Follow the Trends or Carve your Niche?

[Philip Overby]

What kind of writer are you? Do you tend to see what is popular at the moment or find a target audience and write for them? Or do you just write whatever you want and hope you get lucky that it's the next best thing?

For me, neither answer is correct.

I think it's a bit naive' to just say, "I'll write whatever I want and if that's not good enough, then whatever." I think an awareness of where the market has been and where it is going are integral for any writer. Just because your story is "original" doesn't mean it's always good or that any publisher is going to want to pick it up.

For that matter, if you self-publish, you better hope you ARE carving a niche, because the more and more self-published authors are out there, the harder it's going to become to stick out. If there are 100,000 books for 99 cents on Amazon, it's going to be difficult for me to pick which one I want.

But following trends won't help either. Just because you follow a popular trend (urban YA, gritty, etc.) doesn't mean success either.

I think writers need to stop thinking like writers all the time. Think like a writer maybe 80% of the time. Think like a marketing whiz the other 20%. In this day, you have to be more than a good writer. You have to be a good everything. To me, good writers are like good guitar players. Maybe I've said this before, but there are hundreds of thousands of them. Just because you're a good guitar player doesn't make you a rock star.

So my solution?

Study the market, see where the trends have gone and find out if your book has a place somewhere. Then, submit it everywhere under the sun. If your book doesn't have a place anywhere, then figure out if it's because it just doesn't work or if you're not presenting it well enough. Sometimes writing a good book isn't enough.

And if you're self-publishing, figure out what you're offering that 999,999 other people aren't offering. I'm not parting with my 99 cents so easily.

So either write a really, really good book that fits a current trend and find out how to squeeze it in with the other books that are also there. Or write a really, really good book that is original and find out how you can market it so people will notice. Do a bit of both. Experiment. See where that takes you.

The job of a writer doesn't end with writing a book.

 

[Steerpike]

I agree with what you're saying there, Phil.

I'll also add that I think either of the above could work. The important thing, to me, is that the writer is writing what she loves. If a story doesn't speak to you, doesn't thrill you, doesn't embody for you the things you feel should be embodied by fiction, then it isn't going to do any of these things for the reader, either. So you have to go with your passion.

If that means you're going to write a teen paranormal romance with vampires and werewolves, then write that. If it means you write an epic wholly in the tradition of Tolkien, with an evil, dark lord, elves, dwarves and so on, then so be it. If it sends you to the fringes of the genre, looking for new trails to blaze, then great, go down that path.

You just have to be true to your own artistic vision, and none of the above is inherently better than any of the others.

 

[Ireth]

Well said, Steerpike. Stole the words out from under my fingers. XDDD

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

For me, personally, I can't enjoy writing what I don't enjoy reading. I write whatever I feel like writing and don't worry about whether there's a market for it. I'd be unhappy as a numerically successful writer if I wasn't writing stuff I enjoyed writing and reading.

I already have a job I don't fully enjoy... I don't want to transition into the same situation in another field!

 

[Feo Takahari]

I'd like to draw an analogy.

On the site I write for, I'm relatively respected within my target genre. My most popular story in that genre has ~17,000 hits*, and many of my others have ~5,000. All of these stories have a user rating between 4.09 and 4.67 out of 5, and I've received two Editor's Choice awards.

I recently tried writing in the most popular genre on the site. This story already has ~21,000 hits. However, many readers disliked it--said one, "Too strange. Sounds like an episode of the Twilight Zone." The current user rating is 3.91.

Now, I don't think this story was bad--it failed only because it didn't match audience expectations. It did match the kind of story I want to write, and I'm inclined to write more stories like it, outside of that genre. I won't get as many views, but views were never what I wanted.

Just the other day, I discovered that my favorite writer on the site recommended one of my stories, saying that it was outside what he normally read, but that he liked it nonetheless. That story has ~8,000 hits, but I'm prouder of those hits, and of the praise it's received, than I am of those I've gotten when writing outside my genre.

* Due to the way the site's counter works, this doesn't necessarily mean 17,000 views, but it's worth mentioning the number for comparison's sake.

 

[Philip Overby]

I agree with what you're saying there, Phil.

