Probably the last thing we think about when noodling over the details of our novels is the market. Yet, that’s probably the most important element if you want to get published. You can have beautiful prose, words that sing, metaphors that send shivers down an editors spine, but if your book doesn’t have an audience, it will die in the marketing meeting and never see the light of day.

Who will buy this book? the money crunchers want to know. If the editor can say 10 million women who are interested in red widgets–you have a winner.

So why not plan a plot that takes into consideration red widgets? Your main character can manufacture them, sell them in a fancy shop on Pike Street in Seattle, or be out to destroy the inventor. It’s impossible to wedge that sort of plot material after the fact, but it can liven up a novel during the planning stage.

If you do, you might have a winner.

Share with us how you’ve worked a market into your novel.