A Writer Reboot—The Search for Sales

80% of families in the US did not buy a single book over the past year.

80%.

If you look up the proliferating infographics available on the internet today, the picture of reading as a pastime isn’t encouraging for authors. Let alone authors of genre fiction. Christian authors of genre fiction? It’s no wonder so many of us are looking at our quarterly royalty checks and laughing in a way that makes the people around us a little uncomfortable.

Is it any wonder, with the statistics,
that bookstores are a dying breed?

It’s all just a matter of numbers. Of the 20% of Americans who bought ANY kind of book last year, how many bought fiction? Not the majority. Of those who bought fiction, how many bought fantasy? Of those who bought fantasy, how many tried something that wasn’t a George R R Martin book? Of that group, how many of them were looking for fantasy, specifically, from a Christian worldview? (Here’s a hint: the overall religious market—fiction and non-fiction—only represents about $2 billion of the $30 billion book sales industry, if my interpretation of Publisher’s Weekly’s financial reporting is to be trusted.)

Suddenly, I begin to see that my expectation of anything better than meager sales is mostly wishful thinking.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m at a bit of a reboot moment with my writing. The Risen Age Archive is in my lap, waiting for me to figure out when, how, even IF I should get it back out to market. The Windrider Saga is on (I hope temporary) hiatus while I make decisions and corrections on Risen Age. (And then it will be Windrider’s turn for the scalpel. Or the sledgehammer. Not sure.)

Writing the stories isn’t enough for me. Call me pedestrian, but I want to sell books. Enough to make some noticeable difference in my family’s bottom line at the end of the quarter. It has become clear to me that if I want to have much of chance of doing this, it’s time to cast a wider net than the CBA crowd.

What this doesn’t mean for me is that I intend to suddenly “scuff up” my stories for some kind of perceived general market palette. Frankly, while my stories contain a religious system, that system has already proven too loose in its interpretation of real-world Christian theology to get a pass with readers who prefer fiction that exhibits a mirror-image biblical worldview. (Which is fine. To each his own. We live in an age where we can choose what we want to read, and that’s awesome.)

Will my stories smell too much like church to secular readers? I have no idea. They haven’t reached that population yet. This broader audience I’m looking for may chew me up and spit me back out on the doorstep of the CBA, for all I know.

What I do know is that I want to keep writing the stories that are rattling around in my imagination, and I want as many people to enjoy them as possible. And that means taking a chance at putting them in front of people who will mock me for my effort and my convictions.

For the sake of the Realm Makers conference, which I intend to keep administrating as long as people want it to happen, I keep looking for that writer who will serve as my connection to the Christians who are writing for the secular market. It’s occurring to me—maybe I’m not supposed to find him or her. Maybe I’m supposed to BE that author.

Because sometimes there’s no way to know if you belong in a place until you go and try to live there.