... and the flip side of that is that it doesn't matter if some don't, becuase nothing is loved by everyone.

Via the ever-blessed Miss Snark, this from marketing consultant Marcia Yudkin:

Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, which he understandably calls "the best job in the world," once set out to find a cartoon that nearly everyone who had any sense of humor would find funny. He sent what he thought was his own very best cartoon to 2,000 men and women, asking them to rate it from 1 (completely unfunny) to 10 (extremely funny). About 80% rated Mankoff's cartoon 7 or above, which delighted him. Yet some respondents gave it a 1. Mankoff threw up his hands, calling this item "the most highly rated cartoon for funniness that I ever did, or (sob) will probably ever do." His survey has implications for your marketing efforts. Whatever target market you're aiming at, its members differ from one another, having diverse personalities, varying educational and cultural backgrounds, diverging tastes or lifestyles and disparate values. Therefore, they won't all interpret what you present to them in the same way. It's foolhardy to aim at universal praise or acceptance. So long as you have enthusiastic advocates, ignore those who think you're incredibly off the mark.

Is there anyone on WW who doesn't know Miss Snark? If so (I find it hard to believe - apart from anything else, she so funny), she's here:

Miss Snark

Emma

Very true Emma,

I think it's vital to remember this when collecting feedback, you can't please all of the folk all of the time so don't try to.

But still, wouldn't you love to write a book that managed to cross the boundaries of niche and markets and reach a much wider audience?

I think one thing I admire most about the authors I love to read is their ability to do this. Writers who manage to write literature without being literary writers.

Geoff

But still, wouldn't you love to write a book that managed to cross the boundaries of niche and markets and reach a much wider audience?

Well, I've tried to!

And though I posted this thinking of how painful rejections are, and how this helps to reinforce the idea that one rejection doesn't automatically mean it will be rejected elsewhere, it's actually apposite to my situation now: it's hard not to let everything each review says - good and bad - affect how I write the new one, which is a recipe for fictive disaster!

Emma

Sorry Emma,

Didn't mean to offend there, what I was getting at was although we all write with a specific audience in mind what we really want is reach as wide an audience as possible without compromising our writing.

I guess (though I may well be deluding myself) that my writing falls into literary fiction and ofcourse it would be fantastic to be published and read by readers of literature but I'd also love it if someone normally accustomed to the dross of Dan Brown and the like picked up my book and decided to give it a read. Not because I want to 'tap' a market but because I want make people think about things that they might not have done otherwise.

Isn't that what all writers really want to do?

Geoff

Yes.

My mum liked my book. My brother didn't. (Not my cup of tea, was his comment.) So there's a random sample of two that I think proves Emma's point. Or maybe not.

Geoff, heavens no, I wasn't offended at all.

I think the best novels, actually, are written because they're the novel you want to read. In trade terms, TMOL has one foot in literary and one foot in commercial, but that's because I have too as a person and a reader, not because I set out to try to sell it to more people. It's my publishers who seem to think they can do that.

And Roger's right too - you'll never please everyone. In fact a dear friend of mine said she was dreading me asking her to read TMOL in ms, because everything I'd said about it made her sure she'd hate it!

Emma

<Added>

I think it's mainly writerly types like us who can say, 'it's not my cup of tea but it's a good book'.

That's a great post, Emma, and it is cheering! I shall come back to it on receipt of my next rejection

I think the catch to this is 'you only need one otherperson to love it'?

Sarah

Yes. The bold and italics are mine, because we all know an aspiring writer who's convinced - in the teeth of all evidence, which is clearly to the contrary - that they've written the next DVC/HP/Ulysses.

You do have to have 'enthusiastic advocates' to confirm your opinion, and unless they're also the lit. ed. of the TLS, they'd better stretch beyond your immediate family who love you.

Emma