Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime
John Steinbeck- "Of Mice and Men" - Createspace and its market
After securing a decent share of a small market (AS students of selected poems of Emily Dickinson and Edward Thomas), I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of presence you can get in the GCSE study guide field. Perhaps 300000 students take GCSE English Literature; but how many of them buy a study guide?
My guide to "Of Mice and Men" has risen effortlessly into the top three on Amazon in the space of about 6 weeks; ahead of the Letts guide, and mixing it with York Notes and CGP.
I'm about to publish a long(er) study guide to that fantastic novel "Great Expectations", which is both an A-level and a GCSE text. Once that goes live, I'll have more evidence.
The moral seems to be that if you can identify your market, and find a suitable distribution channel, then, provided you can compete on quality, you can write your own destiny.
Comments
My daughter's GCSE texts are Pride and Prejudice and Macbeth - if that's of any help to you!