Sunday, March 10, 2013

When Your Genre Is All Wrong

What do you do when you find out your genre is not right for the current market?

I pose this question because this is an answer I received from an editor at a big name publishing house.

My NaNo book is very close to being finished. It is a fantasy novel. It will have witches, which makes it fall under the "paranormal" sub-genre of fantasy. 

That is a bad thing.

Apparently, the market is super saturated with paranormal right now and publishers are eagerly escaping the flood zone in their kayaks and high-powered boats. They're yelling at everyone to get out as fast as they can. The editors and publishers are hightailing it to higher ground as the huge paranormal wave crashes down around the readers, sweeping everyone and everything away in its path. 

Do I really want to enter a market that is drowning the masses in its wake?

I hesitantly respond, "Um, yes? I don't know. Maybe?"

Will my book survive under the huge, pressing wave? Will it rise to the surface and breathe in healthy air that will give it energy and life? Or will it plummet to the bottom of the ocean, crushed by the pressing weight of the other paranormal books above it? Maybe it will be washed onto the shore, forgotten and left to die while the others get saved by altruistic passersby.  

I really don’t know.

I can’t predict the future. I can’t ride the tailcoats of trends.

I don’t know how I should proceed when I get turned away before I even reach the locked gate.

Well, maybe I do.

I have to go with my gut. My gut may be wrong but there is also a possibility that it may be right. If I don’t follow what I think is the right course of action, I may regret it and then I would always have that constant itch at the back corner of my brain, “What if… .”

It’s better to have an “Oh, well. That didn’t work,” over a “What if I only tried it that way?”

I have my answer. I know exactly what I’m going to do.

Now, it’s your turn to tackle this question: What would you do?

Until next time ~




2 comments:

  1. At the conference, I had an agent tell me I need to age my characters down, and I've been having some similar feelings (and got a blog post out of the issue as well). My conclusion was similar to yours: if you feel like it's the right thing, you have to at least try it. I need to try to find readers for my story with college-age characters before I make them high-schoolers, and if it doesn't work out? *Then* I need to consider either re-writing and down-aging, or self-publishing and accepting that I'll have a smaller market.

    Must have been a nasty shock hearing that paranormal wasn't a positive in today's market, though. Who'd have thunk?

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    1. I have heard that there has been a lot of paranormal books lately but I had no idea that editors/publishers were running away from that genre at lightening speed! I was given a couple of genre choices that I could change my book into but, as I tried to listen with an open mind, I realized that I would lose the feel and the basic premise of my entire book if I took out the "paranormal" aspect. I feel confident in my book and the fantasy genre - maybe I'll just try to remove the "paranormal" heading (that seems to be the factor in how the book will sell). I was leaning towards self-publishing this novel anyway so maybe in the end, it really won't matter about traditional publishing trends.

      I'm glad you're going to go with your gut as well. Your book may very well fit into the New Adult genre (that is geared towards college age people).

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