Someone pointed this out on Kindleboards. Back in September, agent Lori Perkins quoted a response to one of her clients on her blog: "Print publishing is in turmoil right now. Leisure Books has effectively gone out of the print business, and B&N and Borders are having extreme financial difficulties. Mass market sales are suffering during the recession and horror is mass market. It's also summer. So, in all likelihood nothing is happening and nothing will be happening soon. I think it's almost impossible to place a first horror novel right now in print.
I can refer you to one of the other agents in house (go to our website) after Labor Day, but I do think epub is probably the way to go for horror right now."
Notice that this advice is specific to horror, which took a serious hit from Leisure's problems. Nevertheless, it's interesting.
Also, Jordan Summers has a nice rundown of current contractual issues discussed at the Novelists Inc conference in this post.
I'm sure it's no more difficult to sell horror than it is to sell any other genre right now. Personally, I'd call the manuscript 'dark fantasy' if I was trying to sell horror these days. If I remember correctly, Lori said the same thing several years back when I was represented by an agent in her agency. So take that for what it's worth.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. :)