find 1-3 comparable books with reviews.
• Skim read the reviews looking for ones that include specific details (emotion-based words, tropes, themes, character mentions) – copy each review into a Google Doc until you have between 12-24 reviews.

Choosing Books

The goal is to identify 1-3 books that have some reviews and have a similar vibe or emotional resonance as your book. These could be official comps you’ve already selected, but they don’t need to be. This isn’t about finding comps for agents or shelf placement. It’s about emotional resonance with readers.

Think of them more like sibling books. Your ideal reader is going to read much more than just your book. Knowing what other books they enjoy reading will not only strengthen your research and marketing, it will also strengthen your relationship with them when you’re connecting with them.

Use the emotional identity statement you’ve written to guide your search through books in the same genre (ideally subgenres to get more specific), and look for covers and descriptions that you think will resonate with the same type of readers you want to attract. Books you’ve actually read will provide an even stronger match, but you can start with a best guess.

Don’t overthink the books you choose. Close enough is good enough. Over time, you’ll start to see what’s resonating and what’s not and you’ll revisit and refine this search process.

If you’re really struggling with finding suitable comps (that have reviews) there are a few ways to ask for recommendations:

• Ask friends and family who know your book for suggestions.
• Ask a librarian for suggestions.
• If you’re active on social media, try posting a “recs request” post. I’ve always had good success with this and one of my authors did this last week and was pleased with the results. You can see one of my posts here and her post here. Threads is particularly good for this, but if you’re not on Threads don’t get distracted with that right now.
• Ask someone you know who is active on social to post a “recs request” for you.
• Search social media for other previous “recs request” posts.

The key to asking or searching for recommendations is to lean into relevant keywords. You’ll notice in the two examples from Threads that they both use specific language that is relevant to the books they’re looking for comps for. This isn’t a sales pitch for your book, so there’s no refining of wording needed. Just tap into the most relevant components of your book.

Note: The publish date of a book isn’t as relevant for this exercise as it is when choosing comps for querying agents. It also doesn’t matter if the books are mega-popular. The more recent the reviews are the better, but even that has wiggle room, because all that really matters is that the language the readers are using is still relevant in today’s society, for your audience.

Choosing Reviews

Once you’ve picked your comps, you want to scan the reviews to find ones that may be useful and copy the entire review to a separate document. Aim for somewhere between 12-24 reviews. You can start with less and go back for more if needed. It’s not really about the volume here, it’s about what information you’ll be able to extract from them.

I find that copying each entire review to a separate document makes it easier to work with than working directly from the review platforms (whether it’s Amazon, Goodreads, Storygraph, the author’s website, or something else). So doing this from the computer is typically easier so you can copy/paste the text. (Mobile can be finicky with copy/paste.)

Fully reading and deciphering a lot of reviews can be time consuming and can quickly get overwhelming. So focus on scanning the reviews and look for specific details such as: emotion-based words, general vibes, tropes, themes, character mentions, etc.

The star-rating of these reviews is irrelevant. In fact, negative reviews can often tell you just as much as a positive review. But some reviews are nothing more than a brief line about whether they did or didn’t like the book (without the what included); others are basically just a recap of the book blurb. These types of reviews won’t help with your research. 

You’re not assessing the quality of the book, you’re looking for what readers are saying and how they say it.

But don’t agonize over the specific wording at this point, just try to get a general sense of whether a review seems to be emotion or reader-experience based and copy over the ones that are. You’ll look closer at the words and phrases during the next exercise.

If you can’t find at least 12 reviews that have some substance from the comps you’ve chosen, you may need to look for another comp or two.

🦋 Quest Time! 🦋

→ In your Living Guidebook, document the names of the comps you’ve chosen.

→ In a Google Doc (or similar) copy/paste in 12-24 reviews. (Make a note in your Living Guidebook of where you created/saved this doc.)

That’s all for this step. Whether you find enough reviews from one book or if it takes scanning the reviews of 3 or 4 books, the end goal is to get a pool of reviews (aim for 12-24) that you can work with. Once you start working with the reviews in the next exercise you may need to come back to this step to find some more. But start with this initial selection first.

