I had a Twitter conversation today where it occurred to me that sometimes it is possible for a book to be too creative. A book about weird things, a book that involves things that are not familiar to the reader will not be as successful as a book that does involve the familiar.

It’s not as if I am unfamiliar with this concept. I read an article months on how successful books need to be like something else people knew about, but just different enough to stand out. I can’t find this article now. 😦

I have heard it before in the advice that you need to know what genre your book is. Because if a book doesn’t slot neatly into an existing genre, publishers won’t buy it.

It’s just . . . Accepting people won’t like a book if it’s too different from what they are used to is hard to accept.

I grew up thinking the more creative a book, the better it is. Maybe that’s not true.  Maybe it’s just weird.

That’s sort of depressing.