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FaithfulReader.com: Who do you think is the audience for Chick Lit?
Allie Pleiter: I believe the Chick Lit reader thinks of herself as intelligent, opinionated, and young-minded, if not chronologically young. She holds her world under a microscope, analyzing it and how it affects her. She sees the flaws in her world, even when she's helpless to correct them. Mom Lit takes that a step farther to add a certain maturity, a certain wisdom about what's really important to her and to her world.
Judy Baer: When I imagine my readers as I'm writing, I visualize clever, savvy, contemporary individuals who like to laugh, who read to relax, who know what's going on in the world, and are managing their lives and juggling their relationships as best they can.
I believe readers are responding to these new sassier Christian women because they see themselves in Chick Lit heroines. These heroines are funny, quirky, struggling, faithful, joyous, vulnerable, witty, idiosyncratic, authentic, happy, sad --- so human and so real. Chick Lit heroines aren't perfect, but they always have their eye on their goal: to honor God in their lives and to have a relationship with Him. No one's faultless and Chick Lit protagonists are more than willing to admit it. The reader is allowed on the journeys these women take. And there are lots of people who simply want the story but not the sex scenes.
Tracey Bateman: It has been suggested that the Chick Lit audience is mainly the young college-age woman through maybe thirty years old, especially singles. But I disagree, mostly because I love Chick Lit, and I'm a mid-thirties wife and mom of four. My mom likes them too, and although I wouldn't dare mention her age, let's just say she's even older than I am. So I think anyone who likes in-your-face honesty in fiction, combined with a cynical wit, is a great audience for this genre.
Mom Lit will appeal to any woman who has ever been a mom or had a mom. It's sort of all-encompassing, and if the voice is strong, the heroine will become "every woman" and the reader should be able to find some aspect of her own life in part of the heroine.
Laura Jensen Walker: Any woman with a sense of humor --- and some men too. Although the original target audience was single working women in their twenties and thirties, that's changing and broadening. There are lots of single and married forty-something, fifty-something and even sixty-something women who enjoy Chick Lit also. (One thing I've discovered, however, is that women who never did the single, on their own, independent lifestyle, but went right from their parent's home to marriage, don't understand it or relate to it as well.)
Robin Jones Gunn: With the expansion of Chick Lit avenues to include Mom Lit, Lad Lit, etc. the audience circle seems to have grown. It seems nearly every age group of women readers have a particular niche that applies to them. Based on the mail I've been getting in the past year and a half since the first "Sisterchicks" book came out, the readers are between 15 and 75! I'm not sure if that helps to really target the audience or simply show that Chick Lit authors have the attention of plenty of readers at present!
Sharon Dunn: The targeted audience was the under-35 female, but I have readers across the board from grandmothers to teenagers. I don't think you have to be young and single to relate to Chick Lit. I think you just have to be female and breathing. I've gotten email from a few guys too. I write in a subgenre because I write Chick Lit mystery, so I think that's where the male readership might come from.
Annie Jones: I don't happen to think it's limited to young women. I think a lot of women today identify with a character with imperfections.
Neta Jackson: Supposedly the twentysomething and thirtysomething single females. But I know that my "Yada Yada" readers come from a much broader base --- age-wise, culturally, racially, denominationally, and marital status.
Lori Copeland: Women of all ages. Women love these books because they see themselves in the characters' catastrophes and accomplishments.
Penny Culliford: Mainly women in the 20-50 age group, I would think.
Kristin Billerbeck: I think all women can identify with Chick Lit. Although I target younger women with my books, I hear from their mothers as well. I think it's a good escapist plot for a woman to be able to get lost in a lighthearted book, and if they get the message, even better!
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