One of the things I did over the holiday was read the page proofs for the mass-market paperback edition of Tall, Dark & Dead (my first Garnet Lacey book). My editor sent it as a .pdf, and so I mailed it to my partner's fancy new Kindle Fire, and spent a day reading my book on the Kindle. I found several typos, much to my surprise. The good news is that they'll be corrected in the paperback version. The other thing that was kind of awesome about that is that I discovered that one of my best selling books is also one of my quirkiest.
I don't know if you noticed, but Garnet is kind of a slut. There is a LOT of sex in that book, and sexiness. Sebastian is also surprisingly dark, and Parrish is... a total hustler, like literally, in that book. It's kind of amazing... and Garnet's friends are odd, a lot like my real friends, and the interactions in that books are very *me*.
Thus, one of the things that re-reading that book has done for me is made me a bit more confident about my quirkiness as a writer. You see, in most cases, I had no idea if my personal brand of weirdness was a plus or a minus to sales. The AngeLINK books, which are very *me*, are all out of print.
This "failure" has caused me to believe that maybe I had no idea how to write to a popular market. But, TD&D is going to mass-market. It's the only book I've had that's changing format like that. As a trade-size book, it's well into its sixth or seventh printing. I've easily made as much money in royalties from that book as they paid me in an advance, probably twice as much... if not more.
My point is, I can now say, with confidence, that my quirkiness is _not_ a detriment to sales. IN FACT, a person could make a pretty strong case that... maybe, just MAYBE I know what I'm doing.
Well, we probably shouldn't go THAT far. But, at least, it seems to be true that a book that has a lot of my extra special weirdness smeared all over it isn't automatically headed for the remainder pile.
This was kind of an epiphany... during the Epiphany and everything.
2 comments:
I'm glad you feel better about your quirkiness--after all who wants to read the same old chick lit about women shopping for shoes? A witch who dates vampires and has to run from the occasional zombie/coyote/rogue goddess/irate dead ex-wife is way more interesting.
I LOVE the quirkiness of your characters! You are one of the women who inspires me when I do my own writing. I thank you for daring to do something different!
Take care! Sending positive thoughts your way!
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