Who is Your Book's Ideal Reader?

Define your ideal reader and market to him/her.

 

This oft-repeated advice is sound, but difficult to implement, for me anyway. Thus, I haven't spent much (any) time thinking about it in depth. I could possibly come up with a fictional persona that would be semi-accurate, but then what? The few times I purchased ads that allowed me to target an audience, I basically chose "women age 18-65". There ya go. There's the extent of my ideal reader marketing.

 

The problem with this counsel is, there's never a Part 2---how and where do you market to that ideal reader? The one person I read who even attempted to follow up on it pretty much whiffed. He used the example of a specific medical condition and advised finding online forums for people who share that malady. Well, fine, but my MC's in general are freakishly healthy. I'm not criticizing him; at least he tried. I'm still convinced, though, that metadata is the only real way to draw in that "ideal" person. And even that's a crapshoot.

 

AI tells me that my ideal reader is a "hopeful realist". Hey, that's me! I'm my ideal reader! The hopeful realist would hate it if my novel had a dark ending, and they're in luck---I don't like dark endings, either. I even liked the fact that "Once Upon a Time in America" portrayed an alternate reality, one that didn't happen in real life.  

 

All of this leads me to today's question(s): As an author, have you created a character study of your ideal reader? If so, how specific did you make it? And did it turn out to be accurate? Did you target your advertising/promotion to appeal to that imaginary person?

 

As for me, since my only ideal reader is apparently myself, it's time to start buying my paperback in bulk.