In product driven market places, like publishing, the breakaway successes are category “definers” not category “conformers.” Once the category has been defined, all of the experts come along to make you conform to one of the successful categories.
This is dangerous. You will never transcend or duplicate the success of a category definer with a category conformer approach. But, every expert has every reason (it is in the numbers) to tame, constrain, and shape your work so that it can conform to the category that has now proven successful.
Here is the irony: Had the breakaway success been shaped in the same way it would have never become a breakaway success. The artist must ask himself/herself, “Shall I imitate the imitation, or shall I imitate the radical genius that defied all imitation before he inspired the imitation after?”
