Are you writing a crime novel? Are you absolutely sure about this? You might be surprised by the truth.
Often, when I’m teaching workshops, I’ll suggest to a student that their novel idea could work well as crime. This may cause surprise, worry, and even, yes, disdain. I’ll admit it – I had a similar reaction when I sold my first novel, The Fall. Being slightly clueless about the genre, I thought I had written women’s fiction, which happened to have a murder in it. I do believe there are many women’s fiction elements in that book, but what I didn’t realise was that in today’s market it’s very common for books to be sold as crime when they definitely didn’t start out that way. Especially if, like mine, the entire plot centres around a murder (I really was clueless). Why is that? Put bluntly, it’s because crime sells. There’s a huge readership out there, so publishers like to tap into it where they can. If you take a look in a bookshop, you’ll notice how many covers are starting to resemble those of crime fiction, even when they’re not.