Successful niches in fiction writing

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AlwaysJuly

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I was fascinated by this blog post about an author who wrote a book in a genre she doesn't typically read because she thought it was one of the most commercially viable sub-genres. And her book was quite successful.

http://barbararogan.com/blog/?p=777

Can we discuss?

Also, any idea how you go about finding these particularly commercially viable sub-genres? Just, you know, for the sake of lively conversation...
 

Karen Junker

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Also, any idea how you go about finding these particularly commercially viable sub-genres? Just, you know, for the sake of lively conversation...

I just read on an agent's "Do Not Want" list that they don't want writers to chase trends.

I think there's more to the story than just picking a viable genre and writing a book. Romance is not an easy genre to crack -- and I say that as a romance writer. It still takes skill, talent, and most of all, perseverance. I've been studying and writing the romance genre in general for many years and have only ever sold one book (to a small epub that went bankrupt). I think I may have sold 27 copies of the book, total.

Having the option of self-pubbing on Amazon and the like makes it much more likely you will stumble into some sales (as opposed to not publishing at all).

The author in Barbara's link is already a skilled writer. Her experiment book is one of a few she's written. She also critiques for money. I wish her every success with her writing and her career.
 

Roxxsmom

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I'd put this down as an isolated incident. Sure, there are going to be people who succeed, even when they fly in the face of advice and common sense (and it sure helps if you're already successful in another genre). But one person is hardly a trend. I think writing the genres one knows and loves best is probably the best bet overall.
 

Jamesaritchie

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First, I don't believe there is such a thing as "selling out". This comes from the completely BS notion that only "art" matters, and it's only art if you write it solely for yourself, and out of some mushy feeling you have in your heart.

Writing is writing, and anything anyone wants to write, for any reason they want to write it, is perfectly legitimate. I really see this as no different than ghosting a book.

The romance market is huge, and a higher percentage of novels written for it will be accepted, simply because of size. But anyone who thinks writing a romance is easy, that it takes any less talent or skill, is simply nuts. The romance genre has some incredibly good writers in it. Of the two most memorable descriptive scenes I've read in modern novels, one was from a romance novel by Marsha Canham. I read that scene a long, long time ago, but it's as fresh in my mind now as it was when I first read it. I still see it in exact detail, all these years later. That's incredibly rare.

If you can't write well enough to sell in another genre, you probably can't write well enough to sell a romance novel, either. But if you can write well enough, and it's something you want to try, there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't. This applies to any genre.

But don't think you're getting off easy, or that your writing can have one bit less quality.

I don't think the popularity of romance novels is a trend, and writing for the romance genre is not following a trend. Though I'm not completely against following trends. If you can write well enough, if you can write fast enough, and if the trend lasts long enough, you can do remarkably well by following a trend. Coattail books can sell almost as big as the book that started teh trend, if they reach the publisher fast enough.

I learned a lone time ago that I'm very good at targeting a specific audience, and even a specific editor, and it came as quite a revelation because it works so well. It profitable, and, as important, it's fun.

It comes down to write whatever you want to write. Targeting and switching genres does not mean you can't still write a book that you want to write. or that you can't tell the story you want to tell. And romance novels can have just as much "meaning" as any other kind of novel.

Just have fun.
 

ap123

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First, I don't believe there is such a thing as "selling out". This comes from the completely BS notion that only "art" matters, and it's only art if you write it solely for yourself, and out of some mushy feeling you have in your heart.

Writing is writing, and anything anyone wants to write, for any reason they want to write it, is perfectly legitimate. I really see this as no different than ghosting a book.

The romance market is huge, and a higher percentage of novels written for it will be accepted, simply because of size. But anyone who thinks writing a romance is easy, that it takes any less talent or skill, is simply nuts. The romance genre has some incredibly good writers in it. Of the two most memorable descriptive scenes I've read in modern novels, one was from a romance novel by Marsha Canham. I read that scene a long, long time ago, but it's as fresh in my mind now as it was when I first read it. I still see it in exact detail, all these years later. That's incredibly rare.

If you can't write well enough to sell in another genre, you probably can't write well enough to sell a romance novel, either. But if you can write well enough, and it's something you want to try, there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't. This applies to any genre.

But don't think you're getting off easy, or that your writing can have one bit less quality.

I don't think the popularity of romance novels is a trend, and writing for the romance genre is not following a trend. Though I'm not completely against following trends. If you can write well enough, if you can write fast enough, and if the trend lasts long enough, you can do remarkably well by following a trend. Coattail books can sell almost as big as the book that started teh trend, if they reach the publisher fast enough.

I learned a lone time ago that I'm very good at targeting a specific audience, and even a specific editor, and it came as quite a revelation because it works so well. It profitable, and, as important, it's fun.

