It’s become apparent to me that there’s a military industrial complex of what I call off-brand Jack Reacher novels. That is, they’ll feature some drifter\soldier\spy\ex-military specialist called John\Jack\James\Harry\Tom So and So going through the usual Reacher-esque stories. They all have the same style of cover featuring the tall dark silhouette of a man standing there sternly or running. If you click on one of them, you’ll find it’s like book 7 in a 20 book series. Click the author pages and they’ll tell you to go to their website so you can get your free starter pack blah blah blah.
Now I get the underlying basis to this: that people like to read more of the same, and that if you can hook them on book one, some of them will read book two and three. That all makes sense. I also understand that covers are intentionally similar to other books in the genre so you can recognise what kind of book it is just from one glance.
But, and I guess this is my question, surely you’re going to hit saturation point eventually? There’s only so many readers and so many hours in the day. Presumably mankind cannot live off Jack Reacher-style books alone. And yet, these long running series have thousands of ratings. Clearly somebody is buying them.
Is this like the romance market, where there’s a certain extremely dedicated audience that will main-line the same kind of book again and again?
Many of the books look and sound so similar that I honestly can’t tell them apart. How do they manage to stand out and attract an audience without appearing out of place in the market?
by Napoleon64
1 Comment
If people buy it they’ll keep producing it. That’s all you need to know.