Matthew Johnston wrote:
You have chosen a niche market at best. I should know; my attempts at
gathering original fics for a magazine produced one story. One. This
is fanfiction. People don't read original fanfic of even exceptional
quality, save the shamelessly fan-service-laden Kumiko (a well-written,
if guilty, pleasure) and Macho Caballo, which got the bulk of its
readership near the beginning when everyone knew or thought it was a
retelling of Ranma in an original setting.
True. It's a little like trying to sell hamburgers at a pizza restaurant. If the
customers had been hungry for burgers, they probably would have gone to a burger
place to begin with.
I have no idea how you can gather readership, except to put a Ranma tag
on the story and trick them.
Er, don't. Believe me, I've seen plenty of supposed Ranma fics where (1) the
character is called "Ranma" but has basically nothing in common with the
character from Takahashi's manga, and/or (2) the story is really about the
author's own characters, with Ranma only appearing peripherally for no real
reason. You might get readers this way, but they'll be readers who are expecting
a Ranma fic and will judge your fic on that basis.
Believe me, if I knew, I'd tell you. The
only thing I can think of is to have an engaging premise immediately
evident, a format nobody has to go out of their way to read, and some of
the most incredible writing in the joint. It's a hell of a lot of hard
work. But maybe it'll pay off for you.
Good advice. Something else I'd suggest is to give out a lot of high-quality C&C
to other writers. I know that when I take a chance on an original story, it's
much more likely to be one by one of the people from whom I've received
intelligent commentary on my own fics.
Gary