How to Write the Audience Section of Your Book Proposal (Without Creating a New Audience
When you submit your academic research to a conference or journal, the audience is already established.
When you propose a book for a series, the audience is defined by the editors of the series.
But when you propose a standalone book to an academic or university press, you have to specify the audience yourself in the proposal. And this is a step that can feel daunting.
I’ve written four books with academic presses. Here’s what I learned about the audience section of the book proposal, and why it’s not as hard as it feels.
Why the Audience Section Feels Overwhelming
The audience section of a book proposal is challenging for a few specific reasons:
Academics are trained to write for peer reviewers, not identify readers. In academic writing, the audience of our work is often assumed. Our audience is comprised of scholars in our field from dissertation committees, to peer reviewers, or journal editors. We don’t typically have to make an explicit justification regarding who will read our work or why they'll care.
It’s easy to confuse “audience” with “everyone who should care.” When writing a book proposal the tendency might be to claim the book matters to scholars across multiple fields, students at all levels, policymakers, and general readers. Basically our book matters to anyone who should care. But presses aren’t asking who should care about the significance of your research. They're asking who will actually read your book.
We worry about sounding presumptuous. Claiming that your book is relevant for “scholars in X field” can feel arrogant. Claiming “general readers interested in Y” can feel like we’re overselling the value of our work. The audience section requires us to make claims about readership that might cause us to feel uncomfortable.
The Mistakes I Made (And What I Learned)
Book 1: Trying to Create an Audience
When I wrote my first book proposal, I tried to identify a broad and unique audience I thought I was “creating.” As someone who was working from interdisciplinary perspective, I thought I needed to position my book as opening up new conversations and reaching readers who hadn't engaged with this kind of work before.
One editor’s feedback: “I’m not aware of anyone who is talking about your topic.”
I didn’t need to create readers. I needed to join a conversation that already existed.
Book 2-3: Overthinking It
I felt uncertain about claiming audiences for my work. Would scholars in adjacent fields (whom I had never read or cited) actually find value in my work? Was I allowed to claim that graduate students in specific courses would read my work, or did I need to find proof of interest in adopting my work for specific courses?
The trouble came from thinking I needed permission to claim an audience for my work, or that I needed proof that scholars and students would use or buy the book.
Book 4: What Finally Worked
By my fourth book, I stopped treating the audience section like a defensive justification. I started approaching it like a realistic explanation of the conversations I was joining.
Shifting from “Who should care about this?” (defensive and hesitant) to “Who is engaging these kinds of question” (confident and grounded) enabled me to more clearly articulate the potential audience for my research.
The Three Questions I Ask When Naming the Audience
Here's how I think about audience now, and what I recommend to faculty working on book proposals:
1. Who am I in Conversation With?
The scholars whose work you're building on, responding to, or extending. Your book is your turn in an ongoing scholarly conversation.
This isn’t a literature review. These are the core scholars whose work directly shapes your project. If you’re writing about a specific topic, who are the other people currently writing about that topic whose readers would also find your book relevant?
For Example: Scholars working on topic x, particularly readers of scholar A and scholar B, will find this book directly relevant to ongoing questions about y.
2. What graduate seminars would assign this?
This isn’t a hypothetical guess about the kinds of graduate courses that might assign your book. This is a chance for you to research and name specific courses at specific institutions.
This helps name the audience in concrete terms, and it shows the disciplinary relevance and position of your book without requiring you to guess about who might be interested.
This kind of specificity helps signal to the press the real potential for adopting your book.
3. What books do I read that are adjacent to mine?
Who else reads those books? That’s likely your audience too.
Look at your comp titles. You probably need to have about 3-5 comparable titles in your proposal of books that are similar in scope, approach, or audience to yours.
Who reads those books? Your book will likely reach some of those same readers, in addition to the audience of readers who are specifically interested in your particular topic.
You’re not inventing a new audience or readership. You’re joining one that already exists.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Here’s an example of how this approach translates into actual proposal language:
Instead of writing: This book appeals to scholars across the following 9 fields, graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, policymakers working on the following issues, and general readers interested in questions about (insert topic).
Try: “This book joins ongoing scholarly conversations in 1 primary field, one adjacent field (particularly work on specific topic). Readers of (specific book 1) and (specific book 2) will find these arguments directly relevant. The book is designed for graduate courses on the following specific topics, and will appeal to scholars working on this particular topic, argument, or using this specific method.
The difference?
The first version claims everyone should care. The second version identifies conversations and scholars already engaged with these questions.
You Don't Need to Create an Entirely New Audience
The biggest shift in how I approach the audience section of an academic book proposal:
Stop trying to prove that your book matters to people who aren’t already engaged with your work.
Start identifying the scholarly conversations and researchers that are already asking the questions and engaging with the methods and theories that your book addresses.
That is your audience.
You’re not creating readers from scratch. You’re finding and naming the readers who already exist which includes the scholars working on similar questions, using similar methods, and the students who are enrolled in related courses. These are the conversations and readers that your book engages.
The audience section isn't about aspiration. It's about recognition.
Recognizing who is already talking about these topics. This is your opportunity to show the press you understand the scholarly conversation you’re engaging. Your audience section is an opportunity for you to demonstrate that there are active conversations (and communities) who will engage with your work.
That’s what presses want to see.
And it can also help you strengthen and clarify the argument you are making and presenting with your book.
Next Steps
If you're working on the audience section of your book proposal:
List the scholars whose work most directly relates to yours. Who are their readers? That’s a good starting place for clarifying your audience.
Identify 2-3 graduate courses that would assign your book. Be specific about the course topics and institutional contexts.
Look at your comp titles. Who do those books reach? How does your book extend or add to those conversations?
Write 2-3 paragraphs that identify these audiences clearly and specifically, without making claims that everyone should care.
You don't need to create an audience. You just need to recognize the one that's already there.
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Working on a book proposal and want strategic feedback? I offer Strategic Diagnostic Reviews: a detailed assessment of your draft with concrete next steps. Learn more here.
Chris McRae, PhD — provides strategic support for faculty developing book proposals and navigating scholarly publishing, drawing from experience on both sides of the process as author and advisor.
Aubrey Huber, PhD — Co-Founder & Academic Coach specializing in dissertation-to-book projects and high-stakes academic communication. She brings expertise in helping scholars position complex research for university presses and navigate institutional review processes.