Branching into Other Genres

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve mentioned earlier that I’m branching out into another genre.  This isn’t resulting from boredom with my current genre.  It’s not even purely a commercial endeavor.  No, this is an Attack Novel.  The story rose up and demanded I write it.  Its incessant nagging started two years ago, and the fact I ignored its demands demonstrates my stubbornness and focus.  It’s zombies.  It’s more than zombies, of course, but drilling it down to its core…yeah, zombies.

The book is a cozy treatment of zombies. Zombies with off-stage violence. Zombies with no profanity.  Is there an audience for this?  Who knows?  I was attacked.

Then I realized that my team might not really be onboard with zombies.  Does my cover designer do zombie covers?  Does my cozy editor do zombie books?

It’s good to make sure everyone has experience producing the new genre if we have a team that works with us on a different one.

The next thing to consider was the name.  From what I’ve observed online, the whole should-I-have-a-pseudonym-for-a-different-genre issue is a very hot topic with some strong opinions bouncing around. Although this is a cozy treatment of zombies, I decided to write under a pen name.  Sort of.  I’m blessed with a name that has about . I’ve decided on Liz Craig for this book.  It ties it into my real name but won’t confuse my readers looking for cozy mysteries.  I know my readers very, very well…I really, really don’t want to confuse them.  That would go badly.

My compromise with the situation is to send a reader newsletter updating subscribers on the mystery series and inform them (almost an aside) that I have a new book in a different genre. That way, I put the ball in their court.

I plan to put up a Liz Craig page on this site, maybe even a subdomain of the main site.  In the back of the book, I’ll mention that I also write mysteries with similar ‘mild thrills’ and direct them to the other books.

I’m not going to go wild and let Liz have her own identity online because…let’s face it. Only so many hours in the day.  Instead, I’ll let her latch onto my own brand and tag along. She may even have a completely different marketing strategy than I do: she may explore pre-orders and KDP Select because she has no readers to annoy.  Maybe even a Book Bub ad.  Maybe she’ll put her book up on Wattpad before it even gets released.  That’s the fun thing…she can experiment and screw up because she’s not exactly me.

This book is a one-off, standalone.  If it works out, maybe I’ll let Liz write more books. But this zombie book won’t be a series.

Any of you writing more than one genre?  How are you handling the promo and branding?

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