Writing for a Market

John Scalzi has a post up (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/06/aiming-for-the-market/) talking about writing for a market, responding to a post by Steven Brust (http://dreamcafe.com/2014/10/04/where-would-we-be-without-denial-or-embracing-the-contradiction/) talking about how he doesn't (in the same way) write for a market.

Now, it's a little silly to talk of Brust as an example of "not writing for a market". As a professional writer with a long string of sales, even if he's writing for himself he knows that his tastes represent a viable market. (It's release day for Hawk: it's currently at #968 in books and #75 in Fantasy. Given that a large chunk of the top 100 in Fantasy is taken up by multiple editions of Gabaldon (17 items) and Martin (8 items) (note that these have a lot of over-counting: the same work can show up as a paperback, an audiobook, and part of a boxed set. Slightly different boxed sets of the same works appear separately), that's an extremely good showing.)

If you want examples of people who didn't write for a market, Tolkien's an obvious example. Graydon Saunders, who has published (currently) only on Google Books and Kobo, is another. Joyce. Baudelaire. Hopkins. (The furthest out you can get on that scale is being published only posthumously.)

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money", said Johnson, and money implies a market. (It may be a small market if the author is in a patronage relationship, but it's still a market.) Some people clearly write simply as a hobby, or for a challenge, but generally writers who make a living from their works do write for a market, even if they let their own tastes be their guides. (At one extreme, writers who could live comfortably on the earnings of their existing books for the rest of their lives who continue to write have something other than an eye on the market motivating them. Rowling, Martin, probably Stephenson.)

Still, there's something there which is worth teasing out. With many "commercial" authors I can see them working out themes and issues of strong personal interest to them throughout their oeuvre. Stross spends a lot of time dealing with social/ governmental constraints on privacy and on the balances between rights in conflict. (This is a common thread between the world-walker books, Halting State/ Rule 34, and the Laundry novels (where all that secrecy is justified).) Bujold circles around issues of family relations, generational change, reproductive freedom, and duty vs. inclination.

Some writers -- frequently those who are more "pulpy" -- clearly have a strong interest just in storytelling: telling a good yarn as such, or a particular typeof good yarn. I'd put Weber, Butcher, Sanderson, et al. in that camp.

With Scalzi, though, what I take away, in the end, is a sort of slickness. An impression of general capability, but no engagement of fundamental interests. A writer who does work for hire for himself, based on his observations of the market. Maybe it's just me: but I pay attention when Stross, or Brust, or Stephenson, has a new novel out; I'm aware of Scalzi's books and wait to see them, maybe, second-hand.