For years, I have been given two pieces of opposing advice.
Write for your readers.
Write for yourself.
In all my research, no one ever expands on why they give their preferred advice, presumably because it seems obvious? Let us explore.
Write for your readers-
Your readers are the customers who purchase your books. In business terms, they provide you with the royalties you are owed in exchange for experiencing your intellectual property. Without readers, writers wouldn’t have jobs. So it makes sense to cater your content to the whims of your readers – write what they want to read and your readers will purchase it.
The issues arise when you take a look at the rate at which the audience interest changes – it’s fast, and the factors that impact that change are also constantly going through development. Today, social media platforms and their communities (e.g. Tiktok – Booktok) upload comments on favoured reads and provide easily shareable content for new publications, with an emphasis on aesthetics – people really do judge books by their covers. Popular reads right now are the ACOTAR series (A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas, high fantasy romance), and anything written by Colleen Hoover (romance). 15 years ago brought the rise of the dystopia with Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth, and The Maze Runner by James Dashner. J K Rowling’s Harry Potter took the 90s by storm, and the further back you look, the more literary fiction you will see.
If you consider how long it takes to write (6-12 months at least) and publish a book (up to 2 years), a book may reach launch and no longer be relevant or trendy. Writing for your readers shortens the time frame in which you need to publish, but may produce better revenue.
Write for yourself-
They say “if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”; writing is no exception. You should love what you write because if you don’t, you won’t end up writing it. This is not to say that you shouldn’t push yourself beyond your comfort zone – no one deserves to stay comfy – but if you can’t stomach watching Scream, then you probably shouldn’t put your books on the same shelf as Stephen King.
Your passion will bleed through into your work and your readers will be able to see it; the more you enjoy your work, the more your readers will enjoy your work! Writing for yourself will make the writing easier, but may also prolong the writing and publishing processes. In the end, you will have produced a better product overall, because of your passion.
And so-
I think the advice you deserve depends on where you are in your writing and publishing journey. A beginner writer, someone unpublished and relatively amateur-ish, should write for themselves – building the habits and discipline to write regularly enough to make a living are more important than tracking trends and writing to the forever ebb and flow of reader interest. A more seasoned author, with a number of publications under their belt, is better equipped to view book sales and cater their content to the demand (plus they will already have an audience who is interested in their work!).