Location: Barnes & Noble, Santa Rosa, Calif.

While I was in the bookstore, I focused my research on historical romance. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we’ll start with the pictures of what I saw in the general fiction section:

Biblical fiction in the general market fiction section.

Tudor romances like MY LADY OF CLEVES and THE TUDOR ROSE were very well represented.

Jane Austen knockoffs were abundant.

Tudor romances. Recommended for book clubs.

The majority of the historical romance books in the general market section fell into the Jane Austen or Tudor categories. I was surprised to see those two Biblical fiction books.

All of the faced historical fiction were in the Jane Austen or Tudor categories. The shelf space in the fiction section was used mostly by “evergreen” projects (books that have done well for a long time) and new books by established authors. I was surprised (and somewhat relieved) not to see Pride & Prejudice and Zombies and Sense & Sensibility and Sea Monsters on the shelves, but then was shocked to find them in the teen section. That’s not where I would have shelved them!

In the religious fiction section I was one of two people browsing. The man next to me looked at me funny when I was taking pictures. He was looking at The Shack. The Shack was faced and featured on a bestselling fiction display. The religious fiction shelves were filled almost completely with evergreens and books by bestselling authors. I, of course, was looking for historical romance and I didn’t find much!

Francine Rivers’ books were the most abundant and only three authors had historical romances on the shelves. The other two, Lynn Austin and Julee Klassen, both had one book in the store. I found this very sad! I didn’t pick up and read the back of every book, so I could have missed a couple, but there weren’t many Christian historicals in this large bookstore. Another day I’ll have to check out the local Christian bookstore to take an inventory. I hope my findings will be very different.

So based on my research (done at only one store, so it’s not very trustworthy), if I was going to write a new Christian, historical romance, I’d try writing something about characters from the Tudor or from the Regency period. If I could come up with a unique Jane Austen-type project with Christian content, that would be an ideal choice. I know author Debra White Smith has done books like this in the past (First Impressions, Reason & Romance, Northpointe Chalet), but could there be room in the Christian market for more at this time?

If you’re a historical reader, what time period are you drawn to? Would you pick up a Tudor or Regency book?

]]> http://www.booksandsuch.biz/blog/bookstore-market-research-historical-romance/feed/ 12 http://www.booksandsuch.biz/blog/comfort-novel-influences/ http://www.booksandsuch.biz/blog/comfort-novel-influences/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:00:26 +0000 Michelle Ule http://www.booksandsuch.biz/?p=5294 Blogger: Michelle Ule

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I reread teenage comfort novels over the Christmas season: Lenora Mattingly Weber’s Beany Malone series of some dozen books.

Originally published in the 1950s, Weber’s books told the story of a middle-class high…

Location: Books & Such main office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

As you can see from my picture, I’m somewhat young. Often in my job, I have to “convince” people I’m an adult through my hard work, integrity, and success. But enough about me! When it comes to writing, the author’s age, gender, etc. can limit the intended audience for a book if he or she is not careful. This doesn’t apply much to books written for an audience that the author would fit into, but instead for an audience the author isn’t a part of.

For example, a 50-year-old woman writing for teens, or a guy writing advice books for women. You may have something great to share with that audience due to your experiences, but how do you become credible in the eyes of the intended audience if they believe you don’t belong?

Your first option is one I don’t recommend. You could pretend you are a part of the group you are writing for. Airbrush your pictures so you fit in, or use a picture from high school on your website–or don’t post any pictures of yourself at all. Unfortunately, while this might work for a time, the truth always comes out.

This week, I’ll touch on some techniques that published authors have used successfully to connect with an audience they don’t belong to.

Here are some examples:

The Christy Miller Series and The Katie Weldon Series by Robin Jones Gunn.

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey.

No More Christian Nice Girl (releasing 2010) by Paul Coughlin with Jennifer Degler.

Romance novels by Hannah Alexander (a husband-wife writing team using a pen name).

Using Networking and Marketing to Connect with Your Audience

Today, let’s talk about how author Robin Jones Gunn successfully markets her books to teens and young adults. Robin, first of all, has written her teen series out of her life experiences, so while she’s not a teen girl any longer, she was one, and she wrote the first novel, Summer Promise, in The Christy Miller Series while she co-lead a youth group with her husband. Robin would write a chapter aloud to the girls and then incorporate their suggestions. (Well, many of the suggestions.) The books Robin has written are based on experience.

