There are times I feel a bit like a dinosaur, wondering what all these furry little bastards running around underfoot are up to, and where’d all the food go.

I’m not speaking about life in general; I’m doing okay at keeping up with the world, even if I still don’t have a smartphone or iPad.  I’m talking about writing for a living.

For about thirty years, I thought I had a handle on it.  I wrote novels, and publishers in New York bought them and paid me reasonable advances, and everything went pretty smoothly.  There were a few disappointments along the way, when a story I wanted to tell didn’t sell, or a series got dropped, or whatever, but I made a living at it, and was generally pretty happy with my situation.  I made adjustments to suit the market, but wrote more or less what I wanted to write.  I did some experimenting now and then, but my bread and butter was always the fantasy novel.  I spent fifteen years writing primarily for Del Rey Books, then switched to Tor for the next fifteen or so.

Then a couple of years ago, Tor declined to make an offer on the third and fourth books in the “Fall of the Sorcerers” series.  No big deal, I thought; I’ll just switch to another publisher again.

Except so far, other publishers don’t seem to be interested.  I keep hearing about all the wonderful new ways to get rich as a writer — paranormal romances, steampunk, urban fantasy, straight-to-ebook self-publishing, etc. — and can’t see how to make them work for me.

I don’t think it’s just me, either.  I seem to remember that back in the 20th century, the annual summaries in Locus would report about 1,400 new titles being published annually in SF, fantasy, and horror; well, for 2010 they reported 508.  (They don’t count small press or self-published titles.)  The book market seems to have undergone a massive contraction — not necessarily in total sales, but in number of titles in the genre.

So these things happen.  I’m not going to try to keep the buggy-whip factory running when everyone’s driving Fords.  My wife’s grandfather was trained as a blacksmith, but became an auto mechanic when blacksmithing dried up; my own grandfather was a carpenter’s mate on a tea clipper, but realized that was a doomed occupation and put himself through engineering school.  One must change with the times.

But I can’t figure out what to change to.

I was told urban fantasy was a hot genre, so I wrote an urban fantasy.  It hasn’t sold — it’s too emotionally cool, I’m told, and male protagonists don’t sell unless they’re named Harry Dresden.

All these damned mammals underfoot…