From Clare London:
Today I am shamelessly snatching text from Nathan Bransford's excellent blog, a post about writing to market (or not) that I bookmarked some time ago when I was considering exploring a new genre. I'm still considering where and what I write in 2018! and advice like this is always interesting and refreshing.
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You'll occasionally hear advice around the
publishing-o-sphere that you should just write what you want, don't worry about
the market one whit, and just let the chips fall where they may.
This is somewhat true, but not endlessly true.
On the one hand, yes. Definitely. You should absolutely
write the book you want to write and consider whether what you want for your
book is more consistent with self- or traditional publication. But if your goal
is to be traditionally published, especially by one of the major publishers, it
doesn't pay to just ignore the market entirely.
Here's what I mean (and don't mean) by this.
Don't chase trends
What people mean when they tell you to write what you want
to write is that you shouldn't try to chase a trend. Because of how long it
takes to write and publish a book, if you try to jump on a currently hot trend,
you're already too late.
When it comes to trends, definitely ignore the market.
Do pay attention to genre conventions and word counts
Some genres are stricter than others, but you should be very
familiar with the genre conventions (especially for romance) and the general
word count ranges for your genre.
Word counts aren't a be-all-end-all and you should feel some
flexibility there, but the farther you stray from your genre's word count sweet
spot the harder the sell your book may be.
It's hard to break the mold with a debut
Every commercial art medium has megahit unicorns that defied
genre conventions and were strikingly original.
But when you think back to many of these hits, they were
often written/made after the artist was already established in their field with
more conventional works.
George Lucas made American Graffiti before Star Wars.
Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote In the Heights before Hamilton. Herman Melville wrote
the more conventional travel book Typee before he wrote Moby-Dick and, more
recently, John Grisham established himself writing legal thrillers before he
veered off to write about high school football coaches and football players
living in Italy and baseball players just to mix it up.
Success gives you artistic license and credibility to get a
little wild. It's harder to do this right off the bat.
There are always exceptions
Sure. You can think of a million exceptions to the above
rules. There are always going to be books that are just so magical they make
everyone ignore all those supposed "rules."
But if you are going to break the rules you should do so
consciously and with care.
So while you should absolutely write the book you want to
write and figure out what's most important to you, if you care about commercial
success at all it pays to have the market at least somewhat in mind.
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~~www.clarelondon.com~~
Clare London took
her pen name from the city where she lives, loves, and writes. A lone, brave
female in a frenetic, testosterone-fueled family home, she juggles her writing
with her other day job as an accountant.
She’s written in
many genres and across many settings, with award-winning novels and short
stories published both online and in print. Most of her work features male/male
romance and drama with a healthy serving of physical passion, as she enjoys
both reading and writing about strong, sympathetic, and sexy characters.
