How to make 'weird' books more marketable

without losing your charm and style

So I got talking to some authors recently. We talked about the confusion between the two terms ‘writing to market’ and ‘writing to trend’.

Full disclosure, I am no fan of either. I am first and foremost an artist, much to my own financial dismay. I don’t prioritize making money, I prioritize making worlds.

Sounds pretentious doesn’t it? Well, I did voluntarily get a second degree in writing so I don’t know what you expected. I’m also a poet, so this was inevitable. At least I’m not breathlessly ranting about political issues I don’t understand, whilst rhyming.

Anyway, on with my definitions.

‘Writing to market’ means to chisel your work into something more marketable

‘Writing to trend’ means copying what’s popular just to make money

Readers can tell the difference between these two types of writing. At least, the readers I know can, probably because I hang around with smart people.

But there’s a part of the writing world that consumers of the art might not know about: A lot of people write to trend and stick to rapid publishing schedules just to make cash. They don’t care about the stories, but the stories sell, and they sell well. Where are these soulless stories? Have I read one? How can you tell?

Simply, I think you can just feel it. The story will come across like a manual for a story that hasn’t been told. Things will happen and you will forget the things, the main character might be boring, or the story might just feel empty.

It is something I dislike. Growing up I always presumed writers got published because they were good. Then as I read more I saw that this wasn’t always the case (I’d thank some books I read at uni for that, but I don’t remember their titles) and I’m talking about both Tradpub and Selfpub here. In fact, if we are to argue about which is best, based on originality of work alone, Selfpub is far superior. There are some ridiculously weird stories out there by a fantastically varied group of authors, and they all have one thing in common: They are self-published.

I say this because Tradpub seems to be getting less and less interesting over time, like a one-night-stand who moved in with you and doesn’t actually like the movies you like but just said it so they could move in.

So over time, as more and more people read this blog in the future, I will be more and more right until Tradpub notices it is boring and collapses in on itself, which I’ve been told it already is doing by authors who moved from Trad to Self in recent years…

But that’s a story for another time.

BACK TO THE SUBJECT.

People write to trend and it’s weird, but not weird in the good way like self-published children’s books about alien dragons teaching kids how to refine their critical thinking skills (not a real book, but would be cool) but weird in a bad way. It is weird because you expect a book to be something the author loved. It is no easy task to write a book. Even if the writing itself is easy, keeping negative influences away and chiseling out a slice of time to write it in is a task in itself. No, authors must surely be madly in love with their work in order to push it out into the world at all, right?

Wrong. Apparently some books are more product than art.

It’s disturbing to see talented authors abandon the stories they are passionate about in order to pursue a more lucrative genre. I’d ideally live in a world where they find it easier to meet their real audience, because there is one out there, for almost every book (this is something I shall work on privately in the coming months) you just have to go out and find it. I found mine through meme pages and making jokes on instagram comments.

That said, among authors I’ve spoken to, ‘writing to trend’ is not nearly as popular as ‘writing to market’, and there often seems to be a misunderstanding of which is which.

Some authors also dabble in more popular genres so they can use one book to sell another. I imagine this might happen to my book when my poetry comes out, though my poetry is far from the type you just imagined when I said poetry. Again I am trying to invent my own genre, which is a ‘hard sell’ but I don’t care. I love doing this.

Basically, it’s fine to bend your work into a more marketable shape, but make sure it still has a soul please. Someone will notice.

“So how do I sell weird books without becoming too normal?”

If you choose to ‘write to market’ instead of choosing to ‘write to trend’ then you are still working with the material you love. You won’t suffer burnout as bad, you won’t get as many blocks. You may even get no ill effects from it at all. All you need to do is beat your story into a more marketable shape.

“But I don’t like the term marketable.”

Neither do I, but it’s fine. I use ‘accessible’ instead.

“So how do I make a book more accessible?”

What I did with my debut novel WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? is refine it. I wrote it exactly how I wanted it to be written, then I rearranged the stories so they had an underlying pattern, then I cut back some sentences, moved a reveal around by a page or two. I made the stories easier to read, and funnier, and more interesting. I added visual cues where they were missing, and I added bits of mystery that hinted at future books, so readers knew the multiverse was going to soon be far larger. If someone was wearing a hat, I would remind the reader about the hat a bit later on in case it became important. It’s little things, smoothing out the experience of a book, that makes it readable and enjoyable.

I had another idea too.

The book is a car. It should be complicated under the hood, but smooth on the surface level, so the average consumer can enjoy getting to where it takes them without needing to worry about the machinery underneath. The machinery must exist, and it must take on a shape that clicks into the next book, but it must exist in a way that viewing and experiencing it on a deeper level is optional. The book must be a smooth ride. Everything else is secondary to the reader.

That is a refined version of my philosophy for all books. I do the complicated stuff first, then add the smooth bits, then drive it around for a while. If it works, it gets published, if it doesn’t, it gets refined.

That is how WBTH is fun to read for both casual readers and the strange new following of people who really like digging into the subtext, and asking me if Lax Morales ever comes back and what the timeline would look like if I drew it on paper.

I love those moments, I hope they get more frequent in the coming months.

How it’s going for me.

At present I am soaring toward 500 sales of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? after doing minimal advertising. It’s been out for just over a year (Amazon says less time, but I had it on another site beforehand).

I see spikes of sales after I make posts on instagram, and not my usual posts either. When I occasionally jump into politics and poke fun at both imaginary sides, people engage and sometimes unfollow me, but it acts as a filter. Because so much of my personality is in WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? people who are attracted to my page are of course people who will be buying the book at some point, even if it is just to support me (I have been told by some that they don’t have time to read it, but just want to help me reach my goals).

I am happy with where I am right now because I know where I am going, and I think knowing where you are aiming is a very important part of the marketing. For me, random facebook ads probably won’t work, unless I ask a question that causes some slight controversy.

So here’s another bit of my philosophy.

weird books need weird adverts

So I'm working on that. I have switched off all of my adverts on all online platforms. I am now moving into people’s heads directly by psychically projecting myself from nearby electrical outlets. I am purchasing billboards. I am manifesting a clone of myself in America. I have written to my future self, instructing him to send thank you letters back through time to people who haven’t responded to my emails yet. Half of what I just said was true.

Develop a writer’s philosophy

Readers will know if a book lacks direction. In fact, it is the most frequent criticism of books. It manifests in multiple ways: Boring characters, boring story, too long, nonsensical chapters, disjointed narration, shifts in tone for no reason. All of these are signs that a book lacks direction. Each story and scene may need its own philosophy, it can get pretty granular. But before then, above it all, you need one distinct goal for the entire piece.

For me it was this.

"design a book that is structured like a poetry collection, and can be both a novel and a collection of independent stories, depending on how it is read"

Now that is a very artsy, fancy goal, but on top of that was

"smooth the thing out so it's fun, and also easy to read"

so after chiseling away at it to make it not just into a book I like, but a book other people can actually comprehend, I've got feedback such as "this is the first book I've read front to back in about 4 years!" which makes me smile.

The marketing comes after that. By making a book accessible to its target audience, it markets itself. Make your book enjoyable, easy to read, and easy to remember. The rest will follow naturally. You must make your adverts as weird as your book. Making a normal boring advert for a fun book will only bring in boring people who won’t want to buy your fun book.

For me, I’m weird and so are my books. This means my adverts must be weird.

My next post will cover some ideas I have had.