Wal-Mart? Srsly?

Caught up on my daily blog reading and was highly disturbed by a Smart Bitches article.

Apparently, Wal-Mart can make or break an author.

You don't sell well (or at all) at Wal-Mart, you don't get your contract renewed for a second book. Or you have a damned hard time of it. They are the world's largest bookseller (wtf?) and they control your numbers like a pimp controls his 'ho.

As an aspiring first time author, this scares the shit out of me.

Now, Smart Bitches normally only focuses on Romance. I write Urban Fantasy. How does this affect me?

Urban Fantasy is one of those genres that rides the line between three prominent genres: Fantasy, Romance, and Mystery (sometimes a fourth: Horror). And while I don't generally hear about a lot of Urban Fantasy hitting the Mystery shelves, I have personally come across a lot of cross-shelving between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. If the book doesn't sell well as one genre, they can stick it in the other and watch the sales grow. My book has a strong relationship element to it and an editor may even sell the book as the relationship being the major plot point (which is what defines a book as Romance). So I could very well become a Romance author instead of a Fantasy author, and in that case, I'll have to rely on Wal-Mart to get my book out there.

It makes me ill.

But hey, I shouldn't be counting my chickens before they hatch. I'm not published yet, I haven't even queried anything, so I could be worrying for nothing.

But it still makes me ill.

Quote of the Day:

Wal-mart... do they like make walls there?
-- Paris Hilton


~Sass~