Dean Koontz on the Marketplace

 Jerry Jenkins put me on the trail of Dean Koontz’s book, How to Write Best-Selling Fiction (Cincinnati: Writers Digest, 1981). Jerry spoke warmly of the book at a couple of seminars I attended and urged me to get a copy, though the book was long out of print and hard to find. I found one in a used bookstore, and I’m glad I did. Though its statistics and illustrations are long out of date, the book’s basic principles hold up, so I plan to share them with you in upcoming posts—with updated illustrations whenever I can.

First, a word about Dean Koontz himself. His first novel, Star Quest, appeared in 1968 when Koontz was twenty-three. He has published more than a hundred novels since then, thirty of which have appeared on the New York Times Best-Seller List. A Roman Catholic, he says that spirituality is a recurring theme of his books although his readers may not realize it because he avoids making any overt statement of faith. While he has written in most genres of fiction except Westerns, the suspense thriller is his “sweet spot.”

Having grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father, he often writes about violent (even psychopathic) characters. However, “I like to de-glamorize evil,” Koontz says. Although an evil person may seem to prevail for a time, evil will be defeated ultimately.

So what does Dean Koontz have to say about the book marketplace? He believes every successful author strives to understand what’s happening in the marketplace. “Even if you know how to write well, your work is all for naught if you can't sell what you write" (31).

Readers tend to favor certain genres and not others, and these preferences wax and wane over the course of time. If we write in a genre that’s no longer in favor, we’re pursuing a hobby but not a ministry or a business, and successful Christian publishing must be both. (For example, I enjoy reading Westerns and could probably write a decent Western novel. That would've been a smart thing to do in the 1950s, but not now!) 

When Koontz’s high-school English teacher sent a letter urging him to apply his talents to writing a great literary novel, he replied, "I feel that being read is the fundamental test of greatness in literature" (13). Amen to that!

Keep an eye on the New York Times (NYT) best-seller lists or the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) best-seller lists, depending on which sort of reader you want to reach. You’ll see that genres popular in the Christian marketplace (ECPA list) are completely different from those leading the secular marketplace (NYT list).

For example, Amish romances have dominated the Christian marketplace for two decades, and they still comprise half of the top ten best-sellers on the December 2020 ECPA list. The ECPA list changes more slowly because Christian readers are more loyal to specific authors and titles. Four of the top ten best-sellers on the December 2020 ECPA list were published more than four years ago, and one (Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers) was published fifteen years ago.

We don’t yet have 2020 book sales statistics, which will reveal the authors and subjects that readers most enjoyed. However, we know it was a year of turbulent crosscurrents. Lockdown orders kept millions of people at home, which increased their need for good books to read. It also reduced the income of most Americans, giving them less disposable income for books. It may also have piqued readers’ interest in some genres that had cooled in recent years—e.g., endtime prophecy. When we know the results, it's safe to say that book sales during the pandemic will bear out Dean Koontz’s final marketplace observation: "No movie or concert or stage play or painting or television mini-series can possibly have the complexity, breadth, depth, richness, and emotional impact of a well-wrought novel, and that is why novels will always prosper" (36).