What's with the zombie aversion?

The market is poor for zombies, vampires, and YA paranormal romance. Period.

Editors buy what they think will sell and agents rep what they think they can sell to editors.

It sucks when you spend years on something only to find that the bubble has burst when you're ready to query, but that's just how trade publishing goes. For every "over" trend, another one is growing. High fantasy has been rejuvenated by the widespread popularity of HBO's Game of Thrones, and GRRM's books (and other high fantasies) have been selling like crazy.

That said, chasing trends (many an agent has blogged about this; here is one especially good one by Jim McCarthy) has its downsides and upsides. The moderate approach, as in most things, seems to be the wisest move- write what you want, but don't cry when the market's saturated.

Also directly querying publishers is an option, as is self-pub, but both require as much, if not more, research as querying agents.

HoneyBadger said:

The market is poor for zombies, vampires, and YA paranormal romance.

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Not sure that's the case, at least with zombies. There are quite a few new zombie novels that have been picked up or published recently by big pubs (not counting stuff like Permuted Press).

Offhand I can think of: Courtney Summers's upcoming YA zombie novel; Jonathan Maberry's latest Joe Ledger novel; Carrie Ryan's new Forest of Hands and Teeth novel; Colson Whitehead's literary zombie novel ZONE ONE; etc.

There are also a few movie adaptations of zombie books coming up soon (World War Z, Warm Bodies).

I'm of the opinion that zombies are still in vogue. They're just looking for a new spin on the concept.

Sure, but "published recently" means they were written 3-5 years ago, agented 2-3 years ago, and bought by the publisher at least a year ago.

I feel your pain. I experienced a lot of alien hate when I was querying, and even when my ms was on sub. We got tons of "Love the voice, but don't like aliens." (Who doesn't like sexy aliens? That just does not compute.) But anyway, as you can see from my siggy below, it can still be done! Let the haters hate.

celoise said:

(and I'm of the persuasion that vamp stories -- as long as they don't involve vamps that sparkle -- always make for interesting reading). So, what's the deal?

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I'm thinking this way, too. There are some people who only read vampire books.

I'm working on a vampire novel that is a thriller and has the vampire(s) as the antagonist/villain. Could having something different to the genre attract an agent?

Imagine the anguish I'm twisting myself up in right now: My current novel is a portal fantasy, and my WIP features zombies (in a manner of speaking...)

I'm pretty much on the road to total self-doubting misery right now. Sadly, I must keep trucking on and hoping an agent will take pity on me and my strange ideas...

Trends <sigh>... Just remember that trends are cyclical. History has a strong tendency to repeat. Whatever is presently in vogue will pass as the fashion fades. But rest assured, it will once again surface as the "latest" thing.

The trick is to anticipate the gathering swell and ride the crest of the coming wave.

Don't worry too much about it. Write what pleases you and let fate take you where it will. Savor the journey, as the destination may not always be what you expect.

Pearl said:

I'm working on a vampire novel that is a thriller and has the vampire(s) as the antagonist/villain. Could having something different to the genre attract an agent?

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Before Vampires were sparkly and something to have sex with, they were the bad guys. I guess this is what someone else said about trends.

"Different" is what agents are looking for.

Meh. Write well enough about any so-called "dead-trender," with your own take, your own milieu, your own passions and terrors, and you have a good shot at success. Lindqvist takes on both vampires and zombies (of his own delightful sort) in Let the Right One In and rejuvenates the sub-genres.

The market is pretty much dead for copycat zombie tales. If you want to write about zombies, you need to be fresh, original, and good.

Sounds easy enough, but it's about as tough a task as any write can take on, and it seldom happens by planning.

Do we have any zombie romances in the West yet?

Well, I've just finished writing a first person zombie romance. Working title - "The Loving Dead".

Is it any good? I'll tell you when the rejection slips start rolling in....

HoneyBadger said:

The market is poor for zombies, vampires, and YA paranormal romance EVERYTHING. Period.

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Edited for improved veracity.

caw

kuwisdelu said:

Do we have any zombie romances in the West yet?

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Warm Bodies.

After snacking on the boyfriend of a teen girl, the zombie gets his victim's memories and starts to get emotionally attached to the girl.

R (the zombie) is apparently the usual shuffling, grunting zombie boy, but inside, he's pure philosopher material. It's already a movie in the making.

I totally read some agent's blog that they're simply *over* zombie romances because they're yucky and not romantic (zombie romances, not the agent), but I cannot for the life of me remember where.

And didn't a music exec turn down the beatles before they were famous saying that guitar groups were yesterday's trend?

Yes.

And boy, it's sure a pity The Beatles never got picked up.

There's a difference between persistence and beating your head against the wall in hopes that the wall will move. 97% of queriers with a vampire book (etc) think *they* wrote the special book, *their* book is different. 2% of them did write something really cool, but likely still won't get agented w/ that book. 1% of them wrote a different book when they realized (in 2009) that the market was drying up.

Knowing the market is an easy way to show an agent you're professional, you don't think you're a speshul snowflayke, and you understand the industry.

Isn't it more the case that we've had a sudden explosion in interest in this genre, which has flooded the marketplace with lots of substandard formulaic work? But what we don't know is whether the genre is on its last legs or if it will stagger on for decades to come.

My feeling is that we need to do something new with zombies. In their plain vanilla form they are pretty much a one-trick pony. They shuffle around and eat people who are trying very hard not to get eaten. Add in a few standard images to criticise modern life and you've got just about every zombie story from George Romero to today. And if that's all there is to a zombie story we are going to struggle to spin it out for much longer.

What we don't yet know is if anyone can move the genre on with something new. If they can't, then sure zombies will be yesterday's news. But isn't the point to look for innovation and new angles? I would far rather we did that instead of being sheep - either to follow a trend or to dismiss it as "all worked out".

We don't know what'll happen with trends.

We *do* know agents can't sell zombie books, thus aren't repping zombie books.

As someone mentioned previously, things that are popular now, are - at the very least - something that has been in the works for two years already. So if someone got picked up by an agent right now for a zombie it would still take a year for it to be released. This is why following trends isn't a good idea. It takes too long from start to finish. Hunger Games is huge right now - but Suzanne Collins had time to write three books, get them published, get a screenplay written and made into a movie. How long do you think that took?

Like someone else said already, write whatever you want, but don't be upset when no one wants it. Kristen Nelson said on her blog that editors will be moved to violence if they get any more YA paranormal romance.

KateM said:

Kristen Nelson said on her blog that editors will be moved to violence if they get any more YA paranormal romance.

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I don't know why that made me laugh XD

MokoBunny said:

I don't know why that made me laugh XD

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I personally had a mental picture of a poised woman in a suit reading a pitch for a YA paranormal romance. Her face reddens and with a primal growl she sweeps everything off her desk and onto the floor. She climbs onto the desk (wearing sensible shoes) and screams, cursing the gods. The offending manuscript is thrown into the ceiling fan - on high - and the pages float down around her as she stomps and screams incoherently about sparkly vampires.

If an agent has "NO MOAR ZOMBEE BUKS KTHNXBAI" in their listings, then don't send yours. One thing that's been mentioned over and over here in AW is pay attention to agent guidelines and requests. If an agent doesn't want any more zombie novels (or paranormal YA, etc.) and you send them a query for a zombie/Alice In Wonderland mash-up, that's an invitation to an automatic rejection.