It comes down to write whatever you want to write. Targeting and switching genres does not mean you can't still write a book that you want to write. or that you can't tell the story you want to tell. And romance novels can have just as much "meaning" as any other kind of novel.

Just have fun.

Agree with just about everything James said above, except the bolded.

Not because of the romance writing aspect, but because a) some writers are more flexible than others in being able to write in different genres, and b) (or maybe it's really 1a) Different genres have different ummm, spirit. Besides the obvious of needing to have all aspects of craft down regardless of what you're writing, romance, for example, has a spirit, a rhythm, that isn't immediately seen but is more than the cursory meet, conflict, HEA. I assume each genre has its own rhythm to go along with basic reader expectations.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Agree with just about everything James said above, except the bolded.

Not because of the romance writing aspect, but because a) some writers are more flexible than others in being able to write in different genres, and b) (or maybe it's really 1a) Different genres have different ummm, spirit. Besides the obvious of needing to have all aspects of craft down regardless of what you're writing, romance, for example, has a spirit, a rhythm, that isn't immediately seen but is more than the cursory meet, conflict, HEA. I assume each genre has its own rhythm to go along with basic reader expectations.

I admit, have no idea about rhythm in different genres. It's not something that has ever even occurred to me. I don't think I even know what it means.

With novels, I have written one category romance, and I have a western romance in the works. I've also written westerns, mysteries, and I've written a few different types of MG. With short stories, I've written darned near every type I could find.

There are difference, there are tropes, but I've never thought about a difference in rhythm. Maybe there is a difference there. From my experience, and it really is just my experience, when I see a good writer fail to sell in a given genre it's usually caused by some combination of three things: 1. Not knowing the tropes. 2. They aren't really telling the kind of story they think they are. They try to write a romance, or whatever, but the focus is wrong, and it's really still a novel that fits better in their old genre, or that fits nowhere. 3. Lack of originality. It's tough to sell a story the editor has already seen a thousand times, no matter how well it's written. Writers who jump into a genre they never read tend to do exactly this. They don't know what's been done to death in that genre, so they tend to reinvent the wheel, and give the editor same old, same old.

Conversely, an experienced, good writer may bring something new into a genre because of his different reading experience, if he does his homework, and learns what has been done to death.

I don't know. I have this vague, half-formed notion just beyond my grasp that you may be right. There may be a rhythm difference. Maybe even a difference in spirit. I'll have to give this some thought.
 

beckethm

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I read Barbara's blog post and I've been giving this a lot of thought in relation to my own career goals. I want to make money from my writing. I wish it were as easy as picking a popular genre and learning the "formula." Unfortunately, my mind doesn't work that way.

I've considered trying various popular sub-genres. Regencies, for example, are perennially popular and I enjoy reading them, but I have no interest in writing in that style. Likewise, western, paranormal, and erotic romance don't come naturally to me. The stories I do want to write don't seem to be on any agent's or editor's wish list.

I admire authors who can successfully target a popular genre. I just don't seem to be one of them.
 

ap123

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I admire authors who can successfully target a popular genre. I just don't seem to be one of them.

Me too. So for now, I've given up and going with what's unpopular but feels most "natural" to me. :Shrug: We'll see.
 

kkbe

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Me too. So for now, I've given up and going with what's unpopular but feels most "natural" to me. :Shrug: We'll see.
That we will, ap.

My writing suits me. No use trying to be something I ain't. I'm unpublished, may never be published but I don't foresee changing genre or style any time soon. I write what appeals to me and hope that maybe, one day. . .

Anything is possible. :)
 

jjdebenedictis

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*shrugs* It's interesting, but I can't apply this to me.

I truly applaud a writer so flexible she can write in a genre she knows little about, but for me, I doubt I could get up sufficient enthusiasm to finish writing a book in a genre I don't enjoy. Writing is hard work. I'm not likely to get much of that hard work done if I'm not enthusiastic about what I'm creating.

Personally, I would attribute her success to the fact she's already a talented writer with well-honed skills. A lesser writer could perform this experiment and get very different results.
 

Ava Glass

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Also, any idea how you go about finding these particularly commercially viable sub-genres? Just, you know, for the sake of lively conversation...

This advice is for self-pubbers:

Go to Amazon. Go to the Kindle (not paper) books section. Go through both the bestseller and "New and Popular" lists (they're not the same). ETA: Also go through the Kindle ebook "Hot New Releases" lists. Do this for categories and subcategories. Note any patterns. At this time, dark captivity/Stockholm syndrome romance stories are gaining popularity. The contemporary-set ones do the best, but SF "alien abduction" stories also sell. I'd wager that someone who self-pubs a competently-written story in this subgenre will make money.

One can also enter search terms (such as "elf") and analyze the sales ranks of the results. The Kindle Sales Calculator will give a general idea of how much a book is selling.
 
