Western - ? Success

I think the formal Western genre category has become quite marginalized, but Western themes still have wide appeal. Cross-marketing into areas like anthology, literary, Americana, historical etc (as applies) might bring your book to a readership that might not actively seek out Westerns but would enjoy them if they did read them! A book that well written and enjoyable to write, IMHO almost always has a readership somewhere.

Hi Puma, I'm happy to reading you again on the Western section of this board

Aside what veinglory wrote (I agree with him), in my opinion western will never die, and will never die especially in the USA. Because it's your history, because the taming of the West is the roots of America. The genre will always have readers, I see that in your country are published several fiction and nonfiction western books every year. Here in Italy the western has not the same appeal (nonfiction in particular, I just published a book about the violence in the Old West and that's all), but I love it like I were an american.

My book is in italian. The title is "Piombo, polvere e sangue. La violenza nella storia del West, 1848-1900" [The translation in english would be: "Lead, dust and blood. The violence in the history of the West, 1848-1900"].

There were many violent facts on the Frontier. I did a research more about the reasons that about the episodes like the OK Corral. But I did a more or less in-depth description of the Holbrook gunfight between Commodore Perry Owens and the Blevinses, just to point out that a gunfight and a gunfighter like the Hollywood's ones really existed.

I checked your books I put them in my wishlist, next time I have some money I will buy the anthology (I prefer the tales because it's easier for me to read them in english).

PS. You need to work on covers. I work in publishing and I have a passion for cover-making (I did the cover for a western tales anthology and for a western movie), so if you need an help I would be happy to help you (for free, obviously). Excuse my frankness. Your covers are not bad but are too "plain", they need to stand out, especially If I'm sure that inside them there are great western tales!

"Tektonic" is too plain, too. But the title is good (but you need another font). The problem with the ebook covers is that there are plenty identical, usually same pics and same fonts for the titles. I don't know what software you use to make the covers but I can suggest you to use Photoshop, that has a lot of functions to expand new graphic possibilities. For the fonts, make a search on Google and find those downloadable for free. For the pics, with Google Images you can find photos without copyrights, finding them with the specific reasearch filter.

I have made an example-cover for you; this is a 5 minutes work on Photoshop:

I totally agree with dpaterso! Good work!

No mean to give an exactly representation of your book, that cover it's just to let you see how it's possible to make a cover a bit different using the old, dear Photoshop

You're welcome, Puma

Thank you Puma, I have followed your advice. I hope the moderators of AW will keep my topic, otherwise they can delete it without problems. I think to be the first italian user to put a book on AW Library

Thank you very much, Puma

Two comments:

1) in my area, new book stores shelve few or no Westerns. However, used book stores usually have a few feet of Westerns in a special area, usually at full cover price, no trades, no credits. When I asked one of the store owners about that, they said Westerns were very hard to get and they were able to quickly sell all but the most common ones at full price.

There's a market for Westerns, but it's not being serviced by tradpub.


2) if you go to the new book store and mosey down the Romance aisles you'll find a *lot* of Romance/Westerns. And it also seems to be a booming subcategory under Erotica.

These types of Westerns are probably of little interest to people looking for traditional Westerns.

I think Western will see an increase in popularity due to the "new weird" and books like Emma Bull's Territory, Laura Ann Gilman's Silver on the Road, and Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory.

I notice that libraries are still buying Westerns as well, and that's an important market.