Is market bad for horror novels

I haven't been to a book store in a while, but last time I did the only things I saw on the Horror shelf were sparkly vampires, 'Monica Lewinsky, Vampire Hunter' and 'Finnegan's Wake and Zombies' novels.

So if you're aiming for trade publishers, the market seems pretty much dead. Self-publishing may be more profitable.

markets expand and contract, and good stuff I believe almost always sells....a more correct question may be "is the horror market less permissive?"

It probably is. It isn't hot like it was in the 80s, and so everyone with a semi-competent monster story isn't all but guaranteed a shot. Things are more competetive. That said, I'm not sure ANY market is truly dead. Horror is just very competetive right now....

this may be moved there soon anyway, but if you scroll downt here is a whole horror section here; that might be worth some heavy browsing, i'm pretty sure you can find at least five threads (probably far more) in the first ten pages of that sub-forum discussing this....

If you compare horror to SF or fantasy, it's not as big as either, but it's not dead. You don't need to self-publish horror; you just need to write something new, intelligent and extremely readable, then find a publisher/agent with an interest in the genre.

seun said:

You don't need to self-publish horror; you just need to write something new, intelligent and extremely readable, then find a publisher/agent with an interest in the genre.

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Then find book stores that will actually put something on the shelf other than yet more clones of 'that novel that sold well last month'. The SF sections in the stores around here have far more variety than the Horror sections, though they're still dominated by media and game tie-ins.

I should add that I would actually read 'Finnegan's Wake and Zombies' if someone wrote it, but I'm guessing Joyce is still in copyright .

I wouldn't say it's "competitive" so much as lukewarm. It's not like there's a ton of brilliant new horror being published by the Big Six right now. Rather, they're relying on known names (the King family, Koontz, Barker, etc.) and not really taking chances on new names.

movieman said:

I should add that I would actually read 'Finnegan's Wake and Zombies' if someone wrote it, but I'm guessing Joyce is still in copyright .

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I'm guessing the general reading public finds Finnegan's Wake scary enough without the zombies.

movieman said:

'Monica Lewinsky, Vampire Hunter'

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That explains a great deal of 1990s politics.

seun said:

If you compare horror to SF or fantasy, it's not as big as either, but it's not dead. You don't need to self-publish horror; you just need to write something new, intelligent and extremely readable, then find a publisher/agent with an interest in the genre.

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This. Definitely this.

It is not dead. It's just a very, very niche market. Always has been. If you're tricksy like me, you'll aim for the big publishers anyway and try to squeeze your query through under "urban fantasy" or some such.

Bottom line: be more awesome than your competition. Do NOT self-publish if you equate self-pubishing with giving up. That is not a solution. If you're not confident with your work, trunk it. Don't kill your resale options.

Horror ebooks

I can certainly see the frustration with horror appearing more limited in bookstores. The stores around me used to have a horror section, but have since merged it into either fiction or sci-fi.

This lead me online to ebooks. There are great offerings in horror that are solely ebooks. As print is fading away, it's at least nice to see so many writers in the genre not giving up because they can't get a traditional publisher and instead moving towards the future and an infinite bookshelf where books never go out of print.

The market's definitely not dead, but I do agree with the rest of the commenters above that it's a small(er) market. In addition, horror, unlike SF/F, goes through phases of ups and downs. It really boomed in the 80s, but then fell off rather quickly to the point that in the 90s and early 2000s the question was being asked "is horror dead".

Currently horror is going through another one of its perennial phase shifts. We saw the incredible surge in romantic vampire, undead hunter, and horror romance novels late last decade. Earlier in the decade we had a glut of zombie novels. Currently there appears to be two upswells - another one for zombie novels and one for more traditional or gothic horror novels. The upswell in zombie novels likely won't last, but will be fairly popular for a couple more years to come in my opinion. The more traditional horror novel, that's here to stay. Gothic traditional will be around for a couple of years as well, but it's really traditional style horror that is going to be around forever.

Last of all, we're going to see more and more new horror authors coming on the scene in the future. Our own Damien Grintalis (hi, DG!) has a new book, INK, coming out this year and several other new horror authors are advertising their works up on the Announcements forum. Many of these new authors will choose to go the digital route, but more than a few of them will stick with the more traditional publication routes exclusively. In my opinion the smarter ones will go both ways, placing their less "traditional" works in the digital markets while submitting their best, longest, and more traditional works to more traditional publishers.

One concern I do have is the loss of markets for short horror fiction. We are currently down to only a handful of traditional publishing outlets for short horror stories. However, the digital field is wide open for new magazines and routes of publishing digitally. There are apps available for the iPad and Android tablets that allow almost any individual to digitally publish their own magazine and many ways to distribute said digital magazines. It will require someone with publishing savvy and some money or backing to do this, but digital publication is vastly less expensive than traditional publication. So inexpensive, in fact, that it can be done by almost anyone with a little extra time and some editing experience (I could do it, and have in the past, but editing a magazine is a time-intensive undertaking if you want to do it right).

