Is Your Genre Selling Universally? Maybe Not!

Writers all want to know that their books are selling. They want to know their hard work is getting out there to the readers! Let's face it, if your book is not selling, then you are going no where fast. But then we run into another big question: Does your genre sell universally? What we are asking here is whether or not your genre does well in a lot of different markets and with different publishers.

And here is the answer - Probably not!

I heard this recently when an author had posted on social media that she was struggling with understanding why Publisher X could not seem to sell her genre and yet Publisher Y was claiming that genre was selling through the roof. The answer comes down to who buys each of those publishers books. 

If you think about any business out there, businesses do market research and know their clientele. They know the type of people who walk into their store and those who will cross the street and go somewhere else. While they market similar products, their approach will dictate the things that they do with marketing as well as the products they keep in their stores. Consider people shopping at Walmart and those shopping at Whole Foods Market. Both sell produce. Both sell meats, frozen foods, etc. But their clientele dictates the brands that show up. Each one knows that only certain brands work.

The same goes for publishing. I mentioned once before in a blog that I had a client who had done a contemporary with a western ranch feel. One publisher said that market was not strong and the other claimed it was working great. Again, it all came down to who was buying that publishers book.

As you listen to these claims, always stop and ask if the statement about those sales is truly universal across all publishers or if it is something isolated to a single publisher. You might be surprised at your findings.