love @potvin Read a spread of New Yorker today...so arch, so liberal, so whinging in the metaphors. Teacher goes, finds a picture looks like Lincoln. Shithead ...and now it hangs over his bureau....really bugged me for 5 minutes. Go subscribe to the big mags & you get free bits and pieces for free. Nice hobby. Mat drunk xx
I agree. I too heard that the Hunger Games lifted the trend of dystopian YA to which quite a few best-seller books followed, and from which lots of people were inspired to write dystopian YA novels only to pitch to a saturated market and get rejected. (This is one scenario). Agents and publishers think in terms of sales, so even if they think your book is good, if they don't think they can sell it, they won't take it. Wait a couple of years and things will probably change. It is not ideal, you want to publish now that you finished writing your book. But knowing trends might help you get you a better chance at getting published.
Depends on what you want. Tolkien wrote an incredible timeless epic, but I'm sure it helped that the Lord of the Rings dealt with such concepts as good versus evil and had epic battles in it, riding on the coattails a bit of WWII. But you need to do much more than ride on coattails, usually, to be successful. Which Tolkien clearly did, having inspired and thoroughly shaped a genre for many decades since (with the help of Peter Jackson's adaptations). Point is, I agree with @Xoic. I think a writer is best served to find the timeless in the timely. Of course, I might add this doesn't answer the OP's question. The OP wants to know where they can find trend information for their own purposes, whatever that might be. @jannert listed a couple specific sources that are usually very good, like Reader's Digest. Otherwise, your best bet @ the OP would be to look at the sites of individual agents. Try sending a few emails; many of them are responsive to Twitter as well, I've heard. Find a "curator" or two that you trust, as somebody else mentioned. You're already on the right path, having asked here. A writing forum isn't a bad start. Really, you've received a mixture of good advice that you should keep in mind in your search! If you really try a combination of these things, you'll soon be more in tune with what's hot and what's not. As you can see, everybody including myself has a strong opinion about whether it's worth your time. Only you can decide that; that might mean you spend a month or two researching trends, only to find out you just don't care. Personally, as much as I want to be liked and fawned over, I can't quite bring myself to write something entirely devoid of personal meaning and gratification for the sake of being trendy. I went through that phase in middle school when I wore snapbacks and Vans shirts. With journalism, I have to pay constant attention to *timeliness*. News stories should be timely. Not old. So that being said, when it comes to fiction which I only get to write a little in my free time, I just want to write what *I* want to write. If it's unpopular, uncool, out-of-date, whatever. So be it.
I started this thread asking 'where to find trends' for practical reasons (understanding one aspect of how the publishing market works) and somehow has evolved into 'whether it is worth anyone's time and craft to follow trends'. I do understand why people would make such considerations, and I would probably do the same if I read a post on trends posted by someone else. After all, this is a writer's forum about writing. But in no place I have stated that I want to follow trends, just understand the publishing market and how it works from the point of view of a novice writer. I too write to my heart's content whether my themes are timeless or not, I don't think it is outdated to do that, but I do think it is a choice. You do all make good points and appreciate the conversation going, it is interesting to read what motivates people to write. I somehow feel I stepped into a warning tale, which I view as a sort of fairy tale...it strangely gets my imagination going. I like it.
It's not about the past, it's about the universal and timeless—that means intense emotions that everyone experiences regardless of their culture, and human motivating factors we all understand. Facebook and Kindle both deliver these archetypal experiences, that's why they're so lucrative. Also, I doubt anybody really writes at the extreme ends of the spectrum. If you're writing to trends but including powerful emotions and motivations, then you're including enough depth. That's what I was struggling to say above, but it got lost in confusion and wordiness.
I don't know if this has been mentioned, but there's a book called the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook (published by Bloomsbury) and it has a whole section about trends (a review of the publishing year) - really insightful. It also contains advice from published authors, agents and other people in publishing (loads of articles!). And has names of agents and publishers etc. It's a British publication, but I think it would help overseas authors too (there's a list of USA literary agents in it). It's not just for writers of books - there's a section on newspaper/magazine writing. Really helped me to understand the ins and outs of publishing.
