Love him or hate him, Stephen King has an incredible track record for both publishing books and selling them. King has written over 80 books in his lifetime, which together have sold over 350 million copies. He writes frequently, and he writes in more than one niche.
The “king” of the horror genre, even this famous author doesn’t stick to writing in only one specialty. Some of King’s books, such as The Green Mile, The Stand, and his novella, The Shawshank Redemption, could all be argued to be in a genre different from horror.
I’ve read all of these works. I don’t like horror at all, but enjoyed these books immensely. To me, these are in a genre all their own. They’re fiction, of course, and they contain some horrific scenes, to be sure, but they’re still not horror novels. Then again, you could always argue that they had elements of horror and therefore can be categorized as such.
All right, then maybe Stephen King does just write in the horror genre?
Nope.
Stephen King has several other books in genres very far away from horror. These include, of course, the nonfiction work, “On Writing,” which I have not yet read but intend to (perhaps after I finish the 5 other books I currently have on the go).
King has also written works that cross genre lines, such as 11/22/63, which is a mix of historic fiction and speculative fiction, with an element of time travel. 11/22/63 tells the story of a man who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Want more proof that Stephen King is a multi-niche writer?
Eyes of the dragon is a fantasy novel with elements of horror, but a fantasy novel nonetheless.
The Long Walk is a dystopian novel.
Hearts in Atlantis is a collection of short stories.
Joyland is a mystery novel.
The Wasteland crosses genre boundaries between science fiction and horror.
Stephen King is a multi-niche writer, and you can be one, too.
Stephen King, an author who makes an excellent living by selling his many, many books, is a multi-niche writer. While his most prolific genre is certainly horror, he has dabbed across many others, and has also blended genre lines in some of his works.
You could argue that King can write across genres because he’s famous enough that his fans will want to read whatever he writes, and that might be true. And I agree that in the beginning, you should pick something to concentrate on, just so you get your writing business off the ground, instead of starting too many projects and never finishing any of them (a common issues among multipotentialites). However, don’t be afraid to branch out once your business is a little more established. If you’re a scanner, branching out is essential to the health of your writing business.
More than one way to branch out with your writing
Also, remember that niches come in two packages: types of writing or things to write about. For example, you could start by being a multi-niche freelance blogger. So you’d write blog posts and only blog posts in the beginning, but you could write them about many different topics. Alternatively, you could pick one topic (for instance, eCommerce), and provide several different types of services around that topic (web and ad copy, blog post, email series).
Personally, I prefer to provide one or two types of services across many different topics. I mostly do blog posts and magazine articles, but I write them about a variety of things. Again, remember to pick something to get started, and then branch out from there.
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