Fishing For Books

A few days ago, Bowen Greenwood had an interesting discussion on genres - and specifically on the "Christian Fiction" genre - on Substack, itself influenced by a post from Gaius Konstantine on Twitter/X and a discussion thereon with both myself and Blake Carpenter. It was interesting, but it needed a response... except I couldn't find my angle. I knew roughly where I was going, but the overall structure was simply lacking. Very formless, even though I knew essentially where I was going.

Then, in another discussion with Spotlight On Indie today, I finally came up with a metaphor that really allows me to focus my thoughts here, so let's see if I can do this justice.

Essentially, finding a book is a lot like fishing. If you're going out looking to catch anything at all, you need to go spend a lot of time in areas where there are as many fish as possible. If you have more limited time or a more specific desire for a specific type of fish, you need to look more precisely at either smaller bodies of water (less overall time fishing) and/ or wherever that specific fish may live. (Marlin aren't exactly known for living in the lakes I grew up fishing on the outskirts of Atlanta, but neither are catfish known to be in the surface waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean... at least as far as I know.)

So for finding a book in general, there are a few different strategies. Sites like Goodreads, particularly with its direct Amazon connection, are going to have some of the largest catalogs of books on any site out there. Goodreads, as an overall book site, also has the largest number of overall users - and is literally orders - yes, plural - of magnitude bigger than its next largest competitor (roughly 125 million users to The Story Graph's roughly 3 million). Basically, it is the Pacific Ocean. If it exists at all, you're likely going to find some version of it there... but it might not be the exact version you're looking for. You'll find a fish, guaranteed. But if you're looking for a catfish, you're going to be looking a lot harder in a lot larger of a place, and you're still not overly likely to find anything remotely resembling a catfish.

Then there are the smaller projects that are still rather large themselves - your BookBub or your StoryGraph and similar. Hundreds of thousands to low millions of overall readers, with a fairly substantial library and much easier mechanisms to add books to said libraries. A touch easier to get a bit more specialized and find more precisely the exact kind of fish you're after.

Finally you have the niche projects, be it something like Spotlight that focuses on so-called "based" (essentially the conservative answer to the progressive "woke") books to something like say Gay Romance Reviews that focuses on, well, LGBT romance novels. If those are the specific kinds of "fish" you're looking for, these much smaller "lakes" are where you're going to find a lot more of the specific things you're after than if you search for those same things in the "ocean" of Goodreads without any real direction. And as with lakes generally, there are a seemingly innumerable amount of such more niche projects to serve nearly any imaginable community or desire - and creating a new one is at least possible, though hardly easy.

Now, about these "specific kinds of fish". We have a term for that in the book world. It is "genre" - and this is where "Christian Fiction" or even "based fiction" or "romance" come to bear. Every genre comes with its own expectations, just as when I claim a given fish is a "shark" or a "catfish" or an "anglerfish", you generally have some idea of what to expect from that fish.

Genre works in largely the same way. There are general expectations and in some cases rules that are enforced by various bodies claiming the authority, and some readers are more stringent in what they expect from a given genre than others. At a "shark vs catfish" kind of level, for example, romance readers expect a happy ending and mystery readers expect a resolution to the mystery. Debating such definitions will largely just raise your blood pressure while changing exactly no one's mind.

Looking to Christian Fiction specifically... it almost depends on who you ask. Certainly back at the turn of the Millennium, Christian Fiction was more preachy than not, never had any level of cussing or sex, and generally openly had explicitly Christian characters doing explicitly Christian things like actively going to church, praying before meals, and other things generally associated with American Churchianity really moreso than actual historic, much less strictly Biblical, Christianity. Some claim that this no longer really applies, but at least in the books I've seen of late openly and explicitly being marketed as "Christian Fiction"... eh, it largely still applies - perhaps with less outright preaching. Maybe.

Then we have "tropes" - large, broad plot points like "friends to lovers" or "forced proximity" (being trapped in some small area such as a house or even a single room). These can help refine exactly what the reader is expecting and looking for... and are largely useless when searching Goodreads, but at least some smaller competitors, from StoryGraph to Spotlight, make efforts to make trope searches easier or even effectively design their entire project around making searching by trope or even more granular details (such as so-called "spice level" - the level of sex shown "on screen") as easily searchable as possible. This can get all the way from "I want a catfish generally" (genre) to "I want this specific species of catfish and I want it to have this exact size and color" (trope combinations).

But this is all from the reader side, searching for a book. Granted. That's where my own experience primarily lies.

But what about the opposite - what if you're Ariel and you *want* to experience the joys of living on land? How can you find your Prince Charming that will rescue you from an underwater life and love you forever on land? What if... you're an author in search of a reader for their book?

Really the same thing applies, though in reverse.

If you want to find any reader, you need to go where the most readers are - Goodreads, by far. But there you're going to be one of literally hundreds of millions of fish searching for one of the 125 million ish fishermen in a very vast ocean. You may be found, but making that connection in that environment will be difficult.

Versus if you use a BookBub or a StoryGraph or a Spotlight or a GRR... there are far fewer fishermen, but the fishermen that are there are more proactively searching for the specific kind of fish they're after - perhaps your book may be that exact specific kind of fish! Thus, in these environments, your chances of finding any fisherman at all are far smaller... yet your chances of finding your fisherman may in fact be paradoxically higher in this smaller pond with fewer people fishing it.

But it is also a lot more effort to make sure you're in as many of these smaller ponds as possible than just making sure you're in the biggest ocean on the planet - so it becomes a cost-benefit level business decision, and ultimately only you can make that kind of decision for yourself and your business based on your own needs and desires. Maybe the giant ocean with the more rare, yet also with a higher max potential, fisherman is what you want. Maybe you know or can find the exact few ponds where fishermen looking for exactly the fish you are are actively looking, and thus perhaps make your odds that much higher without that much extra work on your part. Both strategies are very possible, and different fish and different fishermen will tell you different things about both.

Personally, I always recommend being as diversified as you're comfortable with, on the general premise that both have strengths and both have weaknesses, so why not do what you can to hedge your bets as much as possible? Obviously, if one becomes more active than the other, put more effort there until this is no longer the case.

Flipping this back to readers to finish out, again, the same largely applies in reverse again. If you're looking for anything at all, Goodreads is absolutely your best bet. For the most part, if it exists, it is there... at least among the major categories from the major suppliers.

But if you want something more exacting, newer, more niche, etc... those smaller competitors may have more exactly what you're after, and honestly, they very likely make these more specific things far easier to find than Goodreads ever has... assuming these more specific things are on these smaller sites at all. Which is not always a given specifically due to the very cost-benefit analysis referenced above.

And none of this really even scratches the surface of specific genres and their specific intricacies and nuances. Perhaps that should be some follow on posts some day. ;)