niche genres – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 177: Paying the Bills as an LGBT Urban Fantasy Author with Holly Evans

April 17, 2018 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We’re joined this week by LGBT urban fantasy author Holly Evans. She believes LGBT spec-fic is an up and coming sub-genre with a lot of potential, and even though it’s niche, she’s able to pay the bills writing it. Whether you’re interested in it or not, a lot of today’s interview should apply to any author thinking of writing in a smaller niche. Interestingly, Holly found more of an audience when she went wide with her books than when she was exclusive with Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited.

Here are some of the specifics that we covered:

Getting started in the crowded urban fantasy market.
Tropes for urban fantasy and also for LGBT fiction.
Why LGBT spec-fic may be an up-and-coming market with room for new authors to jump in.
What qualifies something as LGBT (i.e. do the main characters have to fall into that category?)?
If romance is expected and how explicit sex scenes should be if included.
The pros and cons of selecting the LGBT category on Amazon and other stores (easier to rank versus perhaps being overlooked by people who don’t think they’re looking for that).
Avoiding stereotypes.
Why Holly decided to leave KDP Select and publish her books to all the other stores.
How she’s found success in the other stores in only a few months.
Writing shorter series and wrapping individual books up so you can start new ones easily.
Whether there are any downsides to writing short.