Why trimming the narrative fat is vital to sell books in the 2020s

Cuppa: A hand-poured cup of the best ideas about writing I've tasted lately

Hey, y’all—

I don’t advocate writing to market—that is, writing a book entirely based on your idea of what’s hot on TikTok. Except that, well, I do advocate writing to market, inasmuch as your doorstopper of a meditation on character and theme is going to have a hard time finding readers.

Commercial fiction, mainstream fiction, genre fiction ... It doesn…