You know, one of the nice things about being an Indie press is that we don’t have to subscribe to the “trends” that the big publishers follow.
Trends, you say? There are trends?
Oh, absolutely.
Big publishers are constantly trying to predict the next trend, and then they buy books that fit whatever that trend may be. But a lot of times it’s a reactive process – some book or series will come out of nowhere and be huge, and then the big publishers react by buying a lot of similar books. Let’s take The Hunger Games as a recent example of this. The series was huge; big publishers bought a huge amount of YA dystopia as a result.
And then they oversaturated the market.
The biggest problem with trends is when something big comes along, a subgenre that hasn’t been doing as well gets dropped by the wayside. Oh, sure, maybe a book or two will still be put out in a year, but if you’re someone who likes that particular subgenre, you’re going to find things scarce. Do people still want to read it? Yes, but perhaps not as many people who want to read whatever the current big thing is and things like it.
That’s why we don’t limit ourselves here at TDP. We put out fun, exciting quality works whether they fit the current “trend” or not, because we understand that there are people out there who still want to read them and we want those people to be able to find books that appeal to them.
Ah, freedom. It’s refreshing.