Facing the Competition

Everytime I think of competition I remember those nature shows I like to watch, the ones that depict survival of the fittest. That's one of the most important laws of the natural world, and Christians are immune. They either adhere to this rule or lose.

What do animals struggling in an eat-or-be-eaten world have to do with selling a book? That book will face competition--lots of competition. There's hardly any industry driven as much by competition as book selling.

In years past the wheat was divided from the chaff by big publishing houses who acted kind of like monopolies because they got the shelf space and the advertising budget. This worked well for those who managed to get in the wheat pile, although a good bit of chaff made it on the shelves, and some good wheat was left in the fields.

Today, everything can make it to the public in publishing. But the books are kind of like those flowers that pop up among the weeds in hopes of attracting the bees. There are so many, and so varied, but still the same number of bees.

Those of us who write in sub-genres try to attract the specialized bees--you know, like those that just like clover--by giving our audience exactly what they want. But it's tricky. The more specialized you are, the more your audience shrinks. If the audience becomes like the panda who'll only eat bamboo, we'll find our creativity stiffled by strict rules of what can or cannot go into the novel. Like the hero and heroine must meet on the first few pages of a romance.

With all this in mind, who is my competition? I can rule out Steve King. His audience wouldn't touch my books, and though I write romance, I can rule out those who write sexy novels. Unfortunately my competition are the authors I love most, those who write the same sub-genre. Of course, they don't have to worry about me yet. I'm like the seal who's floating on a block of ice with killer whales circling. I'm threatened to be overcome by the sheer difficulty of breaking into the market.

The whales crash against the ice, trying to knock the seal off. Added to his troubles, the ice is melting. Discouragement crashes into me and the market is shrinking. But even in this dire situation, something may happen.

As I'm clinging to my block of ice, and the competition threatens to devour me, there may be an opening. At the last minute a group of other seals foolishly swim up and the whales turn on them. The seal sitting on his ice block seizes the moment and jumps off, swimming for his life.

The right moment will come for me, and I can jump off into the sea of competition.