I have never once claimed to be one of those writers. I have taken great pains to refer to others, in fact. If you haven’t picked up on that by now, what else are you missing with your insistence on everything fitting your preconceived notions?
Well I’m no financial guru or expert, so I can only speak in the abstract on such things. As to financial analysts making more money than writers, I would point out the some kids with a good paper route also make more money than a lot of writers. Take that for what you will.
I’ll let Buffett speak to what he thinks the value of timing the market is. I think it’s analogous to writing to market, but of course this is just one man’s opinion.
“We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. […] I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.”
I inferred. Your posts left me with a singular impression of one actively invested in writing to market.
I’m going to be a bit gauche here and quote myself. I think my major point is here:
I think from this it’s clear that I actually didn’t believe you were one of those writers. Moreover, I don’t actually believe they exist. The only reason to do something as hard writing for money is if you have something inside you driving you towards it.
Some people find writing for money hard. Some don’t. They do it just like any other craft a person learns.
Some people find it easier to write for money than to make money in other ways.
Is your experience with other writers really that self-selected and limited?
But of course, you are going to ignore what I am saying because it doesn’t fit your understanding of how things are.
I would have to say right back at ya’.
Why? Are you saying that commercially successful work doesn’t require self-exploration? I would argue the opposite, that self-exploration is one way to stand out from the crowd.
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I’ve been saying all along that your scenario is often true. I simply am not acknowledging it to be universal as you keep insisting. So how, exactly, does that demonstrate that I am not listening to you?
Well, no craft, done well, is “easy.” A friend of mine is a luthier. He talks about things like making the neck of a guitar look like it grew out of the body, or the ridiculous number of hours involved in polishing a top to his standards. He’s spent, at this point, several decades developing his skills.
I never said anything against commercial work. I don’t really distinguish between Charles Dickens and George Eliot, between Michael Chabon and Stephen King, between Salman Rushdie and Danielle Steel.
Self-exploration standing out from the crowd is sort of proving my point. Passion is not only the reason to write but likely the real path to success. All of these listed writers I believe were passionate about writing, none more so than writers like Dickens or Trollope. No one writes that consistently and prolifically without passion backing it up.
And I’m saying it is. I do in fact believe that impetus which propels people to take up writing is passion and this is universal. When it gets hard (and it always does) the temptation is to look for guardrails which will make it easier. I think this is a mistake.
In the end it’s going to come down to a slugfest between: “I’m right!” —“No, I’m right!” At this point in the conversation I’m personally just going to be recycling things I said above. People can read those for themselves. If you guys disagree, you disagree. I don’t know what else to say on the subject that hasn’t been said already.
At fist I misread your post. I agree with this. I’ve been playing the piano for 40+ years. I make my living from this. It becomes fluid. It never becomes easy. It would have become neither without the passion to stick with it for four decades.
I didn’t say it was. There is a world of difference between easy and hard.
Doing market research, or even pre-deciding which segment of a market one is going to write to, is not “look[ing] for guardrails.” For writers who are neurodiverse, such strategies can literally help filter out a wealth of noise and distraction and allow them to focus on their chosen path. “I already made this decision, shut up” can literally be the only thing that silences the voices of self-doubt inside one’s own head long enough to keep the words flowing.
I’m going to have to say from here on out: see above.
Having a book listed on Amazon is easy. Selling enough copies of that book to recoup costs is not so easy. Self-published books on average do not sell as many copies as traditionally published books. (Which makes sense, since traditionally published books are vetted by an objective third party whose entire job is to accurately assess their sales potential.)
The thread seems to be petering out, but I just wanted to observe that the original question concerned the youth market generally, not, say, “what is the market for a school series about unicorn-riding vampires.” So much of the criticism about “writing to trends” seems to me irrelevant, or at least focused on a question that wasn’t actually asked.
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Now that the dust has settled, I just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this spirited discussion, in all of its twists and turns. Passion, discipline, market awareness, Shakespeare, Dickens, …, I found myself nodding throughout. Not sure if this makes me open-minded or wishy-washy. Anyway, thank you mdmullins, devinganger, and kewms for such an intelligently provocative debate.
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As someone who works in a library, I can assure you that there are a great many voracious young readers out there, anxious for new stories to read! My own NaNoWriMo project for this year is shaping up to be a YA-level book, although it didn’t start out that way.
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I think so. But what do I know, I’m 59 and still read them 
JWhitten