While it might seem like copying more reviews at the start will save you time, that’s rarely the case. For one, it’s more data to sift through, but also, you’re looking for quality, not quantity.

Build your reader language bank

Step three is to dig into the reviews you’ve collected and start extracting words and phrases to build your reader language bank.

Reader Language Bank is simply a name I’ve given to the library of words and phrases you’re going to extract out of your research. You’ll use this throughout any type of research you do, and even with conversations you have with readers. The things people say to you can be added to this resource, and you’ll use this resource to help shape the way you talk about your book.

The process for this step is:

• Find the words: Go through the reviews and highlight words or phrases that are describing the reader’s experience and that are relevant to your book (you want wording that reflects both what your book does include and doesn’t include).
• Compile the words: Copy the highlighted text to a separate tab, doc, or spreadsheet (make sure to retain context) and group them into categories.
• Clean up your lists

The end goal is to create a quick reference document of words and phrases you can use anytime you’re creating content, whether it’s social posts, emails, a speech for an in-person event, or just to commit certain language to memory for casual conversations.

You’re looking for: feelings, reactions, and repeated phrases, as they relate to themes, tropes, character traits, plot points, etc. and specifically as they relate to your book. 

But don’t be too quick to skip information that seems irrelevant, opposite, or negative. Consider these points in terms of how your book handles them. You can often flip contradictory reviews to convey what your book actually delivers.

This entire exercise is as much of a thought exercise as a list-building exercise.

Some of the language you encounter will be a direct match that has you saying, “Yes! That’s exactly what my book is like, too.” Other phrases will need you to pause and reflect on what it is the reader is really getting at, and then figure out how to apply it to your book, using as much of their language as possible.

Remember that the point of doing this research is to gain a better understanding of your readers so you can shape your public-facing content in a way that will resonate with them.

Finding the Words

There are many ways to approach this, and you’ll need to play around a bit to figure out which approach works best for you. 

My recommendation is to create a colour code.

Something like:

• Blue = phrases that resonate
• Red = emotions & adjectives
• Green = reader-experience
• Yellow = tropes, plot points, character traits

Choose your favourite colours and group the words in whatever way makes the most sense for you, then create a legend that you can follow and refer back to. You can also layer highlights, such as a specific adjective in the middle of a full phrase.

You know yourself best. Approach this the way you’d approach editing. Maybe you start with a pass for all the phrases, then the emotions, then the tropes, etc. Maybe you work through each review one at a time, highlighting all the different relevant pieces. There’s no right or wrong way to do this.

You’re not reading for grammar or sentences; you’re looking for specific words that fall into the categories you’ve defined. And you want to highlight every instance of a word. Repetition is good here, especially when different readers are using the same words.

Pro tip: Use the search function for specific words. This can help with spotting patterns and is another reason copying the reviews into their own document is useful.

Many reviews include relatively useless information as well, like a copy of the original blurb or a simple statement that they did or didn’t enjoy the book. Feel free to cross out or delete these pieces to narrow down the text you’re working with since they don’t add any value to your research.

The only caution is to make sure you don’t remove context, and keep an eye out for hidden meaning. In some cases, it’s a phrase of 3 or 4 words that matters, not a single word.

If you want to go one step further, it can also be useful to contemplate a reader’s plot summary (when provided) as it compares to the author’s blurb or your own experience of a book. This can sometimes shed some light on how a reader experienced a story and what stuck with them. And it’s almost always connected to an emotional thread.

Compiling Words

For this step, I like to use a spreadsheet simply for the sorting abilities, but again, you can do this however works best for you.

The goal is to group the highlighted words and phrases by category. So all your blue highlights are together, then all your red highlights, etc.

This makes it easier to spot repetition, vibe trends, patterns, word association, etc.

You can also use the search function in Word or Google Docs to get counts of specific words.

If you use Scrivener

My personal favourite for spotting specific word repetition is the built-in word frequency count:

• Select the document with the reviews
• Go to Projects > Statistics
• Choose Selected Documents
• Expand Word frequency at the bottom
• Click the count column to sort

You can also select all and paste the list into a document or spreadsheet to work with them, or just add the totals next to words in your language bank. 