Robin makes up for any lack of “connection” with her audience by staying on top of teen and young adult interests. The proof for this is on Robin’s webpage, Facebook page, and online shop. Check them out if you have time. She knows that teens want to feel connected these days, and she makes herself available to them on Facebook by actively responding and posting there and by hosting giveaways and contests. I don’t think she’s on Facebook for more than an hour each day, but through that limited time investment, she has used networking and marketing to connect with her readers. Because of her availability to her readers, Robin has become more than an author to these young women–she’s become a friend.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about Steve Harvey’s book. Can you think of any other authors who write books for an audience that they might not fit into?

Location: Books & Such office, Nashville

Weather: 65 and spring rain

Do protagonists have greater appeal to readers if they are human, or is it more important that a character simply exhibit some human characteristics?  Animal characters abound in children’s books. Beatrix Potter immortalized Peter Rabbit’s disobedience, and Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider certainly played out admirable human qualities of courage and sacrifice in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.

Writing animal characters in adult fiction is more challenging and is most often seen in short, humorous pieces, but occasionally they are developed well in bonafide novels. It’s hard not be caught up in the suspense and quest of the rabbit characters Hazel, Strawberry, Big Wig, etc. in Richard Adams’s 1975 book Watership Down.

What I notice among recent releases, especially those for teens, is a number of main characters who are quasi-human or aberrations of human behavior. Eternal by Cynthia Smith is a brand new book in which a Dallas teenager becomes a vampire while her guardian angel has been cast from heaven for revealing his angelic nature in an effort to save her. And of course there’s Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, just to name a couple.

It makes me wonder if authors create such characters in response to certain cultural dynamics or turmoil. Maybe, maybe not. Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame appeared early in his career before the French Revolution and his self-imposed exile. On the other hand, Bram Stoker created Dracula, one of the most famous vampire stories of all time, in 1897, and Stoker lived a relatively placid life in Britain at the height of the British Empire.

I’m just beginning to explore this subject. Any thoughts on why and what leads to interest in characters outside the norm?

Location: Books&Such office, Nashville

Weather: 70s and breezy

One thing is clear–a whole lot of people are writing about “fictional character development”! According to Google today, there are 372,000 entries for that topic. Reading a few of them convinces me that the process of creating characters is serious business in the field of fiction. I’m also impressed with the responses from our blog readers who are generating new characters. No slouches there.

Two things started my train of thought on character: Reading again Natalie Babbit’s Tuck Everlasting (c1975) and realizing how seamlessly she had woven the lives of Winnie Foster, who lived in time as we know it, and the Tucks, who had entered a sort of eternity after drinking water from a secret source. I wondered why the movie of this book didn’t do any better at the box office–lots of possible answers there. Maybe the audience had moved on from that sort of story, or maybe the characters were not electric enough for current tastes.

The other stimulus for thinking about character development was reading Joelle Anthony’s article in the March/April SCBWI Bulletin on “Avoiding the Character Cliche.” She offers some basic pointers worth reading for creating minor characters and antagonists in middle grade and teen fiction. Most fiction writers concentrate on main character(s), but the lesser ones can too easily fall into the trap of being altogether evil or stand for all that the main character opposes. This was a classic approach in an earlier age such as the Elsie books, which Martha Finley wrote in the late 1800s. Not that there aren’t really evil people, but it takes more work to create an antagonist who is at fault but has some redeeming aspects of humanity.

Well, as you can see, I’m still wrestling! We all want unique and memorable characters. What characters in middle grade or teen novels stand out to you?

By the way, I’m teaching a workshop on this subject (entitled “When Your Audience Is the ‘Hoodie and Jeans Generation’”) at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers’ Conference in April; our discussion here has sparked my enthusiasm for that upcoming talk. If you would like more information about Mt. Hermon, click HERE. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Now it’s time for a POP QUIZ! No cheating.

