I'm grateful to Debbie Richardson of the Fiction Writers' Club for taking the time and trouble to share her thoughts on genre writing, and her experience of the expectations of agents and others in the publishing industry. Most agents appear to be seeking something in a particular favourite genre, probably because of the commercial ramifications, and that leaves writers like me with a bit of a quandary. Even though in my Novels page I attach genre labels to my novels, it is in fact a contrivance, an acknowledgement of the genre label led marketing practice, an attempt on my part to garner some attention. In fact, I don't in any sense consider myself a "genre" writer, nor do any of my novels fall neatly into any of the usual labels, hence the multiple tags I've assigned them, a marketing weakness spotted by Debbie. I've not been describing a hybrid genre for each of my works, but simply facets of each novel. At the risk of sounding pompous, I believe my novels are "literary fiction", which is a genre itself, I suppose.
So what to do? If Debbie is right and most agents are looking for genre fiction, where do I look for a broader minded approach? My own research confirms Debbie's observations, though it's quite possible I've been looking in the wrong place. So back to searching the Internet, delving into the websites of agencies, scrutinising the bios of the agents, hoping to find folk who might at least give me the literary time of day. To be fair, nine out of ten agents formally recognise my submissions, and about twenty percent of them send a few encouraging words with their rejection notices.
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