During the SF conference earlier this year, a panel of book editors told an audience of mostly new writers that if they want to get published, they can't afford to write in different genres; and ideally they should have written the first 3 novels, all with the same characters, before even approaching them.
Well, I had no idea what my niche was when I wrote my first children's novel. It was about a 13-year old science nerd with no social skills who gets taken to what he thinks will be an academy for gifted kids. But when he turns up, the academy is a cottage in the Welsh hills and the two professors who recruited him are going to teach him to play table soccer instead. Apparently, a mad genius is draining the world of champion spirit via the game, and only our kid can save us. Niche that!
Okay, so that was back in the 1980s when a children's publishing house was more like Hogwarts than the law firm-ish offices of today. My editor didn't have a large beard and pointy hat, but she had the magical power to choose the books she wanted to publish, work on the cover design with the author, and put the book out without as much as a sneer in the direction of the non-existing marketing team.
By the time my next book was ready, however, the sales team had arrived. Everything changed, including the cover design she and I had created. On the sales teams' version, my two main characters were (un)magically changed from bright but girl-ignorant lads to cool, girl-magnet teen dudes. "But," I said, "it won't just be the girls who're disappointed when they read what these guys are really like." Apparently, though, it didn't matter if the cover was as genuine as a Nigerian funds transfer offer, if it drew in the punters, who cared?
Still niche-averse, I published a few more YA/children's books, but also had quite a few rejected by editorial committees, acquisitions committees, and probably the committees' committee, too.
Time for a change!
I decided to switch to my first love, Science Fiction. I thought I'd better start fresh so in 2006 I attended Odyssey, one of the six-week US workshops. It was great to just write stories and critique other people's, and to be in a classroom again, learning stuff from top writers and editors. Even if we got the niche advice there, too. It was also good, as an Englishman, to learn to hug without wincing.
After Odyssey, I started sending out short stories, now almost wilfully un-niche like. I found a new freedom with short fiction, to try different styles, different voices, genders, beliefs, and so on. I also carried on attending workshops, two in Oregon, for example, taken by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, who taught in the opposite direction to much of what I'd learned before. Damn that elusive niche.
I've sold around 30 stories now, no two of them really in the same niche. I might have sold more if they were, I don't know. All I do know is that if writing is fun and exciting and challenging for the author, I think it's likely to please readers, too.
A story of mine just won the New Scientist/Arc Magazine short fiction prize. It's about a town full of bio-toy Cockneys and talking animals, trying to save themselves from the encroaching electro-bio-mechanical sludge by helping their human master, Dave, to fall in love. I wrote the first few pages a couple of years back with absolutely no idea why or where it was going. I just loved the setting and the characters and the language. I went back to it several times, but couldn't see where to take it. Eventually, I got the rest of the story and finished it. But still no niche . . .
T. D. Edge won a Cadbury's fiction competition at age 10, but only did it for the chocolate. His short fiction has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Arc, Realms of Fantasy, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Flash Fiction Online. Terry has been a street theatre performer, props maker for the Welsh National Opera, sign writer, soft toy salesman, and professional palm-reader. He is also proud of being the youngest-ever England Subbuteo Champion, and one of his current writing projects is Subbuteo for the Soul.
Learn more about T. D. Edge on his website.
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