I was saying the writers will just bend to the will of the readers. If the SH readers want ancient samurai x alien tentacle political space opera, writers will follow that if that's the demand. That's how web novel sites go. Readers dictate with their views/favorites/ratings what works will be on a site.
Sort of...
Supply and demand is a good adage, but there is also individual will and freedom of expression. A person's beliefs affects what they read, but they also believe in others. The power of a personal recommendation from a trusted source will influence a person. If I write a good story, then say, "Hey, this is a great story!" it might get read more.
If I go, "This is a story I wrote a long time ago. I'm uploading it as filler. Check it out if you are bored." Even if it is a story you might like, you may never see it, because even I, the author, am not selling it.
Readers as a group push the flow of the over all market, but individuals lead groups.
The common misconception is that humans are like sheep. We aren't. We are like chameleons. This is a survival strategy. If you have four paths and 3 of the 4 lead to death, and you have 100 people, do you send 25 people down each path? Or do you send 1 guy down each path, then follow the one that comes back alive? One method results in 75 dead people. One results in only 3.
Society is like that. 99% of people hang back and wait. They see what everyone around them is doing, then they do that. It's the safe bet. 1% of the population takes chances. 99% of those fail, crash, and burn, but the 1% of 1% that succeed benefit from being the very first to do the NEXT NEW THING. They become the "thought leader" or the "Genius" or the head of microsoft. Sometimes it's blind luck, or fate, or actual talent, but usually it is a combination of the three.
There's also the Dunbar empathy limit to take into consideration. The exact limit is thought to be between 140 to 280 or maybe 300 or maybe nothing. I think it varies for each person. I think some people can handle hundreds and others maybe a dozen.
To explain, the dunbar empathy limit is the number of people you can give a shit about.
How many people do you feel comfortable striking up a casual conversation with? How many names do you know of people? How many people are you willing to say, "Hi dave" as you pass them? I'm not talking about strong friend, or lover, or partner, or ever co-worker. Just... someone you would bother to give a shit about.
There is a limit to how many people you can do that with.
So people have layers. Family, close friends, co-workers, distant friends, passing acquaintances, everyone else. There is a point where you cannot give a shit. This is your Empathy Limit.
One death is a tragedy. One million a statistic.
The people in your empathy bubble influence you. One person you know saying, "Wow, I love Morbius! You got to see this movie!" can change your plans for the weekend. However, ME saying that might have no affect on you. This is how people make choices about what they prefer. Humans are social creatures. We NEED other people. If all my friends LOVE Elden Ring and scream about how much they love to play it, guess what? I'm gonna go get it to play with them, even if I hate FPS. If it is my BEST friend, I am REALLY likely to go buy the game.
Supply and demand DOES influence what people write, but this isn't like FOOD or SHELTER. This is a WANT not a NEED. NEED follows Supply and Demand much closer than WANT.
Anyone remember Tickle-Me Elmo? How about the Furby? Do you know there was a time people LITERALLY got killed for wearing the wrong style sneakers in the wrong neighborhood, because the sneakers had little flashing lights on them?
These trends came out of nowhere, exploded, then died just as fast. If we could predict these memetic surges, we'd rule the world, but we can't. There is no conspiracy. There is no cabal controlling trends. There is just the ebb and flow of social interactions. The book you write today might never be noticed, or in 100 years be dragged out of a database and become a cult classic.
We will never know who is the next H.P. Lovecraft.
Did he bow to the trends of his time? Was he anything special? He was a writer who wrote and kept writing and never stopped. Self-taught, or maybe self-learned, he simply got good at it by not giving up. Was he driven by madness, or fear, or desire for recognition? We can only guess, but we do know he was DRIVEN.
My advice? Write what you love or write what sells?
Do both.
Writing what you love teaches you to write. YOU NEED TO KEEP WRITING TO BE A GOOD WRITER. If you don't, if you stop, you will never improve. Only time and time and time and time will teach you how to improve and that only happens from WRITING. If you hate writing, you will quit. Writing something YOU LOVE, that nobody else will, well, it isn't wasted. You needed to write anyways. If you must write something only you love to find a reason to write, then DO IT.
But that will keep you in your comfort zone.
A GOOD writer SUFFERS. This means you have to write things you HATE. You have to get outside what you love and try things you will fail at. You have to take risks and fall flat on your face. What better way to do that than to sell out?
Selling out. What a silly phrase.
Getting paid to learn how to write differently and improve your craft? How is that a loss? Go on Fiver. Sell your service to someone who needs something written 5000 words for 5 dollars. Pimp yourself. WORK YOUR ASS OFF TO DO THE BEST YOU CAN FOR THAT 5 BUCKS.
You aren't doing it for money. You are doing it to LEARN. You have to step outside your comfort zone and do something impossible. You have to try and fail and try and fail and then... one day... It all clicks.
One day you learn and you find yourself writing something you like AND it is something people will want to read.
How? Because the problem isn't what you say, it's what people HEAR. The way to understand that is repetition. It's a numbers game. It has always been a numbers game. 50% of what you write is crap. 20% is Good. 1% is excellent. You want an excellent book? You need to write 50 awful ones, 30 crappy ones, 20 okay ones, and then you will get your one GOOD book.
Do that 100 times, and you will crank out excellent books without even trying. Of course... that takes about 9,999 books before that truly amazing book, but it's a numbers thing. You might write it your first try. You might write it on your 50th. You might need to write 500 books to get one good one.
But once it works, once it clicks that first time, THEN... the second time... not so hard. Then the third, then the fourth... and it snowballs. It accumulates. Then...
You need to step outside your comfort zone again. Then you need to SUFFER again. Then you need to take your heart out of your chest, show it to the world, and watch as the world takes your heart, stomps it into the dirt, pisses gasoline on it, and sets it on fire, only to then scoop up the ashes, feed it to a pig, wait until it shits out your ashes, then makes you eat a ash-shit sandwich.
And the world will do that. It will. Sooner or later, it will.
And you deal with it. And that which does not kill you and you recover from makes you stronger. The recovery part is important.
Which returns us to writing what YOU LOVE TO WRITE.
Is it worth it?
Well, I'm sitting here, eating a plate of bacon and ribs because I got bored. I have a job that I work at where I literally wipe people's asses. They cannot wipe their own ass, someone has to wipe that ass, I am that man who wipes that ass.
And my job involves a lot of down time. During that time, I write. I write what I want. I want what I hate. I write just to push myself. I don't have a dream. I have a way to stop going insane. If you include my work on Statistical analysis of d20 3.0/3.5 and my ghost writing, I've written hundreds of books. Some only 80 pages, some over 5000.
I'm just about getting to... Okay. Not good. Just... okay. 14 years of writing to pass the night and I'm just... okay.
Will I influence what people want to read? Unlikely. But predicting what people will like is a difficult thing. I'll write things people like, I'll also write things they don't. I'll slowly improve. I'll change some minds, and some minds will change me. Give and take. Push and pull. Is this skill worth the wasted time? What could I have had instead? Who knows. It's the path I took and I'm happy with it.
This golden apple is for the prettiest one.
Is it yours?
