Writing Books We Love…to Sell

The comment thread on last week’s post regarding submitting your work regardless of what some other writer might say about its chances at publication has spawned a lot of interesting side discussions: about revising on the advice of an agent (who is not your agent), about what to do with a manuscript that seems too out of the box for the market, about the advisability of writing something that has a good chance of being out of the box, and many more topics that, although beyond the scope of THAT particular subject, are things that writers are deeply concerned with. Most recently, there was a comment from Beth Smith that naturally led into a post of its own:

“I suppose the next question is: to what extent should you think about marketing BEFORE you start the novel? Where do you draw the line between ‘protecting the work’ and not embarking upon a ‘hard-sell/no-sell’ project?”

The first thing you need to ask yourself is how you know it’s a hard sell project. I have two friends who happen to be New York Times Bestselling writers. Both landed on the Times list with books that were, pre publication, deemed “hard sell projects.” Friend #1 had this opinion of her project because she’d been trying to sell it for 10 years without much luck. It fell rather neatly between two very different genres. The publishers of the one genre told her it was too much like the other, and vice versa. They always cautioned her to remove the other element, to make it more fully of the genre they published. But she was in LOVE with this project and the marriage of the two genres, and so was everyone else who read it. One editor who read it was so in love with it, in fact, that a year after she initially turned it down, she dreamed up an innovative way to make it work in their publishing program. The book became a beloved bestseller.

Friend #2 had the opinion that her project was a “hard sell” for lord only knows what reason. Maybe someone on an internet forum told her that, since she hadn’t submitted it, so she had no professional opinion to go on. I know I certainly didn’t agree with the assessment. I was watching the zeitgeist carefully, and this fit right in. To be perfectly honest, I think she was afraid because she knew this one was “the one.” And it was, because she got an agent and a book deal in no time flat, and the book was a huge hit.

The moral of this story is: We’re not always as good a judge as we think we are. Friend #1 believed in her book. Believed in it more than I think I would have the power to believe in any of my books. Believed in it for ten years of disappointment. Friend #2 had to have some manipulative bitch secretly start submitting the book behind her back to get her off her ass. (Don’t worry, she thanks me now.)

And then there’s Friend #3. Friend #3 is not a bestselling author. However, she had a project she really believed in. A “book of her heart.” She tried to sell it for years to no avail. But she so cared for this project that although she continued to write far more profitable books, she put this book of her heart out through a small press, where it found a rabid niche audience and received several writing awards.

So… where do I draw the line? It depends on the book. If I were to write a “book of my heart” (which Julie Leto and Jo Beverly define in the above-linked article to mean “a book that invaded an author’s psyche so deeply, that she is ravenously compelled to write it, even if she knows it will not sell because it is not marketable. The book actually blocks the writer’s more commercial work”) then I don’t think anything would stop me from getting it out. But it hasn’t happened.

I love that Leto article. It pretty much describes my approach to my writing career. I don’t view this as a dichotomy. It’s not “book of your heart” vs. “book of your wallet.” For me, I love all my projects and they have all been a marriage of my writer brain and my business brain — they have been books that I know I could love and books that I thought would be marketable. That has been my luck.

Have I always been right? No. The fourth manuscript I wrote (the last one I wrote before selling Secret Society Girl, in fact) was a single title paranormal romance. This ms won a Molly Award, finaled in a bunch of other RWA contests, got a bunch of full requests from agents and editors, and was rejected by over 20 different illustrious members of the publishing world. To this day I cherish the rejection letter I got from one agent that explains to me that though well-written, the book possessed specific issues which would make it a hard sell in the paranormal romance market, and that it was her professional opinion that I’d be better off trying something else. I was not Friend #1, and this book was not Friend #1’s magnum opus. I chose to move on. Since the next book I wrote got an agent and a book deal in no time flat, I guess I made the right choice THAT time.

But, I wrote that book and edited it and submitted it and THEN figured out that I was barking up the wrong tree. That was seven years ago. Since I’d like to not repeat that mistake, now I try to figure out where my book might fit into the market before I spend a year writing and editing it. To do this, you must not only look at the books on the shelf (which might have been bought 2 years ago), you must see what is selling now. Today. You must subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace and see what people are buying RIGHT NOW. Do you happen to have a book idea that fits into that spectrum? Good. Now’s the time to write THAT book. Not some other book. THAT one.

I have lots of ideas. I keep a whole file of them. Sometimes ideas live inside that file forever with nowhere to go. The words “a retelling of Persuasion” have been in my idea file for years and years. About two years ago, the word “post-apocalyptic” somehow got jumbled up next to that idea, and they stuck. Last year, while casting around for something to write that wasn’t killer unicorns, I thought about that, thought about how much the YA market was loving its post-apocalyptic books, and decided that the time had come. That’s how I choose what projects to write. I look at the things I want to write, and then I pick the one that I think has the best potential on the marketplace.

The truth of the matter is that if we really really REALLY love a project, if it’s a “book of our hearts,” then whether or not it’s a hard sell doesn’t matter. In fact, we probably will never see it as a hard sell. Friends #1 and #3 were always mystified that the publishing world was unable to see their books’ potentials. In their own way, they were each right.

For me, the “hard sell” alarm is going to temper my love for the project. But I also know that one day there may come a book where I’m deaf to the alarms, just as my friends were.

And that’s a “your mileage may vary” situation, too. Some writers would say that I’m missing something if I don’t have some book that consumes my soul to write. Other writers would say that I concentrate too much on what I really want to write (like “weird” killer unicorn books), when I should just write a paranormal boyfriend love triangle like what’s burning up the bestseller list.

It’s possible that there are orphaned ideas in my file that would be big hits. Because here’s the flip side of this oh-so-eternal question. For every writer that has a beloved book be deemed a “hard sell”, there is another writer looking at the bestseller list or a big deal posting and going, “Wow, I totally had that idea.” But here’s what I think — we didn’t write it because we DIDN’T feel the love. We said to ourselves, “yeah, were-mosquitoes might be cool, but I’m really feeling that whole sea monsters in space thing right now.” And then, five years later when the writer of the were-mosquito book is jetting to and from her private island to Hollywood where her were-mosquito movie is being filmed, we’re happy, because we still love our sea monsters from outer space.