I’m a huge fan of paranormal romance and urban fantasy – including vampires. (No, I’m not tired of them yet. More on that later.) In the past few years bookstores have been flooded with these genres, which is wonderful from a glut myself perspective, but it also tends to mean that the quality suffers. In a weird way, I’m looking forward to the day when my genres are no longer trendy (a day which appears to be coming soon).
The way I understand it, the publishing trend works like a sine wave. Something gets popular, publishers sniff easy(ier) sales, and they (a)start accepting works they wouldn’t have taken in a less popular genre and (b)ask their current writers to write this new popular thing instead of the thing they love to write. (This really happens. I just listened to a long-time published writer at my latest RWA meeting talk about how her genre irrecoverably tanked after her publisher asked all their authors who wrote Regency romances to write Americana instead; turn-of-the-century West Virginia farming country stuff instead of London high society Jane Austen stuff. Of course the Regency writers produced less than stellar books because these two genres have little in common and are aimed at different audiences. Chasing trends equals writing with no spark because you aren’t in love with what you’re writing. Anyway.) This flood of stories doesn’t mean everything published suddenly sucks (on the contrary, a lot of really awesome things that might not have been given a chance otherwise get published), but it does mean finding the gems gets harder, and you get a lot of stuff that reads really derivative.
And that’s the peak of the sine curve.
Phase two is when sales drop off because people realize they’ve read ten versions of the same story with a different title written by people with less passion for the material. But instead of the quality of the writing, the subject material gets blamed. It’s now “out.” So now publishers are scrambling to find something “different” to sell people. Different, at the moment, being anything paranormal but lacking the words “vampire,” “angel,” or “fairy.”
During this phase you get these weird books in a genre you love that got published because they’re “different.” Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all over experimenting with new things, and sometimes you discover amazingly creative worlds this way. But I just finished a book (no, I won’t tell you what book) in which I found the heroine annoying, the men jerks, and the concept bizarre and unlikely… but conceptually I’d never seen anything like it before, so props for thinking outside the box. But still I found myself wishing one of those awesome vampire books that I know somebody has written (but keeps getting rejected because it’s got the dreaded V word) would get published so I can read good writing on a subject I enjoy. I don’t care how many I’ve read. I will always be excited to read a good vampire, angel, or fairy story. I can never consume enough good writing by somebody who’s in love with the subject, and I think there are a lot of people like me. But we are tired of wading through meh to find that spark. Replacing uninspired writing on a fun subject with uninspired writing on a “new” subject is not an improvement, it’s just different.
And now I fear my favorite genre is sliding into the down phase of the sine curve. I do think we’ve made a big enough dent that at least we’ll stay regular in the market (the idea of my favorite genre irrevocably tanking makes me sad, but I don’t think it’ll come to that… although, seriously, when’s the last time you saw a vampire book on the shelves that wasn’t part of an established series?), but it is time for the “next thing” to happen in the romance world. I’ve heard it’s Contemporary and I’ve heard it’s Romantic Suspense. I don’t write either of those (though I do enjoy reading RS – if you like it, check out Laura Griffin; she’s kickass). But that’s okay. I will continue writing what I can be passionate about with the best skill I can muster. I’m willing to branch out, but only if I can do it with passion (you don’t want to read something Americana written by me; trust me). Writing is a business, and I need to be a professional about it. But it’s also an art, and I need to respect that. Finding a way to walk both paths is a challenge worth taking.