Sports Fiction

Aztecsince79 · Jul 6, 2009

I'm curious about what insights you might have about whether there's a market left for sports fiction.

My debut novel fits into that category -- its really mainstream but it has a sports theme. I've sent off some queries but the responses, uh, excuse me, rejections, cough, cough, have been very generic. No bites for a partial.

I haven't sent out very many queries, honestly, but the ways the responses came back made me wonder whether I'm beating a dead horse. Is there still a market out there for novels with a sports theme?

I kind of think there is among the public, but what about agents and publishers?

Scribhneoir · Jul 6, 2009

I have no insights, but Nathan Bransford blogged about this just a few days ago.

NicoleMD · Jul 7, 2009

I read Nathan's post and just about had a panic attack. My current WIP is about a fictional sport, but it's sort of alternate historyish too. Nathan did make a good point about the nature of conflict in sports being difficult to cram into the storyline in addition to the conflict of the story. I've tried to balance that out -- there are only a handful of actual sports scenes, and they tend to be pretty short.

But surely there's room for a good sports book out there!

Nicole

Aztecsince79 · Jul 7, 2009

Nathan's blog post is just what I'm talking about. It seems like there is a mindset against sports fiction within the publishing industry for some reason. Obviously, you have to have something else in there, otherwise it might as well be a novel about plumbing.

I guess the way to go about it is to play up the other elements of the story.

Sports Fiction

Aztecsince79

Scribhneoir

Reinventing Myself

NicoleMD

Onomatopotamus

Aztecsince79