TRENDS

 

It is tempting to follow a trend. You read a great book, and you see all the books that follow in its wake, and you see a bandwagon you want to jump onto.

Here’s a note of caution: the bandwagon will have left the station by the time you’ve got your ticket, and there’s a new, shinier bandwagon on its way, and your ticket is no longer valid.

It works like this.

A book will do well, perhaps unexpectedly well, so all the publishers rush to bring out books of that type. Here are some examples.

In the seventies and eighties, Stephen King was huge. The biggest sellers around that time were horror and ghost stories. James Herbert. Guy N. Smith. Peter Straub. Now, not many books like that make waves anymore, but there was an appetite for more at the time.

Go to Gone Girl, a fantastic book. For the years afterwards, you couldn’t move for psychological thrillers, and there were a lot of very good ones, Gillian Flynn opening the door for a lot of very good writers. Also, there were a lot of not very good ones, who just did a rehash of my spouse wasn’t the person I thought they were. But there was an appetite, and people got publishing deals because of it.

Remember Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown? Another great book. For the few years after that, the shelves were filled with thrillers around people solving mysteries with ancient parchments, or whatever. I can bet, however, that a lot of those writers will have been rejected first time around, but as soon as Da Vinci Code made the waves that it did, editors and agents will have been scrabbling around in their recycling boxes for the manuscript they’d rejected not long before. Again, some good ones, some not so good ones.

Remember the erotica shelves in around 2011, in the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey? The main shelf in your nearest Waterstones looked like an underwear display, there were that many corsets on the covers.

I remember being told when I was first trying to get published that “the serial killer market has gone a bit soft lately”. Publishers hope to start the wave, but if they don’t, they just want to ride whichever wave is out there.

The reality of an unpublished writer following a trend is, however, a bit tougher, and it is this.

You spot a trend, are even inspired by the trend, and decide to write something in that vein. It will take you a year to write, perhaps two. It might take you a year to find an agent, then a publisher, if you are lucky. The book won’t come out until around a year after you sign the contract, because of the editing, and marketing, and slots already booked by other writers.

There you go, your book will hit the shelves maybe four years after the trend existed, by which time the bandwagon has not only left the station, but is sitting in a siding, being resprayed.

My advice is to write what interests you, the book you want to write. It’s your story, your idea, your imagination. By the time you finish your manuscript, it might be your time, or your time might be in the future, ready and waiting for the next bandwagon.

I have always said that the key to getting published is the right thing, on the right desk, at the right time. That is the holy trinity of getting a publishing deal.

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Now you can see the path ahead, you might need to do some research. Follow the arrow.

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