And Do It Right Now In Less Than Two Minutes
Only about a tenth of the new titles published today are fiction if we exclude just one genre, romance, mostly written by and for women. This category is sometimes looked down on, which makes no sense. When westerns were selling strongly, they were just as formulaic in their own way as romance is today; yet western writers enjoyed considerable status. If you’re interested in writing romance, make no mistake about it: it’s a difficult and highly competitive discipline. Breaking into this market requires talent, commitment and persistence of the highest order.
In the middle of the last century the ratio between fiction and nonfiction was about fifty-fifty as to the number of new titles published. However, fiction accounted for considerably more than half of the book industry’s dollar volume. In the following decades, competition from television and other forms of entertainment has greatly reduced fiction’s importance to the book industry.
Most new fiction published today is written by established writers. Only about 500 debut novels (first novels) are now being published in this country each year. That’s barely more than one a day. Sound good? Keep on reading.
At least 200,000 Americans aspire to be writers. There’s some reason to believe the real number runs as high as twenty percent of the population—in other words many, many millions of people. More are based in Australia, Canada and the UK, not to mention India, where English is a second language to the most influential three percent of India’s billion-plus population. Most aspirants everywhere are intent on writing novels. Few of these hopefuls realize they are competing to be one of the annual crop of just 500 debut novelists. OK, multiply that number by 10. Say there are 5,000 debut novels printed in the USA each year (don’t quote me on that number; it’s wildly exaggerated). The odds against success are still hugely discouraging.
So how do you multiply your chances by 100 in two minutes? By deciding to switch to nonfiction. (Actually, you can do that in two seconds, but that sounds like an extreme claim.) If you don’t have enough credibility and expertise in a saleable topic, collaborate with an expert who does. Future posts will tell you exactly how to become a highly successful collaborative writer. <>
