genre-hopping vs. publisher-hopping
You love books, all kinds of books, and think it would be terrific to write whatever takes your fancy. Good for you. But if you want a career in publishing--a serious career that pays real money--it is a good idea to pick a genre and stick to it. Unless you're astoundingly prolific, and can write multiple books a year (which can be spread across genres, and perhaps even pseudonyms), you would do better to concentrate on building your reputation and fan base. Readers who've loved your science fiction trilogy are less likely to follow you over to the mystery section of the bookstore than to reach automatically for your next sf release.
Agent Rachel Vater gives a good breakdown of how and why it can hurt your career to jump genres, leaving your readers (and likely your publisher) stranded.
Of course, if you're one of those people who churns out several books a year, then it's a different story. You can have your sf series going over at one imprint, with a new book every year, and your mysteries going on the side--maybe using a different name, but not necessarily. But you have to write a lot, and you have to be pretty certain you can keep up that pace.
Still other writers--prolific ones--stay within a genre but play around with subgenres. By this I mean, you'll find all their books in one section of the bookstore, but the stories themselves will vary wildly. This can be risky if you have devoted readers expecting a very specific type of book from you, but it is far from impossible. After all, plenty of readers like to read across a wide range of subjects.
matociquala has posted an explanation of how she ended up writing for several different publishers. In her case, because she was writing different sorts of stories within the overall sf/f umbrella, not all of her work was right for one specific imprint, and so it made perfect sense for her to spread it out across publishers. (It's important to note that some of her books were rejected by publishers who'd already accepted her previous work. This doesn't mean they never want anything else from her, just that the particular proposal didn't work for them.) This kind of split is common for romance writers, as well, with them dividing their work by publisher based on subgenre. For example, paranormals will be published at one house, while romantic suspense will be published elsewhere.
Some writers deliberately split their work among publishers because they're so prolific that one publisher is unlikely to release everything they produce in one year; they don't have sufficient space on their list to devote multiple slots to a single author. It becomes a numbers game.
Agent Rachel Vater gives a good breakdown of how and why it can hurt your career to jump genres, leaving your readers (and likely your publisher) stranded.
Of course, if you're one of those people who churns out several books a year, then it's a different story. You can have your sf series going over at one imprint, with a new book every year, and your mysteries going on the side--maybe using a different name, but not necessarily. But you have to write a lot, and you have to be pretty certain you can keep up that pace.
Still other writers--prolific ones--stay within a genre but play around with subgenres. By this I mean, you'll find all their books in one section of the bookstore, but the stories themselves will vary wildly. This can be risky if you have devoted readers expecting a very specific type of book from you, but it is far from impossible. After all, plenty of readers like to read across a wide range of subjects.
matociquala has posted an explanation of how she ended up writing for several different publishers. In her case, because she was writing different sorts of stories within the overall sf/f umbrella, not all of her work was right for one specific imprint, and so it made perfect sense for her to spread it out across publishers. (It's important to note that some of her books were rejected by publishers who'd already accepted her previous work. This doesn't mean they never want anything else from her, just that the particular proposal didn't work for them.) This kind of split is common for romance writers, as well, with them dividing their work by publisher based on subgenre. For example, paranormals will be published at one house, while romantic suspense will be published elsewhere.
Some writers deliberately split their work among publishers because they're so prolific that one publisher is unlikely to release everything they produce in one year; they don't have sufficient space on their list to devote multiple slots to a single author. It becomes a numbers game.