Listening to various podcasts lately I keep hearing the same concept, know your market. This is such a strange concept to me as I write from inspiration and in simple terms where ever my mind wanders, within reason, I go with it. I try to tie these ideas into a central theme and package it to some extent. Actually a more precise statement is, I try to direct my ideas to be around the central theme at least having some relevancy and then boom, my brain floods. Of course not every idea holds merit and plenty get discarded. That’s okay because there’s always more arriving right behind it!
The consumer (reader), meaning someone who would pay money for a story, is a distant concept in the writing process. Quite honestly I have so many diverse people reading Impatience right now, I can’t pigeonhole any one demographic as a potential consumer of this novel as a finished product. I quite like this. I didn’t expect it and I’m pleased to know the story might have universal appeal, that’s pretty cool. I had no idea of this as I wrote the story, it simply didn’t seem relevant at the time.
Contrary to Impatience, I’m starting to understand Balance it is a lot more of a niche story and has a narrower appeal. Just as surprising, I have discovered this novel is more male orientated, as I’m yet to find a female who is into it. The reason I’m surprised is two of the main characters are female. I’m fine with the limited demographic. The story rocks and absolutely does it for me. Presumably, with a lot of polish, it will do it for others out there that are like me 
During the writing process, if anything, I’m a bit cruel to my wonderful proof readers as I tend to give them dribs and drabs and quiz them mercilessly. The reader or end consumer is the last thing on my mind. I’m simply too busy getting it all down to have any capacity to think of the consumer.
I also keep hearing how most published books are written to a formula. There are rules such as don’t go over this many words, don’t do this or that! Writing is a creative process where I really need to focus on the creating part and worrying about limiting rules would be counter productive.
Producing a product, a publishable novel is completely different to writing! As an Author I can’t limit the creative part because I’m worried about my word count, that wouldn’t be fair to the plot and the characters. Word count is something to worry about at the end, if at all.
The consumer is supposed to be well understood by a publisher. They are the business experts who know the market segments, do the market research and have the expertise in marketing. They should be able to tell the Author all about the genre specific consumers their masterpiece appeals to. The business realities of producing a paper book are complicated and as I am rapidly discovering, full of plenty of hassles!
No wonder so many writers are now self publishing across the various ‘e’ formats…
I am not an author but I always thought that writing comes from the heart and bubbles out of the soul. Writing to a formula and following a bunch of rules seems to me to be too contrived. Like painting by numbers.
The authors who write to rules are probably the ones that make their living from writing. Can an author reasonably write from the heart and create enough brilliant stories to support themselves? Probably a small number…..
Think of the authors who you (probably) regularly read – Feist, Reilly, King, etc There’s no doubt that their style is consistent – and probably their income too!
Is ‘style’ another name for ‘formula’, for an author?
I’m not sure about this. I hope the three talented individuals you mention Dave are satisfied to write within their styles. It would not be good if they are stagnating in their creativity just to produce what is commercially viable?
Then again they probably want to eat… lol !