In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

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In deciding on themes or central concepts for anthologies, have you ever had an idea that you really loved but set aside because you felt it was too “niche” to be successful? How do you decide what topics are more marketable versus which ones might just appeal to too narrow an audience to be worth the effort?

Oh, I’ve definitely come up with ideas that I would love to do but they seemed too niche. Could be that Kickstarter will pave the way for that since you can sort of test the waters to see if it’s worth doing. If it IS too niche it probably won’t fund, and there you go.

As for how I decide, I mostly just study the market and talk to my agent about it. It’s more of a going with your gut sort of thing, though there is some studying of sales numbers and trends.

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From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!