Understanding the Divide Between Writing to Market and Writing What You Know
The two choices that divide authors in terms of writing and marketing their stories
Every author dreams of catching their audience’s eye, raking in reviews, and building their audience.
But one of the most common questions is how it’s done.
By this, I am referring to the dilemma of writing what you know and writing to market. Both of which arguably require planning and skill to achieve. The concern is, which one yields the best result for readers?
Writing What You Know
When authors write what they know, their writing comes across as more knowledgeable and authentic.
This is often suggested for first-time authors who want to place their best foot forward with readers, having their first piece as strong as it can be. However, this is not to suggest that a first-time author writing about a zombie apocalypse will have experience with a zombie apocalypse. But they can apply their own experiences to the character’s professions, skill sets, and personalities.
Now the argument is, that not every topic an author chooses to write is going to make it big on the market.
It may not be a popular topic at the time in its category, but this just means authors need to research the market and see how their book fits into it.
Let’s look at the zombie example again. Let’s say the book is about a zombie escape room-style amusement park that five young social influencers go to test.
How do I apply this to the market?
It’s about social influencers which will draw in a younger adult audience
The keywords escape room will draw in people who enjoy puzzles and inventive thinking
Zombies will also draw in a horror audience
Taking all of these aspects into consideration, we would need to look at what topics in horror are trending and what is popular among young adults. After seeing what these are, we figure out how to apply our books to these trends.
Writing to Market
On the flip side, this technique requires authors to research the market and trending categories and write something on these topics.
This technique relies on:
An author’s ability to predict what genre and topic is going to be trending next
The author’s ability to plan, write, and publish a book quickly enough to hit the market at the same time as the predicted trend
The author performs well within a shorter timeline (building momentum with the target audience, creating a cover, conducting keyword research, finding an editor, making edits, and finding ARC readers)
The ability to write well in the trending genre and topic
It is believed that if an author can write to the market, they have the potential to be successful straight out of the gate because their audience is already there ready for a book in the trend.
What would this look like?
First, I searched for top trending books on Amazon and this was one of the first choices.
I scrolled down to the categories.
Looking at these categories tells me that women’s fiction is popular and these three branches of women’s fiction correlate to this book.
So next, I’m going to click the top category, Women’s Friendship Fiction.
Looking at the books trending under this category, I see:
Friends are trending here
Family members such as Aunt, Sisters, and Daughters are trending here
Vacation locations are trending here
Life-altering decisions are trending here
Now, I could go on and on with clicking through each book and narrowing down the top trends, which I am sure is exactly what authors do who write to market.
However, when it comes down to predicting what’s going to trend next, that is going to be very tricky and a stroke of luck.
The battling concepts of writing what you know and writing to market will always be at odds as they both are very different approaches to writing and marketing.
When it comes to writing, my personal belief is that you write what you enjoy and try to fit into the market as best as you can. Mainly because, if are writing something you aren’t enjoying, it will show in your writing. And this causes your story to be unenjoyable to read.