Sandra Cisneros and I were good friends in graduate school and now and then since, so I have some perspective on her career and can offer a couple suggestions about how to follow her path to fame and prosperity:

Find your distinctive voice. Sandra began as a poet. Her first book, House on Mango Street, which I suspect may still be the most popular, is a collection of stories in some cases so brief you wouldn't go far afield calling them prose poems. And they all come from a voice at once both wise and youthful. 

Seek out your niche and build from there. Arte Publico, a small publisher from Texas, originally published House on Mango Street. I suspect they promoted the book to college Chicano Studies professors and to high schools in areas with a substantial Latino population, because in those venues it gradually became not only a hit but a staple. 

Here's a link to an article about the future of publishing that advocates publishers would be wise to dedicate themselves to finding niche markets. publishers, but I suspect it relates to authors as well. I'll give a snippet from it:

"A stark illustration of this hit my radar screen last month.  A major agent told me that he sold a Mind, Body, Spirit author’s book to Random House, which sold 12,000 copies.  He sold the next book by the same author to niche publisher Hay House, which sold 200,000 copies! And Hay House, with over a million email addresses of people all interested in the same type of book, probably spent less on marketing to sell eight times as many."

Sure, finding a distinctive voice and a marketable niche probably won't be easy. The voice has to come from your unique personality, or you won't be able to sustain it. 

The niche? Well, I've been wrestling with this question for a spell, and the best niche I can imagine for my books is that they are most liable to appeal to former English majors with History minors (or vice versa) who appreciate somewhat gritty detective fiction and aren't offended by Christian characters who may be either heroic or despicable. 

If can identify a niche market for your work but doubt reaching it will allow you to support yourself and family with your books, take a look at some of the magazines that appear to thrive. I'd bet if your book sold to one out of every ten people who read English and put ketchup on broccoli, you could pay off the credit cards and buy rental property.

Now the question becomes, how to reach our target audience?

Until I find the answer, I'll leave that issue to marketing pros and move on to describing other paths to literary success, next time. So I'll remind you to subscribe.