Writers often hear, ‘know the market,’ and ‘understand the trends to position your book accordingly.’ There’s practical sense in that advice, because publishing is, at its core, an industry. Agents and editors live inside market realities, and books need readers. And while writers aren’t harmed by understanding the room they hope to enter, I still don’t think we should write toward trends.
For one thing, publishing moves very slowly, and the timing rarely lines up. By the time a book goes from concept to zero-draft, revised seven* times, beta-read, queried, cried over, queried again, edited, sold, designed, printed, marketed, shipped, reviewed, and finally placed into readers’ hands, the trend has probably changed. But more importantly, writing toward a trend can flatten the instinct that brings a book alive in the first place. Lasting work feels like someone was paying attention before most of us knew how to name what we were feeling, and less like a wel…
