Stories about American History aren't selling well

Not really, Belle. There's been talk that this sesqui-centennial of the Civil War will help interest in novels about the period, but, not sure there's much evidence of that yet. Puma

I think these things probably go in cycles. You get a period of history being popular, everyone writes a book about it, people get bored of so many books on a subject then move on to something else. Look at The Holy Grail and the Knights Templar. A couple of years ago you couldn't move for books about the Templars holding the Grail. I don't know what the latest thing is (I haven't really been paying attention) but I expect American history will become popular again.

Well, American publishing is in a state of upheaval right now. Everything from e-books, Amazon-like mail order services and the bankruptcy of Borders is having an effect. Speculative publishers are buying less, paying less for what they buy, and taking more and more rights. Also, since the kindle store, smashswords and sites of their like are gaining popularity--and more than a million self-published authors are making e-readers into charged slush readers--newer works of quality are getting harder and harder to find.

I'll wager these are having the greatest effect on the American market right now. The e-books revolution is, thankfully, mostly contained in the states.

I lament the fact that it'll be difficult to add to my more than 1000 physical library.

In my market (Christian fic), American-set historical has never been stronger. The hard-sell is a book in a non-US setting. I'm told there is "no market" for stories set in the middle ages, in the Engiish Tudor period, the Italian Renaissance, in restoration England, in Russia, in India...you name it, we're told we can't sell it.

So if there are those here whose work might be a good fit for a Christian house, you might want to consider subbing your US-set work to one of them.

Civil War stories are supposed to be popular in this period - but I'm not sure they are - yet. Puma

Belle_91 said:

A friend of mine told me that stories set during American history--like the Civil or Revolutionary War--weren't selling as well as those set in England.

Has anyone published a story set in America--or heard of one--that did sell well.

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Cold Mountain kinda did pretty well not so long back. And before that there was that Gone With the Wind thing.

caw

I think if you write a really good book, it will sell no matter the period.

It'd be nice to see some books on American history that avoided the Civil War, Revolutionary War and the Wild West, or at least covered them without buying into too many tropes and cliches.

Kitten said:

It'd be nice to see some books on American history that avoided the Civil War, Revolutionary War and the Wild West, or at least covered them without buying into too many tropes and cliches.

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The Given Day by Dennis Lehane is one of my recent favorites. Set during 1917-1920 period in Boston, it deals with labor upheaval, possible anarchist threats, Babe Ruth, the Influenza epidemic, the molasses flood, the side effects of the war...

It is now in my Top 5. American history that doesn't deal with the Civil War, The Rev War, or the Wild West. And excellently done.

Alessandra Kelley said:

There is a cycle. The last real upswing I noticed was in the 1990s. As we approached the millennium there was a lot of historical fiction, although now I think about it, most of that sort of thing I was reading then was YA. I don't know if it applies to adult fiction.

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This is the first thing I tend to look for since it's my favorite genre, with or without the creative non-fiction aspect, and I've been seeing plenty the last few years. Here's what I've been picking up:

* The Paris Wife- Paula McLain (Paris in the 20s [Hemingway])- 2011
* 31 Bond Street- Ellen Horan (NY- pre Civil War [based on a real crime of the period])- 2010
* Dark Hearts of Chicago- William Horwood and Helen Rapaport (Chicago- 1890s)- 2007
* Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet- AW's own Jamie Ford (Seattle- WW2)- 2009
* Paris Requiem- Lisa Appignanesi (Paris 1899) - 2001
* A Reliable Wife- Robert Goolrick (Wisconsin 1907)- 2009
* Water for Elephants- Sara Gruen (USA, depression-era)- 2006
* The Day the Falls Stood Still- Cathy Marie Buchanan (Canadian side of Niagara Falls, WW1 era)- 2009

Kitten said:

It'd be nice to see some books on American history that avoided the Civil War, Revolutionary War and the Wild West, or at least covered them without buying into too many tropes and cliches.

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I think that's the problem with both the Civil War and Revolutionary War. Everybody thinks it's cliched. If you are a student of history and know what you are writing (and/or reading), then it shouldn't be cliched. The real issue at hand is preference. You either like that era or you don't. There are certain cultural markers that have to be tackled in a Civil War novel. Some might call those cliched but they're not.

I think the Civil War era has been so maligned, it may be impossible to redeem it. What a lot of people take for granted as true really wasn't. Like all southerners owned slaves and signed up to fight for slavery. Um, no. I think something like 2% of the southern population owned huge plantations with with hundreds of slaves. I believe I read once that the overwhelming majority of slaveholders only owned a handful of slaves. My own family were dirt poor farmers with no slaves before the Civil War, but they fought for the south because ultimately, they didn't want to be told what they could and could not do. Just like now...we don't like people coming down and telling us what to do.

So why should anyone avoid the era just because some people have a "Gone with the Wind" complex, which for all intents and purposes, was not the most historically accurate novel out there? If you break it down past what some consider "cliched," it is a fascinating time period. The entire course of our nation was changed because of a war. The same could be said of the American Revolution. Of course both periods are popular--there is endless fodder to be fictionalized! There are so many different POVs.

Personally, I'm sick to death of the Tudor era. How many novels about Anne Boleyn can the market bear? Apparently a lot. I don't understand it, but that doesn't mean new offerings are not worth while. I used to love that era, I will still occasionally read books from that era, but I wish the market would move on. But it won't because people buy books from that era. It's not cliched, it's preference. The same could be said of the Marie Antoinette/French Revolution. That's quickly becoming the new hot topic in historical fiction, IMO. How long will it take for people to consider it cliched?

