Authors Aren’t Competition

I swear to Thor, I was going to write this post before the whole Cockygate debacle.

What’s Cockygate, you ask? I won’t spill any more virtual ink on this topic, but here’s the lowdown: Some crazy author tried to trademark the word “cocky,” and then she tried to get Amazon to pull ANY OTHER ROMANCE BOOKS with the word “cocky” in the title. (Want more? Check out Jenny Trout’s fantastic summary of the entire shit-show by clicking here.)

Does this affect me?

Well, not directly. I didn’t call my romance novel Cocky Norse God (although, hey, there could be worse names).

On the other hand, yes. This affects all writers, indie and traditional. It also affects anyone who might be just a teensy bit alarmed by the concept of trademarking a freaking word.

But really, this whole Cockygate debacle bothers me because it treats other authors as competition, as if writing a novel were some sort of epic Highlander battle in a crumbling castle during a thunderstorm…

And that’s just crap

Look, it took me over two years to write my urban fantasy paranormal romance The Wolf’s Lover (click here for that blog post).

If I’m going to be the only author you read, or even the only Norse mythology inspired romantic smut author you read, you’d better be reading that book damn slowly.

What’s that you say? You’d like to read more than one book every two years?

GREAT!

Writing isn’t a winner-take-all game.

The way I see it, other romance novels that share common ground with my writing will help me sell my books.

If someone reads Janine Ashbless’s amazing short story Sweet Hel Below in The Sexy Librarian’s Dirty 30, Volume 2, or they fall in love with Tina Glasneck’s Norse mythology inspired fantasy epic The Hell Chronicles, they might just go looking for another Baldr/Hel story and find Death and Beauty.

And if someone picks up Liz Meldon’s fabulous Lovers and Liars series and wants more Loki romance, hey, The Trickster’s Lover is right there.

So don’t think of other authors in your genre as competition.

Think of them as gateway drugs, pulling readers into your world.

You’re welcome

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