Don’t Write That Book
Amazon’s wacky bestseller lists
I have an idea for a cyberpunk novel that fans of the genre (and the recent video game Cyberpunk 2077) would probably enjoy. I’m just not sure if I’m going to write the damn thing.
I’m a self-published author. My target platform is the Amazon Kindle. Unfortunately, Amazon has a severe problem with its bestseller lists. In a word, they’re crap.
The Kindle Cyberpunk Top 50 has exactly 5 cyberpunk novels on it. Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson and Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. All those books belong in the genre, but they’re also over twenty years old.
What are the other 45 books in the Top 50 if they’re not cyberpunk? Without doing the math, most of them fit into the relatively new genre called “LitRPG”. What is LitRPG? My glib response would be “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know”, but that doesn’t help us understand the problem. Let’s throw it to Wikipedia for a proper definition…
“LitRPG, short for literary roleplaying game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science fiction and fantasy novels.”
I’m guessing the simulated environments are the connective tissue between LitRPGs and cyberpunk. LitRPG protagonists, I presume, enter virtual reality to battle monsters and have adventures. Cyberpunk employs VR differently, I think. Let’s return to Wikipedia for its thoughts on cyberpunk.
“Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a combination of ‘lowlife and high tech’, featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.”
I’ll give it to the guys and gals at Wikipedia. That’s a pretty good definition. I’ve always described cyberpunk as Film Noir with virtual reality and cybernetic implants. Hell, William Gibson writes like Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon and one of the better purveyors of literary noir.
The biggest difference I see in the two genres is thematic. From the cyberpunk definition, I get a feel for theme and tone. From the LitRPG definition, I get nothing of the sort. I would say cyberpunk has the element of the morality play whereas LitRPG is a “popcorn” experience with numbers meant to represent the gamified progression of the characters.
LitRPG sounds like it would be unwieldy and no fun to read, but I’m showing my biases and, maybe, my age.
But let’s not stray from my core point. Why is most of the Cyberpunk Top 50 not cyberpunk? I think I know.
My theory is two-pronged. 1) Kindle Authors specify the genre when they upload their books to the service. If I’d written a LitRPG, I would likely have put it in the Cyberpunk category because why not? The two genres are, arguably, adjacent. Also, I may have no choice since 2) There is no LitRPG bestseller list (remember what I said about it being new?).
So, what’s a cyberpunk author — a real cyberpunk author — to do? What’s the solution when the bestseller list for your chosen category is mostly something else?
I do not know. That said, I’m worried I’ll write the book and no one will find it. I will have wasted my time. To my mind, that’s a shame. I think the real cyberpunk audience — if there is such a thing — would enjoy it.