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Q&A Should I focus on ideas which the market enjoys, or ideas which I enjoy?

Two approaches to writing: Writing about ideas that are currently 'hot' in the market (a bit like when the Hunger Games came out, many authors quickly released books which incorporated the same s...

4 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Adi219‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:03:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36806
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Adi219‭ · 2019-12-08T09:03:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Two approaches to writing:

1. **Writing about ideas that are currently 'hot' in the market** (a bit like when the Hunger Games came out, many authors quickly released books which incorporated the same set of ideas)

2. **Writing about ideas that you would enjoy (and _have_ enjoyed) reading about**.

I don't have any statistics for this claim, but I'm fairly certain that many authors are influenced by the type of books they read, and are heavily influenced by the ideas which appear in the type of books they enjoy. I can't verify this (yet) but it's certainly true for me; I enjoy reading a specific subset of dystopian fiction (one where the protagonist suffers heavy losses), and the book which I'm planning to write features this key idea heavily.

It seems to me, that, ideas which appear in books are _very_ similar to those that appear in the books that their authors enjoy reading.

My Question: **Should I write books focusing on the market's interests, or my interests?**

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-06-08T17:27:04Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 15