FOTSGreg said:

Last of all, we're going to see more and more new horror authors coming on the scene in the future. Our own Damien Grintalis (hi, DG!) has a new book, INK, coming out this year and several other new horror authors are advertising their works up on the Announcements forum.

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I feel a shameless burst of pimping coming on.

*look at my sig*

Luke, you're in my Nook! Sorry if it's cramped in there.

Greg, thank you for the mention! Yes, Ink is coming out in December, in both ebook and trade paperback. And for those popping into the thread who don't know me, with respect to novels, I write traditional/classic horror. (At least that's what my agent calls it!)

My short fiction is all over the place genre-wise.

Luke, sorry I failed to mention you, but then there are a lot of other horror writers on AW that I also left out I'm sure.

dgrintalis said:

Luke, you're in my Nook! Sorry if it's cramped in there.

Greg, thank you for the mention! Yes, Ink is coming out in December, in both ebook and trade paperback. And for those popping into the thread who don't know me, with respect to novels, I write traditional/classic horror. (At least that's what my agent calls it!)

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Sweet (on both counts). Give me the details nearer the time and I'll make sure we get it at work.

FOTSGreg said:

Luke, sorry I failed to mention you, but then there are a lot of other horror writers on AW that I also left out I'm sure.

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No worries. I'm just a shameless hussy. I'll pimp myself wherever I can.

seun said:

Sweet (on both counts). Give me the details nearer the time and I'll make sure we get it at work.

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Thank you, Luke!

I wonder why horror fiction should be such a tough sell when not a month goes by that at least one new horror film comes out. Already this year we've seen The Devil Inside; Harry Potter and the Woman in Black; and I think Chronicle could certainly be included in the genre.

cmeffa said:

Thnaks to all for your replies. Is there any genre in relation that sells? What sells well nowadays (any genre)?

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i don't think you can actually approach it this way.

1. what genre sells the most copies does not translate to what you can best write, and good work almost always trumps slightly less inspired work

2. even if you said romance sold ten times what horror sold, you don't have any reliable indicator of how many works went in versus were accepted, so you still aren't getting an acceptance percentage, which is what you seem to be really asking for

3. in either case it could be worlds different in three years, or even one. when the markets saturate they can constrict very quickly


write what you can best write--the story that is the loudest inside your head and the most interesting to you. you will almost always have better odds, imho, than by trying to take that story and bastardize it to fit a market trend, or by pulling something out that doesn't speak to you just becaue it fits a different market you think is "hot". Maybe you'll get lucky and that will have enough side-plot that with very minor tweaking it is able to sit on a "paranormal romance" shelf, or maybe under "suspense", but don't start writing about texting schoolgirls because you heard MG was hot if that's not where your interest is....

Horror isn't dead, but right now you're better off labeling your story "dark suspense" or "dark fantasy" when querying agents.

Scary stories will always sell. It's a market that will never truly die. But the point is, like others have mentioned, that it's not necessarily what it's CALLED right now. That said, I have to admit to a little disappointment at the short story entries in this year's Bram Stoker (I was a first round judge). I found a lot of the stories didn't really have a classic horror "feel". We got a lot of UF stories & "gore-in-place-of-fear" stories, but few of those I would classify as stories that would make me want to check that the door was locked just one more time before I went to sleep.

Where are all the stories where the villains win (or at least make you unsure whether they'll be back?) Write a story that makes people shiver and it'll sell. Those are the ones I like.

Cmeffa,

Everyone has given some great advice and comments. The only thing I would add is that you shouldn't write toward trends. Just write what you love, and it will show in your work, thus gaining the attention of an agent or publisher.

To me, horror has always been a hard sell. It's always been around, but it's never been a best seller unless you are Stephen King or Dean Koontz, for the most part. Of course, my definition of horror, or as I like to call it, icky bug, is not for everyone here, either. To me, slasher is not horror, it's terror. Vampires are bloody romances, unless the vampire is an actual monster that terrorizes everyone as in Scott Nicholson's They Hunger. To me, horror is some kind of monster, whether it be man made, alien, or supernatural. It can be a ghost and there doesn't have to be a high body count.

With my very basic definition out of the way, no, there aren't a lot books out there like that. There seems to be a market for vampire and slasher (or terror) novels, but for my definition of horror? Not much, it seems. If that's your definition of horror, I feel your pain. Once in a while, a book or two comes out, but they seem to be few and far between. Also, with only Barnes & Noble left out there, they no longer have a horror section so you have to pick through general fiction to find them.

Arch Stanton said:

Horror isn't dead, but right now you're better off labeling your story "dark suspense" or "dark fantasy" when querying agents.

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This advice is starting to look good to me. My first novel was YA 'Dark Fantasy' (with horror elements). There were bunches of agents to query. Now that I've followed my true desire and written a horror novel, I'm distressed to see far fewer agents interested in seeing horror manuscripts.

I may just go ahead and query 'Dark Fantasy' -- but after I query the horror agents first...