My Ideal Reader: Is She Out There?

Currently self-studying Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, and in chapter three have had to do exercises in discovering my ideal reader.

It seems rather odd to narrow down the type of readers I want. Shouldn't I try to please everyone? As my retailer father taught me, the customer is always right. Who am I to say that some customers are wrong?

But it seems that it helps to narrow your aim down to a core constituency, who will be your most loyal readers. Once you have that group captured and producing a good 'buzz' for your work, the other readers will come.

So I went through determining the gender, age group, politics, religion and interests of my ideal readers. Since I am somewhat of an outcast, an original, a person out of step with others, I put that in my ideal reader description, too.

This is my ideal reader:

"My ideal reader is an independent-thinking, Catholic (or Catholic-friendly), politically-conservative, prolife/profamily, brilliantly intelligent, very mature teenage girl (or youthful-thinking mature woman). She may consider herself an outcast or eccentric. She might have Asperger Syndrome or same-sex attraction/gay orientation. Her interests are likely to include cats, horses, farm critters, pioneering and exploring history, and foreign languages and cultures. She reads widely in many genres but likely has a preference for fantasy, science fiction, and/or western/historical books."

Well, that narrows it down. A lot. It was hard to do this, in a way it felt like saying to some potential readers that I was not looking out for them. But then, on the other hand, any reader who is mortally offended by elements in this reader description isn't likely to become a loyal reader. 

The readers who strongly identify with this description, on the other hand, are likely to become loyal readers, especially if I keep this description in mind as I write, and keep asking myself things like: what does this story have for the Catholic reader? For the politically conservative reader? For the teenage-girl reader? For the reader with Asperger Syndrome? For the cat lover? And so on.

Readers who don't strongly identify with the ideal reader description, but who are not mortally offended by it, might also become loyal readers if they find some of the things in the description interesting, or if they just happen to like my plots and characters. 

So: what do you think of my 'Ideal Reader' description? Do you think having an Ideal Reader description is a good idea for a writer? Have you ever written one of your own?