David Farland calls what you guys are talking about "resonance"
Quote:
With novels, most buyers will purchase a book because it resonates with some other book that they dearly loved. For example, in fantasy a young reader who first read a Tolkien novel will often look for books that are similar. He may define his tastes by saying, "I like books with dragons," or "I like books with elves." The reader is attempting to duplicate his experience.
As he grows more sophisticated in his tastes, begins to grow in his tastes and widen them, he begins to look for something different; he will recognize that he likes more than books with dragons and elves. He might even say, "I'm tired of elves. I wonder what other cool things are out there?"
So he goes searching for something different, but not too different.
If he began with Tolkien, the chances are excellent that he will stick with medieval fantasy. He will yearn to escape to a world that made him feel the way that he did when he first visited Middle Earth. ....
|
How do you drive sales and interest? Resonate with the reader with something more successful that they are familiar with. It could be everything from familiar tropes to plays on names to book titles, whatever. I think David Dalglish does this with his "A Dance of Cloaks" book and so forth, plays on GRRM's writing. Dalglish writes gritty epic fantasy with orcs and stuff.
I kind of wish Shawn Speakman didn't drop off the face of the earth after he tried to sell his book here. I would have been interested in hearing about his success or failure. Speakman spent several years as Terry Brooks webmaster and forum moderator. His name was pretty widely known and he wrote Brooks style fantasy.
If you're friendly enough and actually try to be a part of a community, I've been more apt to purchase someone's book, CD, or independent film.