Monday 9 December 2013

Is there too much new #scifi?

I've been writing and publishing science fiction for almost three years now. Science fiction has been my hobby and fascination for as long as I can remember, so when I started writing it seemed the obvious genre work within.

What I've learned from the last three years is that there are an incredible number of people writing science fiction novels and short stories, and probably just as many creating fan fiction for most of the well-known movies and television series.

I am coming to the conclusion that there's only limited space in the market and the huge number of science fiction writers out there is simply producing far too much material for the market. Up to a point the good stuff will float to the top, but I suspect that these days there is such a deluge of material that even some of the good stuff simply gets lost in the crowd. No-one can possibly be aware of everything that's published (and by that I am very much including the self-publishing world) so those authors without the marketing and promotion skills to draw attention to their work will tend to sink without trace, regardless of how good their writing is.

Short of persuading less people to write science fiction, I don't see any fix for this unfortunate situation.

Although my love of writing science fiction isn't about to end, I'm going to jump ship and try out another genre. What out "Crime Thrillers" - here I come!

3 comments:

  1. I don't think this is just Sci-Fi. There's too much writing going on period. Not sure what the answer is either.

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  2. There may be too much Sci-Fi, but the niche market of Sci-Fi Romance, a sub-genre of Romance has loyal readers with not enough to read. For an example of SFR, check out Linnea Sinclair's Games of Command.

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  3. I don't think I'm going to shift to SFR any time soon. I certainly don't feel qualified to write romances of any kind.

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