Should I Really Be Writing Like This?

I ask because a friend of mine posted this on Facebook, and I thought that the book summary had to be a joke. It isn’t. But here’s what’s more depressing – its sales rank is currently #10,083. The top book of mine at the moment is #163,060. That’s a pretty big difference.

Now to be clear, I haven’t actually read this thing and maybe it’s well-written. It’s the seventh book in the series, so we’re talking about an author with an established fan base. It could be something like The Southern Vampire Mysteries, which seems like it adds a new paranormal trope with every book, so by the time you get to the end of the series the whole world is basically one big mess. Vampires, shapeshifters, werewolves, were-everything-elses, witches, maenads, fairies, you name it.

Still, the setup seems like the author was especially careful to jam every paranormal trope she could think of into a single story, along with terrorists, cowboys, and vikings (!). So is that the secret to becoming a bestselling author? Combine so many tropes together that there’s something for everyone, whether or not it makes any sense? I sure hope not.

Understand, I don’t begrudge Sandra Hill her success. Making serious money as a writer is really tough. She must be doing something right, I just haven’t figured out what it is yet. I totally want to know.

I have a novel that I’ve been working on that basically satirizes this sort of thing and I wish I were a lot further along on it, because we have to be reaching the perfect time to release it any day now. Sadly, it’s not even half done.