... Or ...
I came here expecting horses
There's been a lot of hoopla of late over genre, cross-genre,
tagging, labeling -- whatever you want to call it. Writers agonize over what
genre their book fits into, which agent/small press/publisher to submit their
work to, what tags to use on Amazon and so on.
The situation strikes me as one in which we've built the buggy and
now feel compelled to find the one and only horse to pull it -- or perhaps the
perfect compliment of horses to pull it.
News flash: You can switch horses. Anytime.
That horse, er, label is, and always has been, a marketing tool.
It does more to help focus marketing efforts on niche groups (reader target
audiences) than it does to help niche groups find books to read. (think of it
as the difference between being pursued by a guy you'd probably like vs. a guy
you'd find boring) (Now, that's not a bad thing -- although you'd probably
be missing some gems).
We want people
to read our books, but hey, even Coca Cola targets audiences. Sometimes
companies even create niche groups (anybody remember the "Pepsi
Generation"?). However, until you get to be your own genre (Steven King,
Lee Child, JK Rowling, Janet Evanovich ....) you have to target a genre if you
expect to sell. That doesn't mean you can't include different genres in your
work, it means you have to be able to use a label without lying (too much) if
you want to sell your books easily.
Easily?
Yes. Stop laughing. "Easily" only because otherwise, it becomes a lot more work. That's probably why marketing
departments in publishing houses have been seen making purchasing decisions (I
was shocked, too, when I found that out. If I was in marketing -- which I was
years ago -- wouldn't it be my job to sell what my company produced, not tell
my company what they should make?) (yes, I'm perfectly aware of the value of
market analysis -- did it myself)
As writers, we
not only need to learn to write well enough to hold a reader's interest
(otherwise we write ONLY for ourselves), but we have to learn how to stir up
excitement in a specific group by using a very few well chosen phrases....not
exactly lying, but selective truth-telling.
We can do that,
right? We write fiction, after all.
The
labeling/genre situation is far too established to fight and conquer at this
point -- and I'm not sure it's such a good idea, anyway. However, we can learn
to market to target audiences who, once having discovered a good read, don't
seem to mind multiple genres at all.
So, if you want
to sell a rose don't call it "a flowering bush that requires a lot of
fertilizer, water and spraying for insects and disease, and produces blooms for
a couple of months out of the year." Call it "a bush that produces armloads
of fragrant blossoms," "a velvety flower given to one's heart's
desire," "an ancient symbol of passion," AND call it a "Rose."
People get that. Those of us who love roses, don't really mind the other, un-poetic stuff -- we know it and don't want to hear it. The other sometimes-truthful description simply feeds our interest.
