The Next Big Thing?

The publishing world is a crazy place. We're always chasing after the latest and greatest trend. And by "we", I mean indies are just as guilty as trad pubs. By chasing trends and tropes and the latest fashionable thing, we're not truly creating something new.

In fact, my friend Jo asked me a (primarily rhetorical) question yesterday, "What was the last BIG book that wasn't a sequel or part of a series?"

The Girl on the Train, but even then, I had to look up when it was published. 2015.

Yep, the last big new thing in books was in 2015. Even then, The Girl on the Train didn't start the domestic thriller trend. That honor(?) goes to Gillian Flynn's Gone, Girl (2012).

So now, everyone's jumping into the domestic thriller with unreliable narrator subgenre, even though that ship has sailed. It's no different than the people still pumping out adult coloring books (that's SO 2016) or urban fantasy which has been run into the freaking ground since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air.

So if we're not retreading the tires in the search for the almighty dollar (light-hearted witch stories a la Charmed, anyone?), what the hell are we doing, fellow writers?

Do we continue to chase our past success? (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child from 2016)

Do we chase the latest new trend? (The market saturation of BDSM after E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Gray went into orbit pretty much ruined the income for folks already there when all the newbs jumped in the pool. With some really bad stories and bad writing, by the way.)

Or do you try to find a quiet niche and carve your own path?

Being yourself is hard, whether it's in real life or as an author. But I'm watching too many people who find some initial success in one subgenre flit from genre to genre, chasing the short-term dollar. They won't take time to build their brand or build the trust of their readers. They write maybe one or two books in a promised series, then give up when they don't become instant millionaires.

In the meantime, the readers are losing faith in us. We promise them entertainment. A refuge from a tough world with characters they fall in love with, then we stab our readers in the back by not finishing the story. We don't give the readers any resolution. They get enough of that shit in real life. So why read us if our books, or lack thereof, are as disappointing as whatever hardship they may be going through right now?

Ironically, I got my first WTF! e-mail from a reader this morning over the ending of A Modicum of Truth, which yes, ends on a cliffhanger. But I also made a promise when I added the first chapter of A Matter of Death to the end. A promise the story WILL be finished. Maybe not right this second, but it will be finished.

And the good guys will win.

Because we all need the good guys to win once in a while even if it's only between the covers of a book.