Notes from an Accidental Humorist by Judy Gruen

Happy Sunday Mamas! Today we have a great essay by Judy Gruen about how to market yourself in a niche ... in her case, the humor (or as Kai and I would say, humour) market. This is a favorite (or as Kai and I... oh nevermind..) topic of mine since I've written a LOT in my niche market. And I tell every new writer I can get my hands on to specialize and corner a niche market... So, without further blabber from moi... heeeere's Judy!

When an editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called to tell me she was buying my essay, “Fear of Fat: Don’t Let It Make You Skinny,” I didn’t try to act cool – I shouted "Yippee!" right into the phone. I was only 22 years old, and this was my first freelance sale. Not only had I earned fifty whole bucks (in the mid-1980s, this was only paltry, but not laughable), I had broken into the newspaper business, or so I thought.

What was really happening was quite different, though I wouldn’t realize it for years. This first sale, and the several that followed, were paving a foundation for my career as a humor writer. The Herald-Examiner, at the time the scrappy underdog daily paper in L.A., bought a few more of my pieces, and then I sold a few to the Chicago Tribune when I lived in that city during grad school in journalism. Inspiration struck quickly, as native Chicagoans kept asking me in disbelief, “Are you sure you’re from LA? You’re so . . . normal!” Apparently, they expected native Angelenos to have purple and blue hair that looked like it had been cut by a 4-year-old who’d been mainlining sugar all morning. I was no different than any other essayist: I recycled as many of my life's experiences as possible into humor fodder: When a boyfriend jilted me, for example, I skewered his metrosexual habits, such as sending his jeans to the dry cleaner and stuffing shoe trees into his sneakers, in the Chicago Tribune. (That was fun.)

Though I kept selling humor pieces, the very idea of trying to become a professional humorist seemed absurd. After all, how many Erma Bombecks could one country support? No, I was a practical gal, and my day job for years was writing and editing for health care publications, both at a major research university and later, at a health care corporation. I loved my job. It was interesting. It was relevant. It paid.

But several years later, after I had left my job and worked at home as mom to four children, there was simply too much hilarious material to ignore, so I wrote my first book, “Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy.” Then, when I hunkered down to do the hard, gritty work of marketing the book, I realized I had to market myself as a humorist. That’s when I realized my career focused had changed, perhaps for good.

It’s hard to market yourself in a limited niche, and the key thing I’ve learned after working at this for seven years is that you have to keep searching for your audience, the people who will relate to your voice. For years, I avoided marketing my work to Jewish publications, even though I’m Jewish, since I didn’t want to limit my audience, nor did I want to be pegged as solely a “Jewish writer.” But over time, editors of Jewish publications and web sites started coming to me – they had heard my voice and recognized it in the pieces I had sold to them. In the past two years, I’ve become a regular humor columnist for two Jewish print magazines, the “Jewlarious” section of the web site aish.com, and started podcasting my program, "Just Off My Noodle," on the web site of a national Jewish organization. I no longer shy away from writing about this aspect of my life, as it actually widens my audience, and I can almost always adapt my work written for these outlets into more generic humor, such as for my blog on MommaSaid.net, for my email newsletter subscribers, and other media outlets.

If you are writing for a limited market, you’ve got to love what you do and love your topic. If you aren’t getting pleasure from your work, rethink your writing emphasis. Finally, persevere and carry a thick skin. If you’ve been at this for more than 15 minutes you know editors will ignore you more often than they'll pay attention, but if you keep polishing your work and continue hunting for new, like-minded audiences, you can and will break through!


Judy Gruen’s latest book, The Women’s Daily Irony Supplement, has earned numerous publishing industry awards, including a Gold ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award, a Silver “IPPY” from Independent Publisher, and a Bronze Benjamin Franklin award from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Her work has also appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, Woman’s Day, and many other media outlets. Read more of her work on www.judygruen.com.

My Niche = Reining Horses

I'm late, I'm late, I know, I'm sorry!!

And I swear, I'm the queen of niche writing, so I really should have a lot to say on the topic, right?

Here's my backstory. I was a horse crazy teenager living in the city. I had a single mom who definitely couldn't afford a horse. Or even riding lessons. So I found an instructor who would let me wash her truck and trailer, polish the silver and clean stalls for lessons.

