Writing, on brand

Where your intrepid author is left in the dust by "write to market"

Recently my friend Gina and I have been talking a lot about (and working a lot towards) revitalizing our careers as authors, which means a lot of talking about the changing nature of publishing.

We’re adjusting, but it’s not easy.

The problem is that we both have been deeply infected by the Authorial Command to “write to market” which, believe me, was alive and well long before the internet (and eventually self-publishing) gained a footing.

Consider: “Write to market” was the advice little baby author me got in Writer’s Digest in the 1980s (sitting on the floor at B. Dalton’s in the mall!), and it did not change as I grew up, grew older, grew old. This was as true for literary fiction as genre fiction, because even literary fiction needed to turn a profit, after all. No author I know escaped it, other than perhaps a privileged few in the ivory towers. It was in the blood of me and every writer I know, whether or not we acknowledged it, struggled against it, or leaned into it.

The ebook revolution just made it worse. While it created an explosion of books for readers to read — which is great, and I have loved the variety as much as the next book addict hoarder reader — it also meant that it was harder than ever for writers to make their books discoverable by readers. It just kept getting harder through the 2010s, as markets flooded even the most staid of genres, such as literary fiction and poems.

The market quickly shifted from teams of marketers and PR pros hired by publishing houses to promote books to things like Book Bub deals, Facebook ads, and the ‘zon algorithm. “Write to market” became less a trite piece of advice given to genre n00bs and more a Law of Survival: to prevail over the algorithm, to thrive in a crowded market, you had to write to the exacting tastes of one specific niche genre and you had to write a lot. In romance, churning out a book every six weeks became the standard for a lot of us, and while some people made a living publishing “only” (!!!!) three or four books a year, the general advice was to write 5,000 words a day and, of course, write to market.

That was difficult enough to deal with when it came to my actual story writing, but worse, it was expanded to every aspect of being an author. Your blog, then your facebook, then your twitter, then your tiktok — it all had to be targeted “to market.” Everything you did was marketing, and had to be dialed into your specific audience… because SEO is a bitch, amirite?!?!?!

(Admittedly, some authors have become successful by simply writing whatever they wanted and being entirely themselves in their work, in their brand, and in their lives. Some magical combination of social mores and literary zeitgeist gave them enough support to overcome their refusal to “write to market.” It’s always been possible. However, it has been a fraught path, and it is littered with survivorship bias. I was certainly not breathing that rarefied air.)

The demand to mold myself to the ephemeral and capricious market felt like a ball peen hammer to my skull, and the pressure of those requirements drove me further away from a writing career than ever. Write a whole book to market? I could barely write a newsletter update to market.

For me, the resulting defeat meant that writing became a hobby once more. A hobby I found enjoyment in, but it was not fulfilling. I was not writing my stories, and all my hopes to become a full-time author were destroyed.

But now, in 2023, the entire publishing world is changing again. It is slipping into a new paradigm that is based less on chasing algorithms and brute forcing quantity to one based on building identity and community. In fact, it’s being called the “community economy.” The creator economy has been curving this direction for years, and Seth Godin has been championing it for well over a decade+, but it has only been in the past few years that both technology and society are aligned to support it. Patreon, kickstarter, wattpad, and twitch have paved the way.

To be successful in a community economy, writers need to lean into our unique voices in order to not just set us apart but make it easier for our (potential) true fans to find us. The goal is not to rake in the most readers possible but to build a community with the people who genuinely love what we write.

In other words: Creators need to stop trying to write to market and start writing (and posting and branding) from a place of passion for their work.

Oooof.

Where does that leave me?

Struggling to envision a writing life of not writing to market, honestly.

Finding my voice as an author and as a creator is proving to be hard, since the programming of doing everything “to market” runs deep. If I’m not trying to modify my voice (brand) “to market,” what am I supposed to write about? If I’m not targeting a specific and very quantified niche, what have I got to say?

I’ve sat with this question for a while and shot my resulting analysis at most of my friends, who hate it, but as yet cannot come up with qualitative ways in which to counter the argument: I am very boring.

I live a boring life alone, with my dog. (My dog is cuter than I am and, unfairly, sleeps a lot more than I do.)

I do boring things like…writing. A lot. Sitting at my computer, tap tap tapping at the window…wait, no, sorry, I mean at my keyboard.

My hobby is, get this: fanfiction. Yes, after a full day of writing like my job depends on it, I relax and have some fun by…writing. Hmmm.

I do not garden. I do not LARP. I do not cosplay. I do not have a quirky, photogenic hobby. I do not travel much. I’m not restoring furniture or knitting or volunteering somewhere that has great photo ops. I do not have children or grandchildren to talk about. I don’t even have parents to talk about. I don’t date (so much work for so little reward, tbh).

So here I am, talking about how boring I am.

Hope I’m on brand.