ERIN HALBMAIER

It’s supposed to be the stress-relieving, ultra-comfort activity for women, but I hate shopping. And clothes shopping is the worst.

I suppose it’s possible that I would enjoy it more if stores carried things I like. If I walked into the store and found an entire section of clothes in my favorite colors, prints that I appreciate, in cuts that aren’t too short without being frumpy, the experience would be better.

….but sadly, that’s never been the case. I always skim rack after rack, growing more frustrated with each one. Sometimes I find something I really like. Sometimes I settle for something I can live with because I wouldn’t be shopping if I didn’t need something.

And so I end up using my dollars to tell the companies who decide what options we have that I want them to make more of something that isn’t really what I want. Because what I want isn’t on the rack, so I can’t buy it instead.

Drives me batty.

It happens everywhere. Kenley Davidson mentioned in one of her newsletters that when she wrote her sci-fi trilogy, she discovered there wasn’t a genre for no-spice sci-fi. As if there’s an expectation that sci-fi MUST have spice to sell, as if it’s what everyone who reads the genre wants.

And maybe that’s what the purchasing data says. But how can I vote with my dollars for books just like the Honor Harrington series but WITHOUT the relationship content that makes my skin crawl unless 1) those books exist and 2) I know it?

If the book isn’t on the shelf, readers can’t buy it.

Who’s to say readers don’t want no-spice romantasy with characters in their twenties? Why should I believe that writing relationships that float a little closer to real life than a rose-colored story world won’t sell?

I would buy that kind of a book. And maybe I’m one in a million.

But as I read somewhere once, in a world of seven billion people, one in a million is seven thousand people.

It wouldn’t make me rich, but I could write full time if seven thousand people read each book I released. I could do it on less.

And each of those people would have more books that match what they want to read, instead of settling for the closest thing the market offers.

It means I have to find them all…but I can work on that. Will you help me, and the other no-spice indie authors writing what the market claims will never sell?

Clothing manufacturers may not have the option to make a few of each possible shirt in the hopes the right person will stumble into the right store, but ebooks are different. And with print-on-demand, even paperbacks can be available to just about anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The right people just have to know the books they want are out there.

I stumbled into the no-spice community a few years ago after picking up a free copy of Melanie Cellier’s The Princess Companion, and I’ve never looked back. I love these books and these authors, and I’m sure there are a lot more people who would love them just as much if they knew to look.

Let’s use the power of today’s technology to prove the marketing gurus wrong.

I’m going to write for the one in a million.