If I were asked what is the one thing authors get wrong, it’s this. They don’t understand that publishing is a business. The second thing is they don’t know what a plot is, but let’s stick with the business.
The purpose of a business—any business—is to make money. If it doesn’t, it will soon go out of business and that will be the end of that. It is not the job of a trade publisher to encourage literature or keep the fires burning. The only job of a trade publisher is to make money. If they fail at that, they won’t be able to publish any books at all. (I’m talking about trade publishing here—the realm of bestsellers and popular books that may be literary or not. I am not talking about university presses or small places that look for avant garde material.)
They make money where they can find it. It might be a big, important novel that becomes a classic. Or it might be a book of Sudoku puzzles. Or both. But they are always looking at the bottom line, because they have to.
So the first question you should ask yourself is how will this book make money. Are there others like it that did well and so maybe this one will too? Is it something fresh and different that catches a lot of interest? Is it a memoir about something interesting and new? Has it been told a zillion times before? If so, do you have a new twist?
Many authors think the way to write a book is to get an idea, write the book, and hope it sells. That is a backwards way of doing it.
First, look around and see what’s out there. Your task is to write something that fits in and yet has a new angle of some kind. It can be the book of your heart about your eccentric family in India or it can be a fun mystery novel because you have read many of those and you like them.
Maybe you thought writing was going to be all about being creative, baring your soul, or adding to the progress of literature. And it can be all those things. Just as long as it sells.
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