Why I Don't Write Niche

The aim of literature is to make people feel that life is worth living. —George Eliot

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The real question here is whether I should build my Official Account's content around my paid product.

It's true that I now have a paid product: my paid column, Life Lessons from Mao's Selected Works.

But do I need to shift my whole writing direction to revolve around the column?

To answer that, I first need to understand it fully.

What does writing niche mean? For now, it means my writing topics are basically locked in. My paid product is a column about Selected Works of Mao Zedong. If I started writing niche, I'd have to post related content in my everyday posts too, so people interested in it come across them and the column gets more exposure to its target group.

The point of writing niche is to build an environment around something that needs to make money. The content at the bottom of that environment is all the same, and the readers who arrive there basically share the same taste or value needs. The benefit is that it can lift sales of your product.

By that logic, let me think again about where I am now.

Launching a paid column is a small breakthrough on my writing path, no doubt. But does reaching it mean I should drop all my old attitudes toward writing?

What was my attitude toward writing before? Nothing special, really. I simply like to write. Writing calms my mind, and I sink into it easily and get into a flow state.

Should I overturn that attitude now? I can't.

Although I really do pour myself into writing the column posts, I can't picture all my future writing focused on one theme.

Right now, while I'm still deciding whether to write niche, the subject of my writing is actually myself. Once I decide to write niche, the subject becomes something else.

Selected Works of Mao Zedong has inexhaustible material, but it doesn't stand for the whole of me.

I started Life Lessons from Mao's Selected Works mainly for three reasons:

• I know Selected Works well
• I can write
• I happened to want to create something paid

That's how it is. What looks inevitable often contains plenty of chance, and this project started by a happy coincidence.

Now let me look at where I am from a development point of view.

I do want to make money from writing in the future, but that's for the future. What matters now is doing the present well.

I only restarted my Official Account in the fourth quarter of last year, but I've actually been writing for 10 years, since my school days.

In terms of making money, what stage am I at?

I don't know packaging and I don't know business. All I can do is write out what's in my head, and Life Lessons from Mao's Selected Works is just a part of what's in my head.

Turning it into a paid project is a small milestone in my plan to make money, and it gave me my first paying reader I don't know.

But zoom out a little: what is a project that sells for 9.9 yuan, really?

To start writing niche over something like this, turning my only Official Account into one themed around a product, would weigh on my conscience, and it isn't really logical either.

From a development point of view, what the column means to me now is more like this:

• Training my column-writing skills. Column writing is basically niche writing. You need to do several in-depth analyses and pieces on one theme and present them, and that's a skill to train. Judging by what I've written so far, there's plenty of room to improve.
• Building confidence. Launching a product and having readers willing to back it with real money does a lot for my confidence.

At bottom, this is a process of building experience. After the column's first season is done, maybe I'll do a second, third, and fourth season. Maybe not. Maybe I'll start columns on other topics I'm interested in. Anything is possible.

Because right now I have a lot of freedom in my writing. Readers who've followed me for a while probably feel it: I write about almost anything, but it's always a summary, experience, and reflection from living and doing.

Practice is my basic view of life. My friends often say I have strong follow-through. I can't deny that, but I don't find it unusual, because you can only understand something by really doing it.

Writing the column is the same. I admit that before I started, I fantasized about selling this many or that many copies. But I knew that was all based on imagination. So even now, with only 15 subscribers, I'm not a bit disappointed. If anything I think it's good. If it had sold a great many, that would be when I should worry.

I've mentioned before that I have an almost obsessive drive to go with the rules of things. It's the same with writing.

I'm trying to grasp the rules of writing, and go with them.

So on the question of whether to write niche, my answer is:

No.

Besides the rational analysis above, there are some subjective reasons too.

I always feel that writing niche would choke off too many possibilities.

I'm still young. I don't want to lose the wonderful things that might come.

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