During this step, also consider any of the opposite or negative phrases you found and how you could flip them into something that is a positive for your book. Still use the same language the reader used, but reframe it.

For example, different readers prefer different pacing. So if a review says, “This story moved way too slow for me.” Take some time to think about the pacing of your story. Is it fast-paced or slow-paced? Neither is right nor wrong, but it is important.

If you’ve written a slow-paced story, you want to be upfront about that to help readers self-select, and vice versa. There’s no point in attracting readers who only want fast-paced stories if you don’t deliver that. Again, this isn’t about whether fast or slow pacing is better; it’s about setting up expectations for the right readers.

The one tricky thing you may run into is when reviewers are contradicting each other. One person says the pace is slow, but another person says the pace was fast.

That contradiction doesn’t actually matter much for your purposes. You’re not assessing whether the review and the book align with each other. You’re looking for language and then applying it to your book.

The point is to figure out how readers talk about specific parts of a book so you can mirror them.

For example, if someone says, “There was too much smirking,” that might tell you that readers who enjoy the tone that a lot of “smirking” creates will be drawn to your book. You can flip it into something like, “Is there really such a thing as too much smirking?”

It all depends on what experience of your book you want to lean into, while remaining true to the reality of the book.

So, don’t disregard phrases that suggest a reader doesn’t like something. Preferences are subjective, and what one person dislikes, someone else will like. It’s all in how you use the information.

Clean Up

Once you’ve got all your words and phrases grouped by categories and have added the usage counts, you can clean up your list to get rid of the duplicates.

You want to know how often certain words or sentiments are repeated, because they give you a sense of priority for when you use this language bank. But you don’t need the same word listed in your language bank multiple times if you have a count added to it.

This cleanup process will make it easier to work with your language bank moving forward.

🦋 Quest Time! 🦋

→ Find the relevant words in the reviews and highlight them.

→ Compile the words/phrases into a separate, organized list.

→ In your Living Guidebook document a few of the strongest vibe words/phrases that you’ve added to your reader language bank that really resonate with you. And make a note of where you saved your reader language bank.

After completing this step, you should have a solid start to your reader language bank that you’ll be able to draw from whenever you’re working on public-facing content for your readers.

The goal is to weave as much of this language into your messaging and content as possible so that your content is resonating with the right readers and repelling the wrong readers. Both sides of that coin are equally important.

You’ll continue to add to this list throughout your journey, especially as you start having more conversations with actual readers of your book.

Create your ideal reader profile

The tasks you’ve been working through so far should have really placed you in the mental space of the emotional experience of your book and the way readers talk about that experience in their own words.

That process alone gives you a better sense of who your ideal reader is and they should be starting to feel more and more like an actual person.

So now, you want to take that feeling to shape a documented ideal reader profile so that at any given time you can refer back to this profile to quickly get back into that mental space.

So your task for this step is:

• Fill out the provided template as much as possible.

If you like working with pretty templates, you can print out this PDF and fill in the blanks:

Ideal Reader Profile Template (PDF)

Ideal Reader Profile Template (Canva)

Ideal Reader Profile Template (Google Doc)

You can also just use the template headings to document the information in a notebook or a Google Doc.

You’ll notice that this template includes all of the traditional demographics that I’ve previously brushed off a bit. But as mentioned, this information is useful, it’s just not the whole picture.

The accuracy of traditional demographics is more important when you’re running paid ads as they’re a major factor when refining and targeting paid ads for maximum ROI (return on investment). But that’s not what we’re worrying about right now.

So your task here is to fill out as much of the information as possible that feels relevant to you when you visualize the perfect reader for your book. (Again, if you’re writing for a younger audience, that’s the reader you’re visualizing here.)

The entire point of this exercise is to: bring your ideal reader to life

For best results, don’t try to fill this template out “in order”. Meaning, start with what you know and the pieces that are the easiest. Then take your best guess at the rest of the information based on your own intuition, and leave blanks where you need to. It’s not about being “right” or “perfect” and you’re allowed to change information and fill in gaps later as this person becomes clearer in your mind.

Think of this just like a character sheet, right down to giving this person a name and finding a stock image of someone (or drawing a sketch) to visually represent them.