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juniper

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...I doubt I could get up sufficient enthusiasm to finish writing a book in a genre I don't enjoy. Writing is hard work. I'm not likely to get much of that hard work done if I'm not enthusiastic about what I'm creating.

Well, I don't have much enthusiasm for my day job, but I do it because it provides an income. If someone were focusing on writing for the same reason - it provides an income - would that be enough motive to write something not necessarily enjoyable? :Shrug:

Personally, I would attribute her success to the fact she's already a talented writer with well-honed skills. A lesser writer could perform this experiment and get very different results.

I think this is true, not everyone can do as she's done with good results.

I wonder, though, how many people do? How many fiction writers make a good amount of their money from work they don't feel particularly inclined to write? I mean, they might have more fun - or enthusiasm - in writing something else, but the something else wouldn't pay as well.

beckethm said:
Unfortunately, my mind doesn't work that way.

But could you train your mind to work that way? My mind doesn't naturally gravitate toward what I do at my job, but it pays the bills ...
 
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I never really read romances (except for a few Harlequins in college) before I started writing them. I still only read them as 'homework'.

I've got four novellas, thirteen novels, and a few short stories published, with two more novels with publishers and ready for publication and two others on submission, plus one my agent wants me to revise before it gets submitted. I've had novels translated into four different languages and had two novels made into audiobooks.

I didn't read much YA before I decided to try writing it - now I've got one novel self-pubbed (to near-universal lack of interest) and one that my agent is currently subbing.

I've read NA as homework and only found one that I could stand, but I've got an NA with my agent that she's going to start subbing as soon as she's sure it won't be part of a multi-book deal with the YA title.

When I read for pleasure, it's generally literary fiction, or maybe scifi/fantasy or the occasional women's fic. But I don't think I could write in those genres. Maybe the women's fic I could do... I don't know. I just don't think my brain produces ideas well for those genres. It likes to absorb them, but I think it's a one-way street.

In terms of writing a specific sub-genre for sales - I think that makes sense. I write more m/m than het because my m/m sells better than my het. I write more contemporary than speculative because my contemporaries sell better.

There's a million stories in my brain. I can shape them to fit into a lot of different sub-genres.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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I wonder, though, how many people do? How many fiction writers make a good amount of their money from work they don't feel particularly inclined to write? I mean, they might have more fun - or enthusiasm - in writing something else, but the something else wouldn't pay as well.



But could you train your mind to work that way? My mind doesn't naturally gravitate toward what I do at my job, but it pays the bills ...

Ask any ghostwriter. Ghosting often means writing a book you wouldn't think about writing on your own.
 

shaldna

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Okay, perhaps I'm missing something here, but what I got from this article was the following

1. self published writer sells badly and doesn't know why
2. self published writer talks to others and realises she's not doing anything different to them but can't understand why her books aren't selling
3. decides to write a genre novel
4. writes genre novel based on someone else's structure and plot
5.genre novel in niche market sells well
6. writer is surprised
7. .......

I'm sorry, but this isn't exactly news. For the most part genre novels make up the vast majority of the industry. People buy what they know and what they like. Readers tend to buy in their genre more because they know what they like and they know what to expect from those books.

Literary and 'experimental' books are, for the average reader, more of a gamble and so, even the best of these books, can be slow to gain a readership. With genre novels many readers pick up a book based on it's cover, or genre alone, with literary and experimental novels word of mouth and personal recommendation is more important than ever, and personal recommendations encourage people to try books that they might not necessarily have picked up otherwise.

While I do think that this 'experiment' was interesting to read about, I'd wonder what the follow up sales would be for a second book.
 

aruna

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But could you train your mind to work that way? My mind doesn't naturally gravitate toward what I do at my job, but it pays the bills ...

If I had to put food on the table, and writing books I wouldn't normally write was the only way, yes, I could train my mind to do so...

Ask any ghostwriter. Ghosting often means writing a book you wouldn't think about writing on your own.

...but even then, there would be limitations. There are some genres I would never go near to, and I wouldn't write them either. For a while, when I hit rock bottom, I put myself forward on elance and "ghostwriting" was one of the skills I gave myself. But I would have chosen projects for which I have SOME affinity to.

In the end, no-one know what makes one book successful in a particular genre, while another book of same genre with similar plot, characters, perhaps even of better objective writing quality, have only lacklustre sales. There's no formula. If publishers really knew that every book would be a bestseller, and same for self-publishers. I don't even believe that successful books have some Mysterious Factor X. IMO it all comes down to some utterly unplanned and unscheduled trigger that no-one, neither publishers or writers, can ever figure out, and it's futile to try and divine the winning algorithm

“Based on novels across different genres, we investigated the predictive power of statistical stylometry in discriminating successful literary works, and identified the stylistic elements that are more prominent in successful writings.”

