Genre. The Best Sales Tool Since, Since, Ever.

Don't make the mistake I did with my first novel and start writing it without a genre in mind.

Seriously.

If you want to sell copies, or even give them away as freebies, make sure your book fits into a category.

Deluded old me thought sod that, I'm going to write this genre buster that's a combination of heist, sci-fi, thriller, adventure. All very well until you upload it to Smashwords or Kindle and have to pigeonhole it.

You soon see that books are sold on genre, and writing something that dips its toes into several different genres isn't the fast lane to big sales.

Sure, I've shifted a few copies (mainly freebies) but because The Money Star straddles several genres rather than slotting neatly into one, it's 'yet to find its audience', which I believe is common parlance for 'we don't know what genre this thing is'.

As a result, I've been forced to post-rationalise, during which I discovered the catch-all category of Speculative Fiction, which covers a multitude of genres. But, as yet, it hasn't boosted sales.

Which is why when I started my second novel, I made sure which category it would be filed under when it was published before a finger touched the keypad. (Horror, thanks for asking).

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