Trendspotting

One interesting thing I discovered from looking at my financial data this year is that in 2010 I earned far more in foreign sales than in any other category.   I could make a decent, if not spectacular, living writing just for translation into other languages.

It would spare me all the weird second-guessing that comes with American publishers and their sad, useless charting of trends.   “No, you can’t sell a book with space ships this week, it’s all near-future.”  “No, you can’t do vampires any more, it’s all about angels.”  “No, dragons are passé, try unicorns or wyverns or something else mythical.”

Dragons are passé right up until George RR Martin’s DANCE WITH DRAGONS hits the stands in July, and then everyone will be saying that unicorns and vampires and angels and near-future are dead, it’s all about dragons now.   Spaceships will be over until James S.A. Corey’s LEVIATHAN WAKES appears.   (And you’ll have to take your best guess as to who will revive vampires, because I don’t follow that particular field much.)

It’s useless and stupid charting trends like this, because books are published two or three years out.  If I sell WAMBLES WITH WYVERNS this week, I’ll spend the best part of a year writing it, and then it’ll be a year or more in production before any of you gets to read it.   So are publishers actually expecting that if wyverns are trending up this week, they’ll still be trending up two years from now?

If publishers commission a whole lot of wyvern books right now, all they’re guaranteeing is that in three years’ time, there will be far too many wyvern books on the shelves. There will be a wyvern bubble, and it will collapse.

I began my career with the historical fiction bubble of the 1980s.  I lost my first career when that bubble burst.  I’ve seen this over and over again.

I don’t actually know any editors stupid enough to think that this sort of trendspotting, overbuying strategy actually works, so I assume it’s just insurance on their part.   If things go well, they can tell their superiors, “Hey, I saw the trend and I jumped on it.  Go, me!”   If the bubble bursts, they can say, “I bought wyverns when they were hot!   How was I to know all these other idiots were going to flood the market with cheap-ass wyvern books?”

I’m hardly the first person to think that American publishing, with everyone eager to be the second person to jump on the bandwagon,  is getting to be far too much like Hollywood.   Except without the money.

Foreign markets, I love you!