THE CAREER NOVELIST
sible to tell some stories without going the crossover route. But
crossovers are also risky. Authors who undertake them are gambling
with their careers. Is the gamble worth it?
To help answer that question, let us take a look at the tricky
dynamics of crossover publishing.
THE PROBLEM WITH CROSSOVERS
The first thing to realize is that publishers do not believe that com-
bining genre elements—setting a mystery in a fantasy realm, say—
will automatically capture two markets. Rather, they suspect that
the only audience such a novel will win is the small overlap in the
readerships between those two categories.
In other words, it is not a question of one plus one; it is a matter
of losing most of two whole groups of readers with a novel that does
not entirely satisfy either. Does this seem like faulty reasoning?
Does it even seem, perhaps, a bit shortsighted?
Lots of readers cross genre lines, do they not? I do, and I will bet
that you do, too. And so do your friends. In fact, is it not true that
most readers dip into a variety of categories? It may seem that way,
but the truth is otherwise. Most readers are category-loyal.
Publishers' beliefs are based on hard experience.
So what about Dean Koontz? Michael Crichton? Cathy Cash-
Spellman? Stephen King? Phyllis Whitney? Ira Levin? Robert R.
McCammon? Lori Herter? (I have named just a few.) Crossing
genre boundaries does not seem to have hurt them. Surely pub-
lishers are wrong?
I wish I could say that they are, but the evidence is to the con-
trary. As for best-selling authors who have written crossovers, one
has to take a detailed look at their careers: how many of them estab-
lished themselves via crossovers? Very few. A close look at their sales
would probably show, too, that their crossovers did little to advance
them—and may even have hurt.
There are exceptions, of course. Dean Koontz is one author who
has fought to keep limiting category designations off his novels. His
success is obvious, but it has been a long and tough battle, as he
will quickly tell you.
Certainly editors approach crossover projects with caution. One