A few days ago, I made protein pancakes for dinner. My kids are 2 and freshly turned 5. Protein pancakes may not sound like something a kid would eat, but honestly, every time I cook, I roll the dice. I never know what they will eat on a given day.

Sometimes, they eat normal kid food like hot dogs or PB&J. Other days, they will eat chicken chili or shrimp with broccoli and rice. And sometimes, they ask for foods like mac n cheese or “Wendy’s burgers” and then refuse to eat them.

As it turned out, the older one enjoyed helping me make the pancakes and also liked the smell, but she didn’t like the taste. The younger one liked the first two bites and then refused to eat them (coincidentally after the older one refused to eat hers). She then proceeded to ask for an orange and a hot dog that she refused to eat as well.

Clearly, I have no idea what my children will eat, but to be fair, I don’t think they do either. But when you’re writing a book, knowing what your audience wants is vital to keeping readers engaged and selling books.

So how do you do that?

Asking everyone what they want to read about or learn isn’t a great way to go about it. So start by looking at what other books in your genre cover.

Go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads and read what reviewers are saying about similar books. Look at the five-star and the one-star reviews. People tend to rate items when they are passionate about loving or hating them, so take note of what they are saying.

Then make a list. Write down what the books do well. What do people like about how they cover the topic? What did people learn about the most? What was most important that people learned? Next, write down what they didn’t do well. Why did it earn a one-star rating? What did the book lack? What did people want to know more about? Where did they fall short?

Looking at your list, determine where you intersect with the list. What parts of it do you want to talk about? What is your forte? Do you know enough to cover what the books didn’t do well?

If your audience loves it or longs for it, chances are, it will be important to what you are writing.

As you lay out your outline, determine how you can work those topics in and focus on what your audience really wants to know.

Remember that you have a different experience from other writers and will bring a different point-of-view and solutions to the topic. As long as you aren’t copying their chapter structure or their ideas, you are fine!

Also, if you are in a field where information changes every few years (medicine and technology are good examples), then your ideas will be fresh and new, as well as needed.

You may also be looking at a subset of the audience for some of the books you examine, so take that into consideration. If you are writing for elementary teachers, you may be reviewing general texts or texts for secondary teachers to do your comparison. Think about how that will impact what the audience is looking for.

If you do your research, you will have much more luck with writing for your specific audience than I do with cooking for preschoolers. On that topic alone, I could write a book!