As a writer, I met a lot of editors and some publishers, especially a few years back in the early days. Most of them asked me what genre do I write in? I had to actually go through a pre-defined list to choose as I didn’t know what to answer. But I settled on realistic or contemporary short fiction.
After that, the next question was which are the other authors in your genre? Who is your competition?
The reason for that question, apparently, was for them to size up the market for my books, and position me in competition to them. Again, I didn’t know what to answer.
As a reader, I would prefer to read all the authors that I like. And I keep discovering new ones. But still, as the question was asked, an answer was to be given. I settled on giving them a few names.
But after a few such meetings, when I gave it some thought, I concluded that this question about competition was absurd and meaningless. Books aren’t cars or appliances that you can have only one or two.
In those established markets, thinking about competition makes sense. In the age of digital reading like Kindle or Google Play Books, one can have as many books as they want. Shelf space and cost of books are not constraints.
The problem for authors is not of competition, in my view. It is not that someone is not going to buy my books because they have already bought a short story collection of Chekhov or Saki or Ruskin Bond already. Not that they are my competition – that would be too presumptuous, but, I mentioned some names, for argument sake.
The challenge isn’t that someone is buying something else instead of my book.
The challenge is most people don’t know I exist.
Or they don’t like what I write.
Even the most popular authors in a particular region or language or genre are unknown outside that domain. And not everyone likes what they write. And that is fine.
One can be world famous in a small domain one chooses. In the minds of those readers who like what you write, you have no competition. Because, in reality, there is no competition.
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