Great tip for writers who plan to self-publish their books on Amazon Kindle (and similar). ‘Writing to market’ used to mean writing ‘teenage vampire stockbroker‘ erotica for publishers looking to meet the latest craze. For indie authors, ‘writing to market’ means:
I’m going to look at the sub-sub genres, check the potential sales pool against number of items in market, and find an underserved market. (More sales on average than stuff available on average.) If it’s something I can do, I’ll try a story / trilogy in it, and see how it sells. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe it’ll break out and go big. Maybe it’ll barely sell; we’ll see.
I spent ten minutes last night Googling around the Amazon UK Kindle store, looking for sub-sub genres. I expected cool ones like:
Kindle Store > Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Alternative History > Europe > Cthonic horror > Royalty
Kindle Store > Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Hard Science Fiction > Big Dumb Objects
Kindle Store > Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Urban > Demonic & Undead > Chainsaws (warning: a bit gory)
Books > Fiction > Science Fiction > Military > Wheelbarrows
Sadly, no such luck. The most ambitious Amazon UK gets is Science Fiction Romance in a Post-Apocalyptic setting with Pirates: a category that – incredibly – contains 8 books.