If someone said: "Nothing against women writers, but all
of my favorite crime fiction authors happen to be men," how would you
respond?
My
response would be the same if I heard a woman say she preferred women writers
to male ones. Read what you want. Some people like self-help books. Some like
science fiction. Some like romance. Some people don’t read at all. My response
to the latter would be hand-over-the-mouth screaming to myself: How can you not read? But, let’s face
it, some people don’t read.
I can’t visualize
a truck driver curled up reading a cozy, but I can see a woman reading a
thriller. Women write thrillers. Men have written romance novels. But if
someone, let’s say a man, says he won’t
read a book – let’s say a thriller – written by a woman, then he has a problem
living in the real world. If it’s a literary agent or publisher who says he or
she won’t consider a thriller written by a woman then a lot more people have a
problem. Many good writers won’t get published and subsequently enjoyed if that
is the company policy. But it happens.
In the
past twenty-five years women writers have gotten book deals writing cozies and
chic-lit novels as well as standard detective novels and thrillers. The
over-whelming majority of women writers I know write cozies. The reading public
assumes that if you are female you will be writing that type of book just
because of the vast number of those types of books on the shelves. Reviewers are
going to think the same thing. They have seen years and years of top selling
books, written by men, winning prizes. They will gravitate toward what is
familiar and accepted when it comes time to reviewing books. Everybody wants to
be around the popular kids in school or go see the hot new movie. But if our,
meaning the females in the crowd, if our first response is to whine, then
pardon me for saying this, but snap out
of it, honey. Nobody owes you a review.
But there
are things you can try.
Ladies,
try sending a review of your book to women’s magazines and see if they will
print it. Send them a copy of the book, too. You will have to write your own
review. This is basically the Press Release you should already have in your press
kit. Not every review in a publication is written by an impartial reviewer. Your
review should be a short blurb about your book. It is roughly the synopsis you
sent in your query letter minus the conclusion of the book. Include the log
line-elevator pitch that you should have for every book you write. It will grab
the reader.
I worked
in a bookstore for a year and a half many moons ago (1979-1980). Our romance
section was just as large as our mainline fiction section. We sold down to the
wall in the romance section most months, not so for the fiction section. The
mystery section was fairly small at the time. Obviously women were buying
women’s books. I don’t remember hearing men whine about only females getting to
write romance novels.
What women
should try to do is get known in a smaller pond first. And remember, you drop a
pebble in a pond and there is a ripple effect. You make enough splash and the folks
in the big publishing yachts will take notice. Or even Hollywood.
Some men
write Gothic romance novels under a pseudonym. A man’s name on the cover of a
throbbing romance novel would probably be bad marketing. The same thing goes
for a man’s name on a cozy novel, but occasionally it has been successfully
done. Men can be held back just like women, but many of them consider the
marketing aspect and use a female pen name.
I use my
initials rather than my first name to obscure my sex. My books aren’t cozies
nor are they dripping in blood. I thought initials made my pen name
recognizable but it didn’t put me in a box. Agents and publishers actually
thought a man wrote the Johnny Casino Casebooks. They read the book before they
read my biography. That’s what I wanted.
Know the
market where you want to sell the most books. If you are a niche mystery writer
and write about knitting or cooking while solving a crime, try sending a copy of
your book with a small review to a publication that features that hobby or
skill. They might publish it. See if a local store will let you do a book
signing. A knit shop might let you do an event if you are a local writer.
If you
write a more traditional mystery and can’t get any traction, see if your local
paper will run a small review or maybe they have a reporter who would like to
interview you. Even if you are published by a large publishing house, you might
have to do all the publicity yourself.
Let me
introduce you to Anna Katharine Green. She started writing very intricate plots
with clever details and sleuthing techniques. She wrote stories about a young debutante who solved crimes, a young man who analyzed a crime scene down to the lint in the victim’s pockets, and a spinster lady who helped out the local police in solving crimes. If this sounds a little too much like Nancy Drew or a young Sherlock Holmes or a Miss Marple, Anna Katharine Green was born in 1846. Her books predated these other great
writers. She is considered the mother of the detective novel. Women weren't
writing much more than poetry back then and there were very few male writers of
fiction, much less mysteries. She had to discover new territories and did it
unbelievably well. She did get reviews. In fact, the Pennsylvania Senate
debated whether or not a woman could have actually have written her first book,
The Leavenworth Case, her first
success.
She wrote it and 39 more stories!
