What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
I'm hoping--since you seem to be a group of avid readers, and you're probably quite close to my ideal target audience--that you can give me some good advice.
The book-publishing industry is dying. In the past few years I've sent at least a dozen book proposals off to do the rounds. I'm fairly sure that ten years ago, all would have generated some interest. Not anymore. The print publishing industry is well on its way to obsolescence, and the major publishers haven't a clue how to make money from new publishing technology.
I'm just not sure what kind of book to pitch. Writing fiction is out of the question. It just doesn't sell. Besides, reality these days is mighty interesting--why bother with fiction, I keep thinking, when the world seems stranger and more interesting than anything I could imagine? But non-fiction books about the things I'd naturally think of writing don't seem to sell, either. I was certain that a lively book about Margaret Thatcher would have real commercial potential. I was wrong.
Still, some books are selling. Some writers are still finding a way to make it work.
Suppose you were to commission me to write a bespoke book, just for you. What would it be about? Is there a subject you're just dying to know more about, but you just don't see any books about it in the book stores? What kind of book would you actually pay money to read and to own these days?
As long as I can make a reasonable living, I'm willing to write about just about anything. I'm willing to move anywhere to do it. The idea has to have obvious commercial appeal, because I need to convince a publisher to give me an advance: I don't have the savings to do it on spec. Besides, if I can't convince a publisher to buy it, I probably won't be able to convince anyone to buy it.
Beyond that, I'm open to anything.
Apart from writing, I don't actually have any marketable skills, I don't think. I'm just not seeing a real future for myself in the martial arts, whatever that fight promoter in London might have thought.
So I need to figure something out.
Ideas?
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
You know Claire, books about Istanbul do sell. There's a guy named Harry Turtledove who's sold a ton of them. Of course, he sets them in a differently named country, with magic & whatnot, but they're all Byzantine. I'm not saying that you should take Istanbul, add a pinch of Frodo and then you have a winner. But two routes seem promising.
First, you could go the historical fiction route (ala the aforementioned Colleen McCollough), there are many excellent periods to choose from, with characters spectacular & creepy: Basil Bulgaroctonus, Michael Psellus, or Heraclius. These are characters that can carry a narrative. Your pitch is the anti-hero.
Are you yawning? Well, I'd buy it. How about something in Mr. Turtledove's newly minted sub-genre, alternate history? He wrote a series of books working from the proposition that the south had won the Civil War. He developed a world in which the "Confederate States of America" and the United States of America were rivals, entering into each world war on opposite sides.
So, what if one of the 7th or 8th century arab sieges of Constantinople had succeeded? What does that world look like?
May '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
I've been waiting for a true sequel to Loose Lips, set in Vientiane. Selena Keller would have to get back in the biz somehow -- gets recruited by another agency (NSA? The Mossad?), the CIA sees the error of its ways, she goes private, whatever. Think of it as a funnier and less apologetic take on The Quiet American. (I know you said fiction is dead; I just don't believe it.)
Jul '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
You are clever and amusing, Claire. How about a guide for Americans on what not to say, and how not to act, in Turkey. And you could have a companion book, for Turks, on what not to say, and how not to act, when you are in America. And shop it to Encounter books.
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
I pitched that, too--it was called "In Heat," and set in India, and I was just dying to write it. But I couldn't sell it. If you want, I'll send you the proposal so you can see what happened to Selena next.
Aug '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Is the problem finding a book readers want to read, or a book publishers think they can sell? If the latter, is it possible to do without the publisher?
What do you need from a publisher? An advance, it seems, but money is pretty fungible, and might have many sources. Production? I just read that some publishers are going to e-book and print-on-demand only, technologies well within the reach of many authors. Promotion? I understand that authors end up doing most of that themselves anyway.
I know that John Derbyshire had a very bad experience self-publishing his second novel, but is it still so grim? Is it just the new vanity press, or a new model. (I just read in Modern Times that Proust had to resort to the vanity press to get his works published)
For example, I was intrigued by the first page of Cat-stantinople. Is it in the can, ready to go? Could you sell it as PDFs online, in an i-Tunes or Fictionwise model? Where can I buy a copy, publishers be [expletive].
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Good questions. It's both: the market has shrunk precipitously, and publishers have become terrified of taking risks--preferring to stick to proven sellers like cookbooks, celebrity memoirs and the like.
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Distribution is one big problem. Economies of scale are another. You're right about promotion. I've so far not seen a self-publishing model that really makes sense: I've looked into it pretty closely.
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Possibly! We might yet think about it. We were so discouraged by the universal rejection from conventional publishers that we gave up on it. I'm happy to send you the first half as a special "Ricochet members bonus," if you like.
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Another idea. Maybe would interest some Ricochet folks AND the wide, wide world. You find someone your age who had academic promise, dreams, whatever, similar to yours. However, she stayed in the US, got married perhaps, got a "boring" corporate job, had kids, whatever. You alternate short stories of what happened in your lives at, say, age 24, 25, 29, 35, etc. (You're on a train in Laos; she's shopping for sippy cups in Target, etc.) What lessons did you learn first, because of your international, semi-nomadic, "free" existence? What lessons did she learn first staying home, slogging away in an office, marriage, etc? What similarities/diferences do you have based on experience? What regrets does SHE have? What regrets do you have? Could be marketed a few diff. ways, but one could be to women who are thinking about what kind of life they WANT, what life they are brave enough to do, what happens to them to shape their choices, etc. ... I would also like to know what happens to Selena, if you could email me the proposal ..
Jul '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Sometimes it's the package. Your graphic novel package looks great (now that I look at it), but I would go right by it because I associate graphic novels with teen video gamers. Also, what is the story, anyway? You have to have a central character, interesting, but opaque enough to provide a magic carpet on which your (millions of) readers can ride through your story.
Put that woman on the cover!
May '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
A little late to catching up on this thread as usual. Claire, maybe you and Ursula could collaborate on this (I am not implying that Ursula has a boring corporate job, but she is in the states and has children!) Sounds very marketable to me.
Just getting ready to start Lion Eyes...
Jul '10
Re: What Book Would You Actually Buy if I Wrote it?
Claire Berlinski
Good questions. It's both: the market has shrunk precipitously, and publishers have become terrified of taking risks--preferring to stick to proven sellers like cookbooks, celebrity memoirs and the like. · Aug 9 at 8:37am
Fine, you're convinced it has to be "non-fiction." Yes, cookbooks and celebrity memoirs are two types of books that sell. I think that you're missing the forest for the trees. Those two types are the same book. They're both celebrity memoirs, at least those that sell. There are two other types of "non-fiction" books that do well: textbooks and polemics.
If you developed a solid, politically-correct, writing manual you could do very well. An angry polemic, with a title that screams we have to fix x, or y is bad, is the other obvious way to go.
Books need promotion. A textbook that is assigned reading material for a class promotes itself. A celebrity memoir (or celebrity cookbook) is promoted by the celebrity's celebrity. A polemic is promoted by the big-shot polemicists who agree with it.