Fiction Writers: Tired of Rejection? Write Nonfiction

I come from a journalism background and so understand the demand for nonfiction, a flood of which is published every day in thousands of venues, from news to essays, reviews and opinion pieces in blogs, books, documentaries and on and on.

Yet every once in awhile I stumble upon yet another anecdote that drives home the point of how much more nonfiction is published than fiction.

I discovered just such confirmation when I happened upon the website of Jodie Rhodes in La Jolla, CA.

She writes:

To give you an idea of how well nonfiction sells vs fiction, we sell 70% of all the nonfiction books we represent (and can do so on the basis of just a short proposal), 25% of YA/Teen books and 5% of adult novels.

Of 300,000 books published in 2009 (Bowker Book Industry statistics for 2002-2009), all but 60,000 were nonfiction. Consider this Goodreads.com list of popular nonfiction for 2010.

So the moral is that you're struggling to write fiction, consider taking a break to write nonfiction in order to accrue writing credentials while also giving a life-giving shot to morale.

Happy writing!