A common question writers wrestle with is whether they should write what they love or write what will sell. This is an important question! But before I try to answer it, I need to drop an important truth:
Nobody knows what will sell.
I mean, we all make our guesses (and agents and editors are in a better position to gauge these winds than most of us), but it's not like Rowling sat down and decided that a story about a wizarding school was a gap in the market that would definitely be a hit. Heck, even publishers didn't know—the first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times!
Trying to write a bestseller is like hitting a moving target with a paper airplane on a breezy day. It can probably be done? But it's easier if you can just throw a thousand airplanes.
I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time.
Here's what you can do though:
(1) Know your market. Read books that target the same audience you want to target. Learn what's out there. Try to understand why it works.
(2) Enjoy your market. The number of authors who can find success writing for a genre they don't like are very, very few. Most of us write what we write because we were readers first—because we like our genre!
You don't have to enjoy everything in your target market of course, but the books you don't like are selling for a reason. You may not agree with it, but it will help you immensely to try and understand what your audience sees in them.
(3) Write what you want to read. There are multiple reasons for this. One is because if you don't enjoy it, neither will your readers, but another is because you're gonna be reading this book a lot.
(4) Put yourself in your work. There are no ideas so original that they are unlike anything that has ever come before, but there is no one else in the world with your life, your experience, your voice, or your story. The one thing every breakout hit has in common is novelty, and nobody can write you but you. Use that.
(5) Don't give up. Not everyone is going to be a success, but failure doesn't exist. If something doesn't work, examine why and try again.
Nobody knows what will go viral (and if you do, please explain this to me), but there are elements within your control. You just have to try stuff and see what works. Know your market, take risks, and be yourself. It's the best any of us can do.
Excellent tips! Writing what you want to read is essential, because getting published is always doubtful, but you'll always have that book and the experience of writing it. And when your grandkids find it, they won't wonder, "Why was Grampa writing smut?"
ReplyDeleteI mean, maybe Grampa wrote what he wanted to read....
DeleteActually, that would explain a lot about Grampa...
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