My brother did the same and he was a total natural at riding. Me? Not so much, but I loved the horses.

After I graduated from high school and all my friends were deciding which college they would attend, I went to the school of hard knocks. I started training horses over in Europe and here in Alberta. By the time I was 22 I was riding for Canada's number one reining trainer.

(insert stupid mistakes here)

By the time I was 25 I was divorced and a single mom of a toddler. Horse weren't in my future again for a long time... assistant horse trainers were paid about $1000 a month. Day care cost $900. Yeah.

But I had one other talent. Writing. I'd always written, but I hadn't written with a purpose. Now I had a purpose, to write about the horses I loved. So that's what I did.

My first article was in a horse association magazine. I volunteered with them and this was my contribution. I also did some editing and proofreading and helped to sell ads in the magazine. My second article came a couple months later when the editor of a horse publication in Canada emailed me to ask me if I wanted to write for her. And she paid me.

And that's how it started.

I have had about 250 articles and original columns published. I'd guesstimate that 225 of those were about horses.

Even more specifically, my articles were about reining horses. If you Google "reining horse writer", I'm the first link that comes up. My niche is so specific that I'd probably guess that there are far less than 100 writers specializing in it in North America.

And it was the mastering of this niche market that got me my book contract. Don't think for a moment the publisher didn't say "OK, this writer wants to write a book about reining horses, let's see what else she's done" and Googled my name. There I was.

I wasn't a reining horse trainer any more, I wasn't even riding at the time, I had the experience of being THE WRITER for THAT NICHE.

So, how can this help you?

Think of your niche. Now drill-down three or four layers. Get specific. Here's how mine works:

Horses
*
Riding
*
Western Riding
*
Reining Horses

This can be done with any topic. Parenting, Olympic Sports, Cleaning, Religion, Writing... Drill down into the topic and find a niche inside of a niche inside of a niche and become THE EXPERT on that topic.

Then start your way UP that ladder, next I'd focus on Western Riding (other sports like Cutting, Working Cow Horse, Western Pleasure, Trail) then Riding.... soon I'll be Queen of the World considered an expert on a much broader topic. The Martha Steward of Horses. (Incidentally, Martha has some really nice horses and even she has written about the topic!)

Here's an example:

Parenting
*
Life Stages of Children
*
Babies & Toddlers
*
Challenges
*
Sleep Issues

I have a difficult time when writers say "I want to write about X" and it's a broad topic like religion or parenting or health. You can call yourself a writer of "X" and that's fine, but don't you want to conquer the whole topic? Don't you want to be well-known as an expert in your topic? If so, then you absolutely have to conquer it one corner at a time.

Pick your topic, let's brainstorm your niche!

My niche is ________ (its a BIG niche)

When Heather posted that we'd gotten 'niches' as our theme for the week, I was studying for my last exam style assignment of the term. My head went down on my desk and I sighed.
Its not that bad really, but its kind difficult to point at my niche, given I'm deliberately diverse, indulgent, and to be quite honest, in pop culture circles, a bit of an oddity. In my OWN circle, not so much, but we attract folk like ourselves, so that's not - really a surprise either.
I'm deliberately diverse because I have stupid amounts of productive time on my hands - though I'm a full time student, full time mother, full time writer, I still get around 10k of work done, on my WORST weeks. Not including Uni work. On my good weeks I'm 10k at Uni and 25k or so at home.
I used to be 5k a day, rain or shine, needing it or not, but we moved so I lost that knack to do it consistently. Its slowly coming back though. The point being - when there are so many 'nice' fiction niches out there, would YOU want to stick to one? I'll also admit to getting slightly bored in just one niche. I might have been considerably more successful, but boredom is something that really bothers me. More importantly though, in non fiction and 'real life' circles there are certain areas that I'm an 'expert' or have information in that others might need - raising a child that may or may not have a conflict spectrum disorder (http://theoddchild.co.uk) - bi-polar disorder (http://bi-polarbears.com) and gaming, as a girl (http://irlfemale.com).
And that's where the 'indulgent' thing comes in. I am incredibly indulgent - and spoil myself like a child in a candy store when it comes to writing. I like to write as much as I can, on as diffuse an amount of topics, without losing the focus I already created for myself, because it keeps my writing skills sharp.
And as I said, I'm also an oddity. I'm equally at home in writing geek type pieces for tech sites, or gamers - and in the next breath (essay) I could be writing on parenting, design, artwork, the act of writing itself, Uni...you name it. I like being this way, it gives me scope for comfort, grace, and the sheer joy of sharing and being read by others. And ultimately, that's more important to me than a niche - knowing that somewhere I've entertained, supported, helped, amused or engaged my readers. And living in a thousand niches feels far better to me than missing that and supporting only one. So yeah, my niche is blank - a blank canvas, an ever filling cup. A blank page , that sometimes, mocks me. Its not perfect, but it is enjoyable, most of the time.
It has lead to problems however - I'm STILL trying to find a good bio that sums up who I am, what I do, and how good (or bad) I am at it ;)

