I have a question for the group.
I'm a novice author writing my second book in a series (and revising my first book for submittal) about a person in a certain industry who solves mysteries. There are a lot of cozy mysteries out there about people in certain careers - b&b owners, landscape gardeners, you name it.
I have a friend who is just starting out in writing, and she was preparing to write a series of books about a person in the same industry as my main character. She expressed concern that she might want to not write her book as planned, because they are similar and there might not be a market for both. Her take is likely to be more of a chick-lit format than a cozy mystery, but they both have strong female protagonists in the same job title.
My perspective has been that there are a zillion books out there that seem to be identical at first glance but that are really very different, so she should go ahead and write her book as planned. Even if the base details seem the same - it's no reason to pause.
The flipside perspective is that if I get published (and I'm still considering that an "if") she doesn't want to run into an agent saying "Oh, we already have a series of mysteries about an Accountant (or whatever) out there so we won't publish this...."
So, I think it's a non-issue ultimately, but I wanted to see if there were opinions out there on the subject. Thanks.
MFM
I'm a novice author writing my second book in a series (and revising my first book for submittal) about a person in a certain industry who solves mysteries. There are a lot of cozy mysteries out there about people in certain careers - b&b owners, landscape gardeners, you name it.
I have a friend who is just starting out in writing, and she was preparing to write a series of books about a person in the same industry as my main character. She expressed concern that she might want to not write her book as planned, because they are similar and there might not be a market for both. Her take is likely to be more of a chick-lit format than a cozy mystery, but they both have strong female protagonists in the same job title.
My perspective has been that there are a zillion books out there that seem to be identical at first glance but that are really very different, so she should go ahead and write her book as planned. Even if the base details seem the same - it's no reason to pause.
The flipside perspective is that if I get published (and I'm still considering that an "if") she doesn't want to run into an agent saying "Oh, we already have a series of mysteries about an Accountant (or whatever) out there so we won't publish this...."
So, I think it's a non-issue ultimately, but I wanted to see if there were opinions out there on the subject. Thanks.
MFM
