Finding an audience and defining your book’s genre are closely related. Let’s start by looking at some genres and subgenres:
Adventure
Alien Invasion
Alternate History
Anthologies
Colonization
Cyberpunk
Dystopian
Exploration
First Contact
Galactic Empire
Genetic Engineering
Hard Science Fiction
History & Criticism
Humorous
Military
Post-Apocalyptic
Short Stories
Space Opera
Steampunk
Time Travel
Overwhelmed? These are just the subgenres listed under the science fiction category on Amazon, not the other genres and subgenres like mystery and thriller, literary fiction, young adult, middle grade, fantasy, etc. The list goes on and on.
So, what do you do?
Write the story you want to write.
Of course it’s fine (and recommended) to think about who you are writing your story for, and do some research on what those kinds of books contain. Read books aimed toward the audience you want to write for. Find genre rules for your genre.
It’s a slippery slope, though.
You will have to make some changes in your story to satisfy genre constraints, and change some things to fit your audience. But when you set out to write to market, that is when it gets dangerous.
What I mean is, when you google what is the highest selling book genre (it’s romance by the way), and then you set out to write that book just to try to make money, you’re hurting yourself.
Write stories you are passionate about. Be honest in your storytelling. Write everyday and publish a large volume of work and you’ll be fine, because you’ll be writing stories that wake you up early in the morning and keep you up late at night. Which is to say, you’ll be writing stories you love.
Jump. Build, Fly.
F.C. Shultz