Do Humor Novels Sell?

Squirrel on a Ledge

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It seems like humor is mostly nonfiction these days. But what about fiction? Apart from "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" and "The Rosie Project," there doesn't seem to be much recent stuff out there.

Are any agents or editors still interested? If so, what do you query it as (ie "contemporary," "contemporary humor," "humor")?

And if any of you funny, funny people are prepared to give general life advice: What options are out there when your only virtues are wit and unprovoked swelling?
 

LJD

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There are lots of funny novels out there, but I don't think of them as fitting within a humor genre. Like, there are funny romances, fantasy novels, etc. I mostly read romance, but outside of romance, I also thought "This is Where I Leave You" and "Crazy Rich Asians" were pretty funny, for example. If you aren't writing genre fiction--it sounds like you aren't--then I would query as mainstream or contemporary and make sure the query shows your sense of humor.

I wrote a 90,000-word romance parody. Incredibly stupid idea? We shall see...
 
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Sagml John

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Agree totally with both. I love funny and I like writing 3rd person fiction. Mixing the two just seems to put me in right field watching the dandelions grow. Call it sci-fi or romance or whatever and inject the promise of humor in the blurb or query seems to be the consensus.
 

R.Barrows

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I hope they sell. My current WIP is a cross-genre parody of everything having to do with publishing and writing. If no one is buying comedy, I'll have to self-publish again. Another years worth of work thrown in the hole. I guess I don't care enough, though. I seriously amused myself writing it. There is some value in keeping yourself sane.
 

TheJoker

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Since my novel leans toward sarcasm, I did a little research on the humor/satire market, and came to the same conclusion as you: humor/satire is mostly associated with non-fiction (specially politics). Even if your work is written in a Sharpe/Vonnegut style, you might be better off labelling it as literary fiction.
 

Latina Bunny

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Wait, there is a humor genre? Like an actual specific genre?

I would think that humorous elements can be incorporated into any genre, like Romance or SFF, or in General Fiction or Contemporary, Women's Fiction, Literary fiction, and so on? If it's a humorous story, I would think there are the various genres, or the umbrella General Fiction for that.

ETA: Regarding the query, maybe you can just put humorous as an adjective and give hints of the types of humorous situations that are found in the plot?

Maybe the Humor genre is more for nonfiction books, like political satire, or autobiographies or biographies, or for non-fiction book of just jokes and quotes and stuff?

At least, that's what in the Humor section of a bookstore I went to...
 
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matthew.pee

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At least, that's what in the Humor section of a bookstore I went to...

This. I work at a Barnes and Noble, and the Humor category we have is awfully small, and is made up of things like parody books and joke books and the like. Odds and ends really. But to add onto what everyone else in this thread said, yes, I've read a bunch of humorous books. They just aren't labeled humor. They're books of many genres that just happen to be funny or have humor sprinkled in.
 
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blacbird

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Novels with humor in them sell very well. Google "Terry Pratchett" or "Carl Hiaasen" or "Douglas Adams" or "J.K. Rowling" or "Kurt Vonnegut" or "Stanislaw Lem". But all of these and many more successful authors have concocted stories carrying weight other than simply the humor. So I concur completely with what Matthew said in the preceding post.

caw
 

noirdood

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Raymond Chandler's Red Meat, Testosterone-filled mysteries are funny as the devil. In the parts where someone ain't getting plugged.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Feeling this thread hard. Do they sell? Who knows? Hope so, otherwise the last two years are down the crapper.

I'm kinda getting into the world of Bizarro fiction, which seems to have a pretty lively scene going on about it. Suits me though, since I tend more towards weirdness and gross-out.
 

Melody

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The novel I have coming out next year is a humorous middle-grade novel. But, FWIW, it does have some meat to it at the end. I pitched it as a humorous novel. I also included a brief synopsis so editors would know there was still 'a little something to say' besides all the quirky craziness in the story. Anyway, that was my experience. Good luck! :)
 

Keyboard Cowboy

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Dave Barry seems to have done well with a few fictional humor novels. I've heard Big Trouble is hilarious. I still need to read that one. He likely got a sales boost from an already established audience, though.
 

boatman

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I sometimes feel that there isn't enough humour in novels.
Smiling / laughing as as much a part of life as anything else so why not include it, particularly through dialogue.
Humour humanizes and is a good way to bring out a characters' personality.
Why do I say this? Well, I do it!
 

CarlHackman

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Funnily enough my debut novel is the first in a humorous fantasy series. The second is on submission and I have recently released a prequel short story. I love writing this series and just being in the character's head is enough to brighten my day. The genre is not humor, but fantasy, so I agree with what has been said before. You should place it in a genre that is the main subject of the novel and then make humor a sub category of that.

Have fun and make people laugh :)
 

Conrad Adamson

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Get Well Soon by Jennifer Wright is a recent book thick with humor but on Amazon it is listed under the subgenres of medical books, medicine, essays, communicable diseases, and other related. I think it would almost be difficult to write a book that fit better in humor than in another category.
 

Mburrell

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A tough sell

I spent the better part of a year trying to find a home for my comic novel about an Elvis impersonator who is lured into a cult devoted to the worship of Elvis. Some agents read it and said they liked it, but called it "cross genre." I guess they don't consider satire as a genre. I had given up on it when a local publisher emailed me, saying he'd heard I had a comic novel. It's going to be published by a Livingston Press in July. They have a minuscule promotion budget, so now is the problem of letting people know it's out there.
 

LoaderBot

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Alexander McCall Smith seems to have carved out a niche for himself and done well enough!
 

Farhad

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Apart from Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams of course (classified under fantasy and sci fi respectively), pure humour novels would probably be the works of P.G. Wodehouse or Tom Sharpe, as I can't think of any other category their books would fall under. I think most books in general broadly fall under sci fi/fantasy, thriller, romance, etc, but turn out to contain a lot of humour. I'm querying my first book (Do Orcs Rob Banks?), and I'm wondering whether to label it as fantasy, or comic fantasy.
 

RookieWriter

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The funniest humor novel I've ever read by far is Based on a True Story. There probably isn't a humor novel that's ever been written that even comes close to being as good as that one.
 

RCRichardson

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In my (limited) experience, some of the funniest books I've ever read were autobiographies. That's why I tend to experiment around with writing fictional first-person humor. But what I've learned (perhaps the hard way) is that making the narrative funny and making the story funny are two different things. If a writer can do both, then I think he can strike gold. (But thus far, all I've struck is a match to burn my earlier manuscripts, ha, ha!)
 

pattmayne

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The funniest humor novel I've ever read by far is Based on a True Story. There probably isn't a humor novel that's ever been written that even comes close to being as good as that one.

You should read John Swartzwelder's books. He used to write for The Simpsons (during their golden age) and now he occasionally writes the most ridiculous detective novels I've ever read. His style is so similar to Norm MacDonald's book that I strongly suspect he was the ghost-writer for "Based on a True Story."

Sadly, Swartzwelder is unknown and probably does not sell many books.
 

pharm

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Jasper Fforde cracks me up, though of course he's been established for decades now.
 

pattmayne

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Jasper Fforde cracks me up, though of course he's been established for decades now.

This guy looks right up my alley. I just finished Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy which is an eccentric, far-out, perverse, surreal, cosmic metafiction comedic novel.
 

PostHuman

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Almost anything by Connie Willis is so funny I've nearly peed myself several times. Highly recommend her SF novels To Say Nothing of the Dog or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last and Blackout/All Clear
 
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