I'll also add that I think either of the above could work. The important thing, to me, is that the writer is writing what she loves. If a story doesn't speak to you, doesn't thrill you, doesn't embody for you the things you feel should be embodied by fiction, then it isn't going to do any of these things for the reader, either. So you have to go with your passion.

If that means you're going to write a teen paranormal romance with vampires and werewolves, then write that. If it means you write an epic wholly in the tradition of Tolkien, with an evil, dark lord, elves, dwarves and so on, then so be it. If it sends you to the fringes of the genre, looking for new trails to blaze, then great, go down that path.

You just have to be true to your own artistic vision, and none of the above is inherently better than any of the others.

I'm right there with you on "write what makes you happy." Like you said, if you like writing paranormal romances, don't let anyone tell you not to. More along what I'm getting at is don't expect success either way. "Well, I followed the trend, and nothing happened. What gives?" or "Well, I followed what I'm passionate about even though it's not popular and nothing happened. What gives?"

I know success can be defined however you'd like. I would consider getting published by a major publisher a success. However, I'd considered getting a short story pub also a success, albeit a smaller one.

I think it IS very important to follow what you like, whether it be trendy or not, and see where it takes you. But that doesn't necessarily mean you will achieve your goals as a published writer if you do so. Becoming a savvy marketer is more important than being an awesome writer nowadays. Or throwing the dart at the board as much as you can and hope someone likes what you're doing.

 

[Light]

When people write what they enjoy the quality is innately better in the long haul. Maybe it's more fresh when people write for themselves instead of someone else even if they aren't as widely appreciated at first. I'm a fan of Brian Jacques who wrote the Redwall series, he began writing for kids with hearing disabilities, and other people began to appreciate his work and it took off from there.

 

[Ireth]

Brian Jacques [...] began writing for kids with hearing disabilities, and other people began to appreciate his work and it took off from there.

Actually, it was for the visually-impaired.

 

[Devor]

I think writers need to stop thinking like writers all the time. Think like a writer maybe 80% of the time. Think like a marketing whiz the other 20%. In this day, you have to be more than a good writer. You have to be a good everything.

I think, whatever you're shooting for, it makes sense to include a few mass-market elements to avoid completely shutting yourself into a niche where nobody - even the people in that niche - will notice you. In entertainment marketing, it's sometimes understood there's usually been a lack of stories which are written for the mass market. The mass market is full of children, women, parents, old timers. Artists tend to be 20s-30s, skewed away from those groups. Even the copycats of books like Harry Potter tend to shift away from mass markets.

That doesn't mean selling out, or abandoning what you want to do. It means taking your vision and trying to broad its appeal a little bit.

Even Game of Thrones had some mass market appeal, although it completely vanished by Clash of Kings, along with the character typified most of it.

 

[yachtcaptcolby]

I'd say the choice of whether to follow the trends or not depends on your ultimate goal. If you're writing to have fun, to hell with what the market thinks--write what you want. But if you would like to make a living off your work, then yes, you'd better study the market and make sure what you're working on fits somewhere. Both goals are equally noble and respectable.

Personally, I'm somewhere between those two sides. Would I like to be able to make a living off my writing? Definitely. Am I willing to compromise my creative vision to do it? Nope. Doing so wouldn't be any fun for me. Writing that way would feel like work, and I've got more than enough of that. I realize that attitude could be a definite hindrance to "making it," but I'm content with that.

 

[Bear]

My last novella was extremely fun to write. I prefer to carve out a niche. I could write a zombie story or vampire tale if I wanted to but then I would feel like my story brought nothing to the table. I mean in my third story I had a character eaten by a giant worm and his companion dives into the worm with katana blazing and drags him out of the ass. Then they wash off in a drive through car wash.

I had a specific goal in mind with my books and they didn't really fit into the current trends. I will say that it makes it tough to pitch to book store managers. When it's all said and done writing is a business and business usually likes safe investments. That's probably why every body on the block has a zombie, vampire, or elf book floating around. I figured If I was going to write something at least I'd be original. At least that way I can live with myself. I like to write things that haven't been done or seen before. Sometimes, it makes selling the work a bit tough.