Can you handle the truth (in book form)? • 20 September 2007 • The SnowBlog
Can you handle the truth (in book form)?
Snowbooks started out with hardly any non-fiction, but we're planning to gradually add more into the mix. We've already talked about why. It's easier to spot gaps in the market with non-fiction. And 'good' is less a matter of taste and more a matter of standards. Both of those mean our hard work is less of a gamble and more likely to pay off. And non-fiction titles often benefit from colour and pictures in a way that novels don't. And that's good because it's more difficult to self-publish graphics-heavy books and less likely that an e-book reader will be able to do a good job of displaying them any time soon.
With that in mind I'm thinking of talking about and reviewing lots of non-fiction on this here blog and I'm wondering whether I might be out of step with the current make up of the Snowblog readership. So who are you people? When you tot up the books you read in a year, what's the ratio of fiction to non-fiction titles? I'd love to know. I could quite imagine that the average Snowblogger is 20:1 Fiction to Non-Fiction. Maybe higher. Am I right? I used to be like that: 50-60 novels per year and a couple of non-fiction titles, probably pop science books. But now I'd say my ratio was more like 1:20. Anyone else undergone a change like that? Maybe someone with a ratio like 1F:20NF wouldn't be visiting the Snowblog in the first place.
I'm guilty of it myself, but do you find that when you think of publishing, your first thought is always fiction?
Rob
Snowbooks started out with hardly any non-fiction, but we're planning to gradually add more into the mix. We've already talked about why. It's easier to spot gaps in the market with non-fiction. And 'good' is less a matter of taste and more a matter of standards. Both of those mean our hard work is less of a gamble and more likely to pay off. And non-fiction titles often benefit from colour and pictures in a way that novels don't. And that's good because it's more difficult to self-publish graphics-heavy books and less likely that an e-book reader will be able to do a good job of displaying them any time soon.
With that in mind I'm thinking of talking about and reviewing lots of non-fiction on this here blog and I'm wondering whether I might be out of step with the current make up of the Snowblog readership. So who are you people? When you tot up the books you read in a year, what's the ratio of fiction to non-fiction titles? I'd love to know. I could quite imagine that the average Snowblogger is 20:1 Fiction to Non-Fiction. Maybe higher. Am I right? I used to be like that: 50-60 novels per year and a couple of non-fiction titles, probably pop science books. But now I'd say my ratio was more like 1:20. Anyone else undergone a change like that? Maybe someone with a ratio like 1F:20NF wouldn't be visiting the Snowblog in the first place.
I'm guilty of it myself, but do you find that when you think of publishing, your first thought is always fiction?