Escapists Uncensored: Release Date Nightmare

You walk into the bookstore with money to burn and go to your favorite section, eager to peruse the new releases. You see cover after cover of the same style and subgenre, turning the book over you read a similar synopsis to every other book published that day and begin to wonder if today is some odd trend of hashtag like #fantasyfriday or something. However, the same thing happens next week and the week after.

Seriously, why do the same kind of books all come out on the same day?

Now as I review, I tend to be much more cognizant of when books are released. That being said I tend to read books in order so that the books which are published sooner, I read first. This enables me to review it before the release date and hopefully help you in your perusing endeavors. Now, I’m not complaining. Well, not really. I did notice though that the same kind of books are almost always published on the same day. This seems like poor marketing to me. If I went into the store to buy books, I won’t pick up two books that look too similar in the same week.

I noticed this recently when on 7/30 two books were published that both had a fantasy outline, male protagonists, were from established authors who were debuting new series and had the same demographic. The following week two other books were published that were each scifi, were by newcomers, had a male protagonist who was an escort of some sort and had a post-apocalyptic setting. I understand some similarity since I tend to read the same type of books. After all, there are only so many ways you can spin the same story. I wasn’t too keen to read two books back to back that for all I know could be nearly the same. I certainly wouldn’t buy them in this order and I don’t think most would. So why do publishers do it? Do they want their works to compete with each other? The books are at different price ranges so one could feasibly buy both. However, from my experience I’d rather go both weeks and pick up one fantasy and one scifi each week.

I know that some people take this into consideration. One only need to look at game and movie releases to see that scheduling is a big factor in the success or failure of a book. So why not book publishers? Is it simply the SciFi/Fantasy section that suffers from this? I also wonder how this effects authors. As a reviewer, it is oftentimes hard to not compare books who in a shallow way seem the same. This very well could make you like or dislike an author simply by comparison. So why do it?

What about you? Do you notice the same trend? Does it not matter and you read what you like when you like it?