I've got an itch....

and a copy of that book by Kelly James-Enger that tells me I can make more money if I had a niche too. The title makes it seem easy: Ready, Aim, Specialize! I bought the book (and I've read it). Does that count for anything?

My writing background includes over 15 years as a reporter. During that time, I did everything, and I do mean everything: hard-news, features, advances, obits, page layout, proofreading, generating ideas, and I even sold a few ads. Clearly, I'm not good at developing niches, but I keep trying.

I have now narrowed down my focus to three key topics: weight/body issues, online communication, and writing about writing.

I didn't realize I had done that until I wrote it down just now, but it is true. The majority of my writing right now has to do with weight, specifically I'm working on my nonfiction memoir, Fat Man's Daughter.

I keep thinking about pitching articles about online communication, and I have great ideas, but I have not yet done this. I really need to do this.

And I write about writing and teaching writing. Next week I'm even speaking at a conference about a writing issue (although it is related to teaching writing too).

One of my dream writing jobs would be a columnist for a daily newspaper. The kind of columnist who finds interesting people with great stories that I can tell to readers. That's right. When I grow up, I want to be Susan Ager of the Detroit Free Press.

By the way, the cover of Kelly's book said today's 10 hottest markets are health; business and finance; parenting; travel; essays; diet, nutrition and food; technology; fitness and sports; profiles and features; and home and garden.

Of the top 10 markets mentioned by Kelly, I have written something in every single one of those categories. Plus, reviewing these categories doesn't help me narrow my niche. It just reminds me how much I absolutely love essay writing, and home improvement stuff. Plus, if I write about parenting and finance, I can get interview experts who can help me too....

You First: Define and Pronounce "Niche" (Please!)

Our theme question this week is "What's your niche?" Other members of the Writing Mother group might remember that I haven't really decided on a niche or niches yet. I consider myself a generalist at the moment. I do tend to gravitate toward certain topics, but I've written everything from advertorials about sand and gravel aggregates to navel-gazing essays about motherhood. And those two were just in the past couple of months.

So I'm going to answer the question by not answering it, because I really want to know how you define "niche" when it comes to writing. Are you a writer with a niche (or several)? If so, what are they? If not, what do you say when someone asks what you write? Do you think a niche means a particular topic (like "family"), or could it also mean a particular form of writing (e.g. "navel-gazing essays")?

And for fun, let me know how you pronounce it. :) When you say it, does it rhyme with itch or sheesh or wish? (Hint: All three ways are correct, apparently. See below.)

Leave me a comment with your thoughts on niches, and I'll bake you some cookies. And I'll eat them for you too, because I go above and beyond for Mama Needs a Book Contract readers. I'm helpful like that.

Compliments of Merriam Webster online:

Main Entry: 1niche
Pronunciation: \ˈnich also ˈnēsh or ˈnish\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Middle French, from nicher to nest, from Vulgar Latin *nidicare, from Latin nidus nest — more at nest
Date: 1611
1 a: a recess in a wall especially for a statue b: something that resembles a niche
2 a: a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted b: a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species c: the ecological role of an organism in a community especially in regard to food consumption d: a specialized market

And if you're feeling chatty, let me know whether you think having a niche has anything to do with having "vision" for your writing business.

Theme: Niche Writing

"Niche – what’s yours? How to develop one. How hard it is to develop one. Whether you think you should or shouldn’t, etc."

Another theme courtesy of the wonderful Carolyn!

I feel like the Queen of Niche some days so I am really looking forward to hearing the rest of the group's take as well as from some of our readers!