My partner shared a Wired.com article with me today about the strong role genre fiction is playing in the e-publishing world. This doesn’t really surprise me; in Hollywood you know that there are many genre subcultures with supernormal appetites for their preferred flavor. With the hardcore audience, you can’t get stuff into the pipeline fast enough, and one of the positive things about the way this generation of technology has redefined the cost of entry to the pipeline, it makes it easier for folks to offer up their own stuff for sampling and see if that hardcore audience takes the bait.
It’s not to say that quality doesn’t matter if you’re shoving something into, say, the direct-to-DVD zombie movie pipeline, but lack of quality is rarely disqualifying if you’re not charging them an arm and a leg. Remember that I’m the guy who went to a movie theater and bought a ticket for a zombie movie made for $2,000 in Chile.
Since our book has science fiction elements, that’s good for a little confidence; really all you can do, though, is make it as easy as possible for luck to find you. We’ve worked hard to write a decent book, and we’ll have marketing, and what should be a good-looking cover, and that built-in genre advantage. Not to mention; since I like this genre bunches and bunches, the hope is that sci-fi fans who read it won’t think I’m being all pander-y or exploit-y with them.
But, outside of friends and family, I can’t really make anyone buy anything. However, that won’t stop me from spending the next couple of months being all like: