| Re: What makes a work commercial?
I'm not sure I totally agree with you there, John. People still like Tolkienesque fantasy. Look at Trudi Canavan, for example. I'd say that her writing falls into that bracket, and she has sold successfully into both adult and YA markets. My next series is all dragons, dragons, dragons. I reckon dragons have been done to death, but readers from this website shouted me down. I took the advice of the readers and pitched a four book dragon series (admittedly for the YA market) and it was snapped up in preference to my much darker, more magically based proposal.
I guess there are some things that the market place cannot get enough of. I'm sure it helped that I put a rather unusual spin on the story - sort of "Biggles meets dragons", which when being pitched by a pilot with over 5000 hours of flying behind him (and two previous successful series) might have made the proposal slightly more appealing. The point remains, though, that there are some constants in what the readers want. Surely the publishers are grown up enough to recognise this? |