Take this mini-quiz to see just how much you know about twentysomethings’ reading habits:

1) Which of these books would most likely be on a twentysomething’s favorite book list:

a. Blue Like Jazz (Miller, Donald)
b. James and the Giant Peach (Dahl, Roald)
c. The Shack (Young, WP)
d. The Five Love Languages (Chapman, Gary)

2) Which author is not considered a favorite of most twentysomethings?

a. J.K. Rowling
b. Stephenie Meyer
c. John Steinbeck
d. Nicholas Sparks

3) Which is least likely to be read by twentysomethings?

a. fantasy
b. classics
c. nonfiction
d. teen books

—–

(Answers: b, d, c)

I collected these answers from my twentysomething, Facebook friends’ “favorite books” sections. (These people are from all walks of life and live all over the place.)

Favorite Authors

Austen, Jane
Bujold, Lois McMaster
Card, Orson Scott
Crichton, Michael
Dahl, Roald
Gregory, Philippa
Hornby, Nick
Jacques, Brian
King, Stephen
Lewis, CS
Peters, Elizabeth
Tolkien, JRR
Meyer, Stephenie
Rowling, JK

Favorite Books

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers, Dave)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens, Charles)
A Thousand Spendid Suns (Hosseini, Khaled)
A Wrinkle in Time (L’Engle, Madeleine)
Angels & Demons (Brown, Dan)
Animal Farm (Orwell, George)
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy, Leo)
Anthem (Rand, Ayn)
Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea (Handler, Chelsea)
Arena (Hancock, Karen)
At Swim-Two-Birds (O’Brien, Flann)
Bringing Down the House (Mezrich, Ben)
Cadillac Desert (Reisner, Mark)
Catch-22 (Heller, Joseph)
Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis, CS)
Confessions of a Shopaholic (Kinsella, Sophie)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky, Fyodor)
East of Eden (Steinbeck, John)
Eat, Pray, Love (Gilbert, Elizabeth)
Ender’s Game (Card, Orson Scott)
Far From the Madding Crowd (Hardy, Thomas)
Frankenstein (Shelley, Mary)
Girl Meets God (Winner, Lauren)
Harry Potter books (Rowling, JK)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad, Joseph)
He’s Just Not That Into You (Behrendt & Tuccillo)
Honeymoon with My Brother (Wisner, Franz)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou, Maya)
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Bach, Richard)
Invitation to the Game (Hughes, Monica)
Lamb (Moore, Christopher)
Like Water for Chocolate (Esquivel, Laura)
Lolita (Nabokov, Vladimir)
Matilda (Dahl, Roald)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Golden, Arthur)
Music of the Soul (Berger, Joy)
My Name is Asher Lev (Potok, Chaim)
Norwegian Wood (Murakami, Haruki)
Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky, Fyodor)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez, Garbriel)
Peculiar Treasures (Gunn, Robin Jones)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen, Jane)
Prodigal Summer (Kingsolver, Barbara)
Reedeeming Love (Rivers, Francine)
Small Wonder (Kingsolver, Barbara)
The Awakening (Chopin, Kate)
The Bonesetter’s Daughter (Tan, Amy)
The Call of the Wild (London, Jack)
The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, J.D.)
The Culture of Fear (Glassner, Barry)
The DaVinci Code (Brown, Dan)
The Giver (Lowry, Lois)
The God Delusion Dawkins, Richard)
The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck, John)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood, Margaret)
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Adams, Douglas)
The Hobbit (Tolkien, JRR)
The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde, Oscar)
The Kite Runner (Hosseini, Khaled)
The Once and Future King (White, TH)
The Other Boelyn Girl (Gregory, Phillipa)
The Patron Saint of Liars (Patchett, Ann)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Chbosky, Stephen)
The Princess Bride (Goldman, William)
The Prophet (Gibran, Kahlil)
The Red Tent (Diamant, Anita)
The Stranger (Camus, Albert)
The World is Flat (Friedman, Thomas)
Things Fall Apart (Achebe, Chinua)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, Harper)
Treasure Island (Stevenson, RL)
Twilight (Meyer, Stephenie)
Watership Down (Adams, Richard)
What Is the What (Eggers, Dave)
Wheel of Time Series (Jordan, Robert)

Are you surprised by this list?  Would you have guessed these books/authors from our discussion this week? I see a reflection of the life of a twentysomething in these books: Many would be assigned reading for college students; many are teen books, showing that twentysomethings often relate to teen protagonists; many are controversial or thought-provoking.

What do you think?