But with that being said... As the Hip-Hop-a-potamus, there seems to be an upswing in American historicals lately. Ciji Ware, Megan Chance, and Daisy Goodwin are publishing late 19th century historicals that are either wholly set in the US or feature a part of the story in the US. Mary Sharratt, Kathleen Kent, and Sally Gunning are putting out novels set in the early days of the American colonies or during the American Revolution. Nevertheless, some agents are leary of taking on American historicals because they think the market is not receptive to them right now. It will change. Change is constant, after all.

oldhousejunkie said:

I think the Civil War era has been so maligned, it may be impossible to redeem it. What a lot of people take for granted as true really wasn't. Like all southerners owned slaves and signed up to fight for slavery. Um, no. I think something like 2% of the southern population owned huge plantations with with hundreds of slaves. I believe I read once that the overwhelming majority of slaveholders only owned a handful of slaves. My own family were dirt poor farmers with no slaves before the Civil War, but they fought for the south because ultimately, they didn't want to be told what they could and could not do. Just like now...we don't like people coming down and telling us what to do.

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Good point. Just like all the damned Yankees weren't abolitionists, intent on "freeing the slaves." Many just needed the money they'd get for soldiering (two guys in my family did that, to help with the farming income the family got). Others had no desire to fight at all. They couldn't have given a damn if the South seceded or not. The NY Draft Riots are proof of that!

Belle_91 said:

A friend of mine told me that stories set during American history...

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I hope not because I'm busy plotting one set in frontier, Colonial Pennsylvania.

Hip-Hop-a-potamus said:

Good point. Just like all the damned Yankees weren't abolitionists, intent on "freeing the slaves." Many just needed the money they'd get for soldiering (two guys in my family did that, to help with the farming income the family got). Others had no desire to fight at all. They couldn't have given a damn if the South seceded or not. The NY Draft Riots are proof of that!

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Equally, not all slave holders were mustache-twirling villains. I am (making an attempt at) writing a story set in the antebellum South. I'm trying to get at the ambivalence of many Americans to the institution, as well as the division of opinions. I'm setting the beginning in Baltimore, which while being located in a slave state, was industrialized.

The Civil and Revolutionary Wars are key events in American history not just because of the outcomes, but because they completely redefined what the United States meant. The Revolution made promises and set the tone for what the nation would become. The Civil War was a reckoning for the mistakes made by the Founding Fathers (specifically, putting off the slavery question). It also affirmed America's path towards greater and greater freedoms for more and more people. It really was a fight for America's soul. As such, the Civil War in particular holds a fascination for me and a lot of other people.

Plus, you know, there was a lot of high drama. Spies, battles, women at home trying to keep body and soul together, political gambits . . . . Even though the market is pretty glutted with stories about the wars, there is a lot of material to mine, so I don't see that well ever running dry.

That being said, there are many under-represented, fascinating, but perhaps less-glamorous periods in American history. For instance, aside from perhaps Jackson, the early 1800's are pretty underrepresented. If the 1850's are written about, it's almost always as a lead up to the war. I've always been fascinated by the early republic/Federalist period, which I think is also woefully under-appreciated (there are books out there, but not nearly enough as far as I'm concerned).

I sympathize. I go through periods of paralyzing moments of fear. When I go into a bookshop looking for fiction set in ancient Rome or Greece, all I can find is military stuff. Sometimes it can make me wonder if there is a market for my type of books [more imperial intrigue than blood n guts stuff.]

Then every so often I see a comment on Amazon or Goodreads from readers asking where are the Sutcliff-esque, non-military Roman fiction, and I believe that there is a market out there. After all, Rosemary Sutcliff did outsell Robert Fabbri and Anthony Riches last year.

I'm half expecting to have to approach the small presses, or even e-publishers. I'd rather be good and offer something different, than join the pile-on.

I also think part of the trouble is that a lot of people just don't like history (for good reason since it has never been taught properly) and they don't understand that some of their favorite movies are actually works of historical fiction. It's a perception issue. Then you run into the difficulty of whether a book is historical fiction, historical romance, historical fantasy (and yes, there are quite a few of those that are quite good but NOT historical fiction).

EngineerTiger said:

I also think part of the trouble is that a lot of people just don't like history (for good reason since it has never been taught properly) and they don't understand that some of their favorite movies are actually works of historical fiction. It's a perception issue. Then you run into the difficulty of whether a book is historical fiction, historical romance, historical fantasy (and yes, there are quite a few of those that are quite good but NOT historical fiction).

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Good point. I'm so glad there are some of us keeping it alive. I've been so shocked when I mention some historical event nowadays and get these blank stares from kids under thirty. It pisses me off that they have no interest in what happened before they were born.

I've always been interested in history. ALWAYS. It took me a while to find out about certain events or learn more about them, but I'm fascinated by "what came before."

Oh, it isn't just the "kids today under 30". I can remember my high school history teacher moaning about the lack of interest from her students in World War II and Korea and, for my peers, that was their parents' era.

A clever reference to that can be found in James Cagney's YANKEE DOODLE DANDY. As George M. Cohan, he is rusticating on a farm and some teenagers come by in a jalopy. The scene is set in the early 40s and they have no clue who he is or even any idea about the Broadway of his era.

As historical fiction writers, we can do what we can to try to trigger an interest in history of our readers. One way is, as you write your books, throw up the occasional reference on your blog. Perhaps, even have a dedicated page to those references used. This way, as readers find their way into your eras, you can help them link to other books and resources.

I'm done with Tudor stuff, and have been for a long, long time. I think its been two years since I read such a book. After the first 10 they all start to feel the same to me.

I wish American history would get the attention it deserved, but alas, it hasn't. Maybe its cause there are no kings or princesses or something like that. Not sure.

At the last historical fiction conference I practically begged a big name author to write an American history novel. She said she was toying with the idea around the American Rev. I said if she did then the spotlight would be on American hist.

Eh, but what do I know.