The Curse of Missing your #Genre

Genres are a tricky thing. Some are obvious and clear, others are fuzzy and wide-open to personal interpretation. There are many sub-genres out there that stir up heated debates around their definition. The more you look into the whole thing the more of a mess it seems to become.

I've always classified myself as a science fiction author. My first few novels were classic science fiction, or at least I thought they were. The fact that they form an on-going series of books, sharing a common scenario and characters pushes them into Space Opera, but then I write very accurate science with a decent attempt to realistically predict near future technology. That kind of makes my novels Hard SciFi.

For years I kept labelling my novels either Hard SciFi or Space Opera, but recently I am beginning to think I may have got it completely wrong. Yes I write epic, far-reaching stories with a large cast of characters and yes my stab at future technology is soundly based in current technological research, but those are NOT the most important aspects of my novels.

The science fiction is not the centre of the story or even the reason for it. Looking back, most of my novels would actually work just as well set in the 18th Century on board wooden ocean-going vessels. The stories would translate very well and there's very good reason for this.

Icarus

At the core of my novels is not science fiction, but humans. Everything revolves around the characters, their aims, fears, loves, fights and struggles. I've had several people tell me they believe Astronomicon: Icarus is based on the movie Event Horizon. It wasn't. I cannot claim that there is no crossover there, but my book was actually devised after watching The Perfect Storm (which was almost an excellent movie). I wanted to write a version which fixed the problems and, as I tend to write scifi, I wrote it as a scifi novel. In the end it diverged quite substantially from the plot of The Perfect Storm and went very much its own way.

By constantly labelling my novels as science fiction, and some of its sub-genres, I am probably losing a massive chunk of my potential reader base. I know of about a dozen people so far who have loved my books who openly state they do not like science fiction. My books have elements of mystery, action, adventure and even horror in them. They all contain some humour and even a little romance in places. My latest novel, Deadline (soon to be published) even has two of the key characters getting married before the final chapter. I planned it as a science fiction comedy, but it could easily be described as the account of a relationship from first meeting to eventual marriage. Maybe it's a RomCom? (No I don't think so!)

My stories are human stories, which happen to play out in a science fiction background. Which genre should I file them in? I genuinely don't know any more.

What does it take to make you #review a #Kindle book?

I guess this is the eternal question that most authors would ask their readers. I've been trying to find out the industry standard rate for book sales on Amazon to reviews left, but the data is either elusive or does not exist.

It would be nice if it was 2% or even 1%, but so far I seem to get one review for every 300 or so sales. One of my books does a little better than that, but there's not a big margin of variation.

All my books feature a page at the end politely asking for a review or at least a rating, I've tried to persuade readers to leave a review in discussions on Facebook and Google+, and I've even given copies away free in return for reviews (which in the majority of cases did not lead to reviews).

Obviously, there are review sites out there, but I am dubious as to how a review generated that way would compare to one by someone who chose to read one of my books because they liked the sound of the story or read the sample chapters and wanted to go on and read the rest of it. I'm doubtful that someone who reads and reviews books in order to create content for their blog/website is as likely to enjoy what they are reading and write as positive a review. I've heard horror stories about authors getting bad reviews from people who didn't even like the sound of the book before they read it and then the resulting review damaging future sales.

I hoped I could get some of my friends to review my books, assuming they like the genre, but I've had no luck there either. Most of them are not big readers anyway.

So if you are a reader, what is the key thing which makes you want to leave a rating or write a review?

What's a good number of novels in a series?

We've all experienced trilogies, quadrilogies and even longer series of novels. Some authors only ever write standalone individual books, others love to write larger stories - sometimes a LOT bigger.

But what do readers like?

There's a lot of advantages for an author, especially an indie author, in writing a series as it can really help with the marketing side of things. It allows the author to pour most of their marketing effort into the start of the series in the sensible hope that most readers of the first novel will go on to buy some or all of the rest of the series. Obviously that relies on a good first novel.

The big weakness with that plan is that your first novel is most probably the worst one you'll ever write. Book 3 will probably be a much better novel as you will have honed and polished your writing skills, but readers prefer not to enter a series part way through. If your first novel is good, you are on safe ground, but if the first in the series is the weak link it can kill sales of all the others.

So what's the solution? Some people recommend writing two or three novels and just throwing them away, but I would never advise that. Your first novels are not only necessary to improve your creative skills but also to sort out the skills and help needed to edit and finish your novels. Attempts to promote those novels will also teach you a huge amount about the market, advertising, sales blurb, making contacts and how to use social media to promote your brand. You're going to make mistakes, probably a lot of mistakes, and it's much better to make those mistakes on your early books.

Save your best efforts, once you've learned some of the tricks of the trade and how to avoid the many pitfalls, for your later books. This is a circular thing as the tips you learn from attempting to market your first couple of books can also help you plan and write your later books. Whilst it's nice to think of writing something new within your genre, you also need to not stray too far from what readers in your genre expect. Feedback can be especially important here, and you won't get much feedback if you don't publish anything.

So how does this all work together?

Well the detail is very much up to you, but I would advise writing a couple of standalone novels first. It's the best way to learn and they will be most helpful to practice your marketing skills, building a following and making some useful contacts. With all you learn from that experience, crack on with a series.

Some genres are better suited to a series of novels than others, but within Fantasy, Science Fiction and Thrillers, a series will usually be well received by readers and you will benefit from increased sales.

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Looking to #promote your E-book on #Facebook?

If you're reading this, you're probably one of the many aspiring authors out there who have one or more e-books desperately looking for more readers. In the last few days an excellent new resource has been created to help you tap into the vast potential audience of Facebook users.

There are a great number of e-book groups, author groups and e-book promotional groups on Facebook. Finding good ones is tricky, finding ones that aren't just full of spam is even harder.

This new group has the advantage of being strongly moderated. Authors are encouraged to post announcement of promotions and freebie offers of their e-books but all posts are checked to ensure that everything is on topic and suitable for the group. We trying to foster a friendly and helpful atmosphere where authors can learn to maximise their potential and reach an ever growing number of potential readers.

Click here to see the Ebook Specials group.