I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially since I’m currently working on two WIPs myself. I’ve been a huge fan for months, but when I try to talk about IF in the real world, it’s crickets. I’ve only ever met one person offline who even knew this genre existed! I think our lack of mainstream popularity boils down to a few major hurdles:
1. The Identity Crisis (Are we a Book or a Game?)
Even as an author, I struggle to explain what this medium is to my friends. If you call it a “book,” mainstream readers don’t understand the branching choices. If you call it a “game,” gamers open it up, see walls of text, and bounce off. To me, IF is “Books+”. Regular books are like custom movies in my head, but IF is a whole different level—I’m not watching someone else’s movie; I’m actively living the part. But how do you market that feeling to someone who has never experienced it?
2. The Review & Visibility Issue
Look at traditional publishing: Harry Potter, Reacher, Twilight—they make millions. The quality of writing in IF (like Fallen Hero—shoutout to Malin, whose level I am desperately trying to reach!) is absolutely on par with mainstream bestsellers.
But traditional books have huge PR machines and author blurbs (I once picked up a Marcus Sakey book just because Lee Child praised it on the back cover). In IF, we rely on App Store reviews, which are incredibly frustrating. You get 1-star reviews from people who just didn’t understand the genre they were clicking on. Thank god for people like Kate doing real reviews, but we desperately need wider reviewing ecosystems outside of our own forums to give potential buyers the confidence to spend their money.
*(Side note: I actually spent hours talking to an AI, unpacking the exact tropes and feelings I loved in my first few IFs. It gave me tailored recommendations, and I found so many amazing hidden gems that barely get mentioned even here!)*
3. The Genre Issue
Finally, there is the genre bubble. I love the superhero and supernatural stuff (my second WIP is exactly that!), but if we want mainstream readers, we need mainstream genres. My first WIP is actually about a young lad wanting to be a footballer. I wrote it thinking it could bring in readers who don’t necessarily read sci-fi or fantasy. But the paradox is that the current target market is everyone on this forum. So it’s a huge risk to write outside the established meta when you’ve spent 10,000,000 years coding and writing your passion project.
Fundamentally, the quality is here. We just need the publishing world’s marketing tactics to catch up to what we’re creating. Does anyone else feel like we need a push for more “mainstream” genres, or better review visibility outside the stores?