Trying to jump on the latest big trend, what folks in showbiz call chasing the puck, is a misguided business strategy that all-too-many authors fall for. And not necessarily for the reasons you think.
The conventional oldpub wisdom held that an author simply couldn’t get a book to market fast enough to cash in on the new hotness. Not that their own rationale stopped them from publishing a slew of Harry Potter and Twilight clones.
Some newpub gurus claim that Amazon and the resurgent pulp work ethic have broken the trend-jumping barrier. Now that an independent author can write and publish a pro-quality book in a month, they say, it is indeed possible to catch that pesky puck.
There’s no question that newpub authors enjoy a tremendous speed advantage over the ossified New York houses. The folks who point to this advantage and declare that they’ve cracked the code miss a key aspect of the challenge facing authors.
Riding a trend doesn’t merely require catching the wave in time. Speed is just one horn of the dilemma. The other problem is visibility.
What everybody overlooks in their haste to join the next big thing is that a million other writers have the same idea. Getting your book into a hot new market means competing with the glut of other books vying for the fad consumers’ attention.
Here’s something else everybody misses. A new blockbuster trend doesn’t just attract fans from adjacent genres. It creates new ones. What happens when the public moves on from a prior fad to the next? Do fans of the old fad go away? Some do, but not all of them. That leaves a large, but not too large, audience underserved.
Vampire fiction: perfect example. Which name authors are writing new vampire books now that Twilight has largely faded from the scene? The answer is nobody. Stephenie Meyer remains the biggest fish in that shrunken but still cash-rich pond. Are there still readers who’re interested in vampire books? Almost certainly. Is competition for those readers as stiff as it was a decade ago? Not even close. A smart author would capitalize on this situation.
The problem with chasing the puck is just one publishing conundrum that author David V. Stewart and I tackled this past Saturday. Check out his show for a rollicking conversation about the writer’s craft, the latest Death Cult enormities, and more.
One topic David graciously chose to discuss is the currently running crowdfunder for my mecha thriller Combat Frame XSeed: SS. We just smashed our third stretch goal and unlocked the CFXS short story collection, which is available as a perk through the campaign. Mecha and RPG fans alike will be enthused to hear that our current stretch goal is an official Combat Frame XSeed Roleplaying game rulebook.
The RPG manual will be confirmed when we reach $5000. Support indie sci fi, choose from a ton of sweet perks, and help make the Combat Frame XSeed RPG a reality.
