THE CAREER NOVELIST
than writers. Writers are the best-read folks 1 know. They devour cur-
rent fiction, and have strong opinions about what is good and bad.
Frankly, writers are our best marketing experts; they just do not
think of themselves that way.
So, get your hands dirty. Make some decisions about where you
belong in the marketplace. Do not be afraid that identifying your
audience or drawing comparisons will limit you, or keep you from
getting that out-of-the-blue million-dollar advance. That thinking is
for amateurs. You are a professional. You want to get your books out
into stores in the way that will most efficiently allow your readers,
your fans, to find them.
To begin, try to place your novel in one of these broad categories:
- romance
- mystery/suspense
- science fiction/fantasy
- horror
- frontier/western
- gay/lesbian
- other
Is it a tough choice? Those categories correspond to the crude
divisions you will find in most bookstores, where the choices are
limited.
You may have noticed that I have not yet included the terms
fiction or mainstream. Although often used in the book business, those
words do not usually help inexperienced writers identify their audi-
ence. The word mainstream, in particular, conjures visions of wide
popularity and wonderful sales. Authors often believe that if a novel
can only be categorized "mainstream" then it will automatically ship
to stores in large quantities and sell to customers in big numbers.
That belief is naive. So-called mainstream novels can sell in tiny
numbers. That is even more true of a category called literary fiction,
which is meant to denote novels of superior quality and a certain
nebulous group of subjects such as small towns, real people, or
hard lives. Authors with such labels face a double struggle in build-
ing their audience. For one thing, they cannot tap into the popular-