Pick a Genre and Stick to it?

Two classic bands. Two different styles.

Queen vs. AC/DC

With over 200 album sales, the band Queen ranks as one of the top 20 best selling musical artists of all time. The Australian band AC/DC has also sold over 200 million albums and is also in the top 20 best selling musical artists of all time. Which one is better? That depends on your taste, I suppose. After all, AC/DC delivers raunchy riffs from their debut album to their most recent. Over 50 years, they’ve used the same formula=hard rock.

But Queen?

First of all, what kind of music do they make? The early albums were epic fantasy rock that rivaled Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Then they found their pop groove. Oh, and don’t forget Bohemian Rhapsody with that bizarre operatic moments. Funk? That bass groove on “Another One Bites the Dust” is all time. Then pick up the acoustic guitar and take the time machine back to the 50s with “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” By the time they found their disco sound with “Radio Gaga,” nobody knew how to label them. But guess what? They kept selling out full stadiums.

Okay, that’s enough for music talk.

My point?

I’ve met a lot of authors out on the road, and just like AC/DC, Queen, or Jetboy (bet you don’t know those guys), there are all types of band/artists for you. Many of the authors I meet proudly introduce themselves as “Romantasy” or “Splatter Punk” or “Cozy Mystery,” which is great. There’s a niche for everybody. 

But if you show up at an outdoor event in Iowa with only one style of book, the odds are that there might not be a lot of your type of readers in the crowd. When I first started, this would happen to be a lot. Since then, I’ve seen authors with single genres also struggle with the odds a public events.

So strategically, I decided to have a diverse platform of genres. This month, I’m releasing my crime/mystery/thriller series with EXILE ON MAINE STREET with a subgroup for those who love 70s music. My companion book for the series is THE ODYSSEY of CHUCK LUNING, a war novella about a chopper pilot shot down in the closing days of the Vietnam War. 

The rest of my table? I already had the Alchemist Chronicles, (epic historical fiction with a dash of fantasy), the Dreamcatcher Chronicles (magic-realism with splashes of horror, history, and family drama), my kids books, a collection of NonFiction myths and legends, and a short story collection. 

So when somebody stops by my table, I have better odds at selling a book.

There certainly is a school of thought that an author should still to a single genre lest you confuse the readers. True. If profit and marketability are your goals, then this is a sound philosophy, but then again, there isn’t a lot of money in being an author. 

Perfecting your style like AC/DC is admirable. Tightening your writing style and dialing in on what your readers want is a great goal.

For me? I love writing, and thus, I love to experiment. Looking back on it, Queen’s Hot Space disco album was garbage (in my opinion), but it was an experiment that certainly scratched an itch. For my fans, there is a risk of disappointing somebody that loved the monsters in Dreamcatcher Chronicles and found NOTHING supernatural at all in the new Mixed-Tape Mysteries.

Personal preference is always a matter of taste and opinion, and while fans are great, my love of writing will always lead me to take chances and be like Queen rather than do the same thing again and again and again like AC/DC.