I was at a craft fair peddling my books yesterday, and the woman at the booth beside me told me she and her girlfriend are writing a children’s book. She went on to say that they’ll need an illustrator, it’s taken them a few years to get this far, they are at a dead stop because the girlfriend is going through a divorce, and they want to change the entire plot now because they attended a writing conference that told them the story they were telling was “wrong” for the market.
Now, I get all these things. I get how they are a concern. I listened and nodded and offered some of my own tips for getting one’s butt back in the writer’s seat once a break has unintentionally happened. But what I thought was, no.
Mainly, no, don’t write for a market.
I am not a marketer. Do not take my word as gospel. But here is what I have observed.
The stories that last, the stories that sell, the stories that win prizes and win hearts — those are all heart stories. I work for a children’s book publisher right now, and I see such patronizing crap every season that I want to cry. It’s all very carefully “marketed.” It’s very clean, very polite, and very boring. You know how many prizes books from my employer have won? How many books have been reprinted after the first run? Yeah, zero.
I generally don’t read kid’s fiction (I’m a little snobby that way, sorry, but not really sorry), but I do read a little. The stuff I read that I like and that has gone far and been re-printed over and over is the stuff that talks about sex and death and responsibility and how stupid adults and other kids can be. In short, it’s the stuff that talks about life how it really is, and can only have been written because the author felt this was something they really had to say. Not sanitized. Not patronizing. Not marketed.
I write vampire stories and urban fantasy. (Or “paranormal” or whatever they’re calling it these days.) This is supposed to be a “dead” genre, but here’s my take: I like it. That’s what I want to read, that’s what I want to write, that’s the way I feel I can talk about the human condition in terms that make sense to me. This is art, people. It’s also an attempt to make a living, but since when have the arts ever been a good thing to try to make a living at? I’d like to make a living, but first and foremost, I want to make good art. Good art is not good marketing.
Good art certainly has its rules, but those rules are very different from good marketing. And don’t get me wrong, you can have the best art in the world and it will sit and collect dust unless you have at least a little marketing behind it. But please, do not set out to create a “marketable” piece of art. That’s not art. That’s smooth and flavorless and tepid and no matter how well it might sell initially, it’s doomed to burn out quickly.
Again, this is my opinion and my observation. It is also my belief and my integrity, and while I intend to make money at this, I also intend to be an artist. And at the end of my life, it’s the art that will comfort me and leave something for others, not the money.