Most importantly, don’t overthink this. These aren’t trick questions and you don’t need to have an answer for everything. You only need answers that are relevant to your book.

For example, if you’ve written a cozy romance that doesn’t have anything to do with politics, then maybe the political views of your ideal reader are completely irrelevant. So, that’s your answer, or simply put N/A (not applicable).

If your language research gave you a sense that your ideal reader leads more of a professional lifestyle versus being nomadic, then that’s something you could describe under lifestyle, or maybe “Professional career type” is a personality trait.

It doesn’t matter where you put information, put it wherever makes sense to you and if there’s something you want to make a note about and there’s nowhere that feels appropriate, put it under Additional info.

Maybe you want to note that they’re part of a particular type of book club, or that they’re an empty-nester, or in the midst of a major career shift, etc.

If your reader language bank revealed some really strong, repetitive language that you want to highlight, drop it in the Key language box. But you’ll also use your full reader language bank along side this character sheet whenever you’re working on messaging or content.

The trick to creating a useful ideal reader character sheet is to think of them as a real person but in a way that specifically relates to your book and through the lens of the language research you’ve done. It makes no difference in the big scheme of things whether they prefer cats or dogs, unless you feel that it has relevance to the type of person who will enjoy your book and the experience they’ll have with it.

This is for your eyes only, and purely for the purpose of clearly understanding what it would feel like to have a conversation with this one, specific ideal reader who would be the biggest, most obsessed fan of your book.

That clarity is what will have the biggest and best impact on how compelling your content is to the right readers.

🦋 Quest Time! 🦋

→ Fill in as many blanks as you can in the Ideal Reader Profile template (PDF |Canva | Google Doc).

→ You can use the template, a separate doc, or write it out in your Living Guidebook. Just be sure to make a note in your Living Guidebook of where to find it.

You should now have a detailed Ideal Reader Profile (aka character sheet) and be able to clearly visualize a specific person that you can “talk” to anytime you’re creating content for your book.

It might take a bit of practice, but if you intentionally visualize this person and draw from your reader language bank every time you’re creating content, or even when you’re speaking to strangers, you’ll get more confident in how you’re talking about your book and you’ll never be stumped on what to say.

Ideal Reader Wrap Up

And that wraps up the tasks for week 1! By the end of this week you should have:

• A statement that defines the Emotional Identity of your book
• A strong start on your Reader Language Bank
• A documented Ideal Reader Profile

Remember that none of the information you’ve compiled throughout this week is carved in stone. This is a starting point that you will likely continue to refine and add to throughout your author journey. But you should now have a clearer picture of who your ideal reader is and the language that will resonate with them.

You’ll use this language throughout all of your messaging and content. And visualizing this ideal reader will help when creating the wording you use in your website, emails, reader magnets, and content (whether that’s on social media or in other places).

Drop a comment in the Community Discussion section at the bottom when you’ve completed the steps for this week. Were you able to create all three resources? Did you have any ‘aha moment’ insights throughout the process? Were there any parts you found to be particularly challenging?

No matter how much you got done, take a moment to celebrate! This is a big step that many authors avoid. You’re here, showing up, and that’s going to have a positive impact for you.

Live call for Q&A

We’ll meet for our first Q&A on Saturday, September 26th at 1pm PT / 2pm MT / 3pm CT.

If you can’t make the call, be sure to send me an email to let me know and to submit any questions you have so I can address them during the call. Also provide me with a brief update of how the tasks have gone for you this week.

Additional resources

During the cohort, I highly recommend staying focused on the specific tasks I’ve provided. That said, I do have a lot of additional resources and information on the topic of Your Ideal Reader inside the main Skystone Atelier training section.

If you find that you get through the tasks for this week and have some extra time, feel free to poke around the training topic Your Ideal Reader. You’ll find that some of the information is a repeat of what I’ve covered here, some of it goes deeper, and there are some additional options that I haven’t covered here.

You have access to these materials through until the end of the year, so you’ll have plenty time to investigate them later as well.

The reason I haven’t tried to address all of the points from that training is focus. The steps I’ve provided for this week have been streamlined for specific results.