Craft Chat Write to Market

[SilverWrites]

Hello,

I'm aiming for the ambitious goal of becoming a full-time author. It seems the best way to do this is to build a huge author platform and write to market. Does anyone have experience writing to market? Seeking advice and productive conversation.

 

[Sedayne]

Not many writers can make a full time job out of fiction writing. Nice work if you can get it. Many successful authors need other income streams - teaching, editing, ghost-writing for famous people - or other professions altogether. Even for someone like Freida McFadden, writing is a second job.

But if you are young, and just starting on a career, you may be able to carve out a path with the right self-promotion and a good backup plan.

As for writing to market - it's difficult because the market is constantly changing and by the time you finish a novel, the market may have moved on to something else. Got to think ahead and predict tastes. It must take some discipline and skill.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the few successful, famous authors in the world are writing to market; they write what they love and are lucky that it chimes with so many readers.

For me, I just want to write what I enjoy writing and take the time to get it as good as it can be. If other people want to read it, that's a bonus. But I wouldn't risk my mortgage on trying to turn it into a career. And I have the luxury of a steady income from another profession (It's a poor state of the publishing business when my job in nursing is better paid).

Sorry, that's probably not the advice you were looking for, but I honestly can't think of many people, apart from celebrities, who are making a full-time career out of writing.

I'd be interested to know what other writers think about this. It's never been part of my plan, but I find the idea fascinating.

 

[Pamela Jo]

From Shakespeare to Brendan Sanderson it boils down to this. Do this and Bobs Your Uncle. I'd say we all would love to be able to make a living from writing, but have come to accept that probably won't happen. I support 13 Spanish Mustangs. We dream of them being able to earn enough to pay for their food. But we do it because it's the life we want. I think it's probably true of most of us on here. But not to be discouraging. To write to market you need to know what the market wants NEXT. With trad publishing it takes 2 years to get to market. Have a look at Hannah's post on bundling. The catch there is they want someone w a track record. The usual barrier to get into any job. An editor once told me,"Write what you want but SELL to the Zeitgeist." What every agent is looking for is something that is a risk-free, slam dunk, no brainer. Trending, not too new, a new take on an old formula-when they say genre crossover that's usually what they mean. Their whole game is figuring out the market. If you can do it for them-well, see above.

I officiate over a rotating clan of young aspiring creative types: actors, artists, poets, writers, game designers.... I'd say their advice would be don't forget to enjoy life-there is a reason that through history starving has always gone before artist.

 

[RK Wallis]

I think it's fair to say most of us dream of living off our writing, and dreams are healthy, but to write a book is hard work, to market a book is harder still, and to resonate with readers who give you the buzz of word of mouth that's like winning the lottery.

Never write to market. Readers can tell when your writing is 'work' and when you're writing something you love. Besides, the market shifts on a dime and a book takes time to write.

 

[SilverWrites]

@Sedayne Was the Freida McFadden part supposed to be a link?

Thank you all for your input!

I'm thinking now that the best solution would be to be a part-time author and work part-time in something else. (I already have an editing/ghost writing business which doesn't have consistent clients.) Thoughts?

 

[Sedayne]

Was the Freida McFadden part supposed to be a link?

No, just an observation. She's a practising physician. Her best-selling fiction writing is a second job.

 

[Pamela Jo]

This is the article on packaging or bundling I was thinking of. Since you have a record as a ghost writer you ight have a chance.

/how-soulless-fiction-factories-became-publishing-s-dirty-little-secret

MSN

 

[Sarit]

I don't know what writing to market means, but if you want to really make waves, what has worked for some is to write something outrageous, controversial, a hot take on something, that will piss a lot of people off, but will also bring just as many to your table. Then post it online everywhere and engage on social media.

 

[Sedayne]

I just read an interesting interview with American UK agents Catherine Cho and Katie Greenstreet. Amongst other things, they talk about reasons not to write to market.

When actually writing their books, do authors need to be considering multiple markets? What about markets outside the US and UK?

CC: I think it’s difficult to think about the market at all when you’re writing, and my personal advice is that it’s better to write in a vacuum without any thought of the outside market.

The market is constantly changing, if you’re writing with the market in mind, in traditional publishing, the timelines are so long, and so often by the time a book is complete, the trend has finished.
I think when you’re querying and starting to think about positioning a book, then you can think about what will resonate with readers, but so much of it is outside a writer’s control, and also, sometimes the more specific a book is, the more universal. I would think about whether a story is compelling, and if it is, that makes it more undeniable.

KG: Specific trends within/across various markets ebb and flow, and they follow and feed into each other. For example, when I first started agenting, extremely dark thrillers could get you crazy advances in Germany, but now, the Germans are all asking for happy endings and big love stories! So, as Catherine notes, I wouldn’t write specifically to those sorts of broad strokes trends if that means deviating from the type of stories you want to write! A lover of rom coms isn’t suddenly going to be great at domestic suspense, just because it’s trendy again and as an agent, it’s incredibly obvious when someone submits something to me that they’ve written cynically. Instead, its important to think about what you want to be doing on the page and consider how to shape that into something that might tap into the current zeitgeist.

Read the full interview here:

Transatlantic Agenting with Katie Greenstreet and Catherine Cho

The Paper Literary team talk about signing authors in other countries, the differences in the UK/US markets, what happens when authors leave agents, and how it feels to set up a new literary agency!

substack.com

 

[Sedayne]

This is the article on packaging or bundling I was thinking of. Since you have a record as a ghost writer you ight have a chance.

/how-soulless-fiction-factories-became-publishing-s-dirty-little-secret

MSN

I just caught up on reading this. It is so far beyond my experience as a reader or a writer that it feels like another artform altogether. It's certainly a different discipline.

 

[Josephine]

I read the start of that Write to Market book on the Amazon preview thing. Writing to market isn't something I want to do personally, but I was intrigued. I can see his point; and if you're self pubbing (which from that small snippet seems to be the idea) then I guess the timelines are less important.

But what did strike me is... He wrote that book to market. He didn't write it because he has a passion to help everyone to make a living out of writing. I daresay it's possible, but I'm not sure how scalable it is - i.e. if ten people read that book and try it, they may have a good chance. If 10,000 people read it and try it, not so good. That's not his premise. His premise is that he can sell a book to people who want to write to market - and he has done. It's proven correct when he sells his book, not when his readers use his technique successfully.

I'm not saying it's all rubbish, just perhaps to take it with a pinch of salt. And good luck in your writing career of course, however you end up structuring it!