Market?
Do I have a market?
I
suppose I must. I mean, not all the rows on my monthly royalty
statements are zero. However, I suspect that the people who buy my
work don’t fit easily into any category, because my writing doesn’t
either. They don’t constitute a Market with a capital M. I’m not
particularly popular with Erotic Romance Readers, or Suspense
Readers, or BDSM Readers, or Science Fiction Readers, or Steampunk
Readers, though I’ve written in all those genres. Actually about
the only identifiable group who seems to consistently like my work is
the community of other erotic authors.
Definitely
not what you’d call a large market, though I’ll admit it’s one
I respect and for which I’m grateful...
The
funny thing is, to a very large extent, I understand what’s popular
in the different genres where I dabble. I believe that I could write
exactly what the market wants, if I set my mind to it. Another lusty
virgin seduced by a dark, seductive, haunted dominant? I cut my
literary teeth on that trope, in my very first novel. (Okay, Kate
wasn’t exactly a virgin, but she was a total newbie as far as BDSM
was concerned.) Been there, done that. Although tales of power
exchange push my personal buttons more than almost any scenario, the
world now has more than enough books with that basic plot. I have
little desire to write another.
In
fact, I’ll admit that when it comes to my writing, I have a
contrary streak a mile wide. I love to experiment with different
genres. When I do, my first thoughts involve ways that I can give the
genre an original twist. For example, I wrote a feline shape shifter romance in which the hero was originally an ordinary cat. I wrote
another shape shifter romance about Quetzlcoatl the feathered
serpent. In The Gazillionaire and the Virgin, the bossy
billionaire is a woman and the virgin is a guy (a nerdy professor who
is borderline Asperger’s). In my multi-genre opus RajasthaniMoon, I challenged myself to include the classic elements of as
many genres as I could. I ended up with a steampunk/ BDSM/
multicultural/ menage/ werewolf/ Rubenesque/ Bollywood tale that I
personally think is pretty brilliant (or at least, a huge amount of
fun), but which apparently left readers puzzled.
These
narrative choices do not endear me to the capital M erotic romance
market. What about pure erotica, though? There are millions of
readers looking for stroke fiction and thousands of authors
publishing it. I can write fuck-and-suck stories with the best of
them (with correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, too!) Perhaps
that should be my target market.
Alas,
sex for the sake of sex bores me, almost as much as love for the sake
of the happy ending. If I were desperate for money, I’d probably
try my hand at hard-core porn, and I suspect I’d be at least
moderately successful, but writing as I do mostly for the pleasure of
the experience, I want more than just the mechanics. I’ve received
reviews from folks who bought my erotica collections, complaining
that the stories weren’t sufficiently graphic. Yes, I know. They
had characters. Conflict. Plot.
On
the other hand, I find myself struggling to tone down the raw sex in
my romance. I make my editors squeamish. Then there’s the problem
that my characters always want to have sex with the wrong people,
instead of staying focused on their soul mates.
In
my latest books (the Vegas Babes series), I’ve dabbled in the
shallows of porn, but I’m not sure I’m going to continue in that
mold. I’m starting to find the process of writing unmitigated smut
a bit tedious. I also feel sheepish about these volumes, despite the
fact that they’re selling well; I wrote them really fast and I know
they’re not up to the standard, craft-wise, of my best work. So
what, right? But that bugs me.
I
could write popular erotic romance or utterly filthy
smut if I forced myself to do it. I’m quite certain. Despite my
contrariness, I’m actually good at taking direction. (I am
a sub, after all.) The commissioned stories I’ve written for CustomErotica Source have been highly praised. Clients have written
comments telling me how I brought their fantasies to life, exactly as
they imagined.
I
understand how fiction works and how language can manipulate emotion.
I feel as though I have decent control over the tools of my craft –
better than the majority of published authors today. I’m confident
I could bring those tools to bear in order to construct, if not a
best seller, at least a series of books that would sell much better
than what I write now.
The
bottom line, though: I don’t want to do that. I’m not trying to
make my living at this. I can write what I like – even if only a
few people share my tastes. My true market consists of the relatively
rare individuals who care about originality in fiction and who
appreciate the way a story is told as much as the story itself.
