crispina kemp

I don’t like adverts.

The static types are fine. Or at least acceptable. Image. Text. Consume at your leisure. No, I mean those irritating inconsiderate interruptions that blare out twice as loud as anything you’re watching.

Not that I watch TV. Haven’t had a tele since the 1990s. YouTube on my laptop serves that function, though I don’t spend much time watching. But there are some documentaries, and certain videos. But whatever I’m watching, those unwanted ads are the pits.

There’s one in particular which has me grinding my teeth. It’s not terrifically loud and it’s not obnoxious, not really. But its message is based on a false premise. It’s for Reedsy.com: “The Best Editors Are On Reedsy.”

I don’t doubt the truth of that. But I do doubt their stated reason for the failure of self-published books. The ad doesn’t actually say that self-published books are badly edited, with ill-conceived covers. But it does imply that’s the reason they don’t sell. “They should have used Reedsy.”

I read a lot of self-published books. I’ve never found fault with their editing, neither developmental nor line editing. And believe me, I can be very picky. That’s not the reason self-published books fail. Lack of marketing is. And marketing is extremely difficult, and ultimately ineffective, without an adequate budget. And boundless energy. And a wide network of contacts.

Apologies for the rather long introduction, but it has delivered us to my problem.

How do I find a readership for my books?

I’m not looking for sales. I’m happy to give them away. Epubs. PDFs. Whatever.

But… here’s the main problem, first noticed when I uploaded The Spinner’s Game to Amazon/KDP back in 2020. Genre.

I write mythic fantasy.

Or do I?

In The Spinner’s Game, the protagonist and most of the main characters are banished divines. In our western culture that translates as fallen angels. Yet key-in fallen angels and Amazon will show you Paranormal Romance, Gothic Erotica or Paranormal Thrillers. That’s not what I write. Nothing like what I write.

Medieval churchmen believed that elves were fallen angels. Tolkien writes about elves. But if you search on Amazon for elves, you’ll find LOTR fanfic and high fantasy. If you search for fae, you’ll come up with stories based on Celtic folklore and/or mythology. Or, again, Paranormal Romance, Gothic Erotica or Paranormal Thrillers. That’s not what I write.

My banished divines do not conform to this image.

And I don’t write romances, or thrillers.

My stories are closer to whodunits but set in an ancient land that could have existed – if we don’t follow too closely two centuries of archaeological findings. A whodunit peopled in part by banished divines. But again, search for whodunits and you’re not going to find anything like my stories.

Back to this problem of mythic fantasy.

Quote from Servicescape’s ‘book-genre-encyclopedia’

“This subgenre of fantasy draws heavily from myth to create a unique blend of fantasy and folklore. It often includes gods or goddesses as characters or could be a retelling of older myths set in a fantasy world or the real world.”

I don’t draw on myths and neither do I retell them. But my stories are inspired by them. I like to twist them, turn them around, imagine the circumstances that resulted in this or that myth. And while within my created worlds there are myths, they’re not the myths that we know now. Maybe I do draw on myths?

Do my stories include deities as characters? I have to say yes to that, though neither the character nor the reader might know it. But the clues are there if you search.

Yet I doubt those readers of the mythic fantasies listed on Amazon would be satisfied with my non-conformist stories.

Could I list my books under a different genre? If so, which genre?

From the same Servicescape’s ‘book-genre-encyclopedia’:

Magical Realism “… refers to magic or the supernatural that is presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting.”

That does seem to cover it. Magical realism – but prehistorically set.

Yet that fails to cover the mythic element.

And now my head is whirling.

Perhaps I can solve this by listing my books under both Mythic Fantasy and Magical Realism? Overall, I think this self-discussion has gotten me nowhere.

Perhaps by the time I need to state my genre again, I’ll have unravelled the confusion. That won’t be until summer when I’m thinking of opening a Pinterest account (my head’s too busy at present to take on more).

I thank you for reading, and I’ll thank you again if you share your thoughts on any of this.