Humbug. Nobody knows anything.
 
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AlwaysJuly

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I didn't take the post as suggesting that romance novels are easier to write, but easier to market (in terms of certain sub-genres). I've never really thought there were any sub-genres that had more demand from readers than supply from writers, to be honest. So I find that concept a fascinating one.
 
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Maze Runner

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I think there's something powerful about writing something that would have never occurred to you to write, that's off your radar. You put people in a box and they get creative. Necessity is a mother and all that...
 

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If a novelist tells me they've worked hard on their novels, I'm prepared to believe them. If they tell me how great yet inexplicably overlooked their novels are, that's another matter.

I had a look at two of Ms Lakin's novels, one published under her own name and the Colorado Promise book. The writing in neither particularly impressed me. And the awards she's won seem to be the Zondervan First Novel Award (Zondervan being a straight-to-ebook digital imprint of Harper Collins) and an Amazon Breakthrough Award. Not quite the Booker.

It's nice that the book is selling well in its category. But it's not exactly a breakout novel.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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...but even then, there would be limitations. There are some genres I would never go near to, and I wouldn't write them either. For a while, when I hit rock bottom, I put myself forward on elance and "ghostwriting" was one of the skills I gave myself. But I would have chosen projects for which I have SOME affinity to.

.

Yes, but two kinds of ghostwriting exist. One kind is where you advertise yourself as a ghost. The other kind is where a publisher offers you what can be a very tidy sum of money to ghost a book. The sum is often tidy enough to make you love almost any genre.

I think the limit is more about what a writer is willing to do, rather than what a writer is capable of doing. In fairness, I've read a lot of romance novels, and a fair number of category romance novels, so that wasn't a stretch.

Anyway, yeah, I can think of a couple of genres, or sub-genres, that I just don't want to read, and that I'm pretty sure I couldn't easily write. But no publisher is going to offer me the chance to ghost one of these, so that isn't a worry.

Could I write one if I spent a moths or two reading novel after novel in one of these sub-genres? I really don't know, but it might make for a good experiment, except that I'd have to spend a month or two reading novels I don't enjoy.

Even if I could do it, I suspect it would be far too difficult for the reward. There has to be some pleasure in writing, or why bother?
 

Torgo

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If a novelist tells me they've worked hard on their novels, I'm prepared to believe them. If they tell me how great yet inexplicably overlooked their novels are, that's another matter.

I'm not sure Lakin quite says that, you know. She says she's proud of her novels but that they were a hard sell because of being hard to categorise.

In any case I'd prefer it if we could discuss the thrust of the piece (that having a clear genre or niche genres seems to be an easier sell) rather than Lakin or her work? Ta!
 

Buffysquirrel

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In any case I'd prefer it if we could discuss the thrust of the piece (that having a clear genre or niche genres seems to be an easier sell) rather than Lakin or her work? Ta!

My bad. I'm sorry.

I remember reading somewhere how there could never be another Great American novel because the market is so fractionalised nowadays. Of course, that does sound a bit like 'good old days' nostalgia nonsense. But maybe that very fractionalisation could benefit people who can target niches effectively.
 

Barbara R.

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Personally, I would attribute her success to the fact she's already a talented writer with well-honed skills. A lesser writer could perform this experiment and get very different results.

I think she's also been very clever on targeting a very precise sub-genre. Since that piece ran on my blog, I've been asking people I know who read genre books how they find them, and the answer always centers on Amazon's lists. It would be fascinating to know how much of her continued strong sales are due to word of mouth and reviews and how many to her smart manipulation of Amazon's algorithms.

Okay, perhaps I'm missing something here, but what I got from this article was the following

1. self published writer sells badly and doesn't know why
2. self published writer talks to others and realises she's not doing anything different to them but can't understand why her books aren't selling
3. decides to write a genre novel
4. writes genre novel based on someone else's structure and plot
5.genre novel in niche market sells well
6. writer is surprised
7. ......."

I'm sorry, but this isn't exactly news. For the most part genre novels make up the vast majority of the industry. People buy what they know and what they like. Readers tend to buy in their genre more because they know what they like and they know what to expect from those books..

Your list stopped just where the piece got interesting. I think what's new, or newish, here is that an unpublished book by an newby (by name) author with little platform could hit the genre bestselling list prior to publication and then stay there. The question is what's driving those sales.

I'm not sure Lakin quite says that, you know. She says she's proud of her novels but that they were a hard sell because of being hard to categorise.

In any case I'd prefer it if we could discuss the thrust of the piece (that having a clear genre or niche genres seems to be an easier sell) rather than Lakin or her work? Ta!

Ta to you, too. One thing I came away wondering about is the importance of platform when Lakin's book did so well with little or none. Makes me question how I allocate my time. Any thoughts?
 
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