Which Market Should I Write For?

As a reader have you ever thought where the books you love fit in the great scheme of things? Reading tastes are constantly changing. It would require a brave person indeed, who is willing to predict what the next best selling subject will be.

It may not matter to you. But if you are a writer, where your book fits is always at the back of your mind. Every genre has multiple compartments within it, where discerning readers, critics, reviewers and publishers like to place your work. People are people after all, they love to pigeonhole things.

At this moment in time, while one of my books is selling well, the one I personally prefer which has earned nine extremely positive reviews on Amazon is not. If I had written it forty years ago it might have enjoyed a modicum of success. While folk like it, not many are actually buying it. It fits into a small niche market which is currently out of fashion you see.

In its particular case, all I can hope for is a wholesale rediscovery of fantasy tales about goblins sometime in the future. At the moment people don’t necessarily want to read a lighthearted anthology like ‘Globular Van der Graff’s Goblin Tales for Adults,’ no matter how friendly I made them. And yet for some reason they are willing to read about a rebellious young archaeologist out to save the world before the deadline to destruction for the Earth and the entire Solar System of December 21^st, 2012 in my book ‘The Seventh Age’, which is selling well. Who knew it would take off – certainly not me.

If as a new writer, one of your books gets taken up by an establishment publishing house, more power to your pen. That’s not for me – never was. With the changes, some would say more an unnecessary upheaval, going on within the publishing industry; at least the ebook versions of our work are always available via the internet, therefore in the public eye, unlike their physical cousins who have a short shelf life in the bookshops of this world before they are remaindered and sadly forgotten.

But all this still doesn’t answer my question – which market should I write for? Want my advice? Change your approach and simply write what you would love to read. Chances are if you love it, others will too – eventually.