by Anne R. Allen
Unless you’ve chosen to write in a specific genre from the get-go — and you’ve purposely written Romance, Mystery, Sci-Fi, etc, one of the toughest jobs for a new writer is figuring out how to categorize your book.
I spent years querying an uncategorized book, and many of my books don’t fit into neat categories, so I know the problem personally.
It turns out there really isn’t a really a category called “general fiction” anymore.
We keep saying stuff like:
“But I write for everybody. Can’t I just call it ‘fiction’?”
“I just write what I like.”
“It’s like On the Road meets The Great Gatsby, with space aliens.”
Thing is, whether you’re aiming to traditionally publish or go indie, you gotta have a genre. In traditional publishing, agents need to know what publishers and editors might be interested in your book.
They are not going to say:
“This publisher specializes in DYI repair manuals, but this is a work of staggering genius, so I’ll send it to them anyway.”
“Thanks for saying your book has cross-genre potential. I’ll send it to every publisher I know.”
That stuff doesn’t happen. In fact, former agent Nathan Bransford had a post this week about why you shouldn’t mention crossover potential in a query.
If you indie publish, it’s even more important to know your genre. As author Sarina B. said on Substack this week, “Self-publishing is not for every book. It works well when the genre has a built-in readership who already knows what it wants. For example, mystery lovers know how to shop for a mystery. They know how to spot one, and they usually don’t need an NPR interview with the author to entice them.”
Publishing is a Business
Once you’re trying to get published, you’re not in school anymore. Nobody’s giving out gold stars.
Publishing is a business, and has to follow a strict set of rules. A merchant can’t sell pet food in a jewelry store, or market a summer sandal on the shelves of a Home Depot, even though it comes in a to-die-for leopard print.
So we have to figure out if our book is a can of chicken bits in gravy or a strappy leopard-print sandal.
Even though it may seem it’s not really like either one. We need to find the closest existing genre.
Part of the problem is that we often start writing in an academic setting. Our teachers tell us to “write what you know” and “just be honest” and “write what you like to read.” And a lot of what we’ve read is probably classic literature we studied in school. After all, they keep telling us to read classic literature to learn how to write.
So we write as if we had a 19th or 20th century audience, instead of the fragmented audience of the 21st century. And we end up genre-less. ☹
Genres are Constantly Fragmenting
Not only do we need to know what genre we’re writing in these days, but in a number of genres, you need to know the subcategory and what trope you’re using. In the Romance section of Amazon, you’ll find Romantic Suspense, Romantic Comedy, Historical Romance, Domestic Suspense, etc. Then a lot of Romances have subtitles indicating the subcategory: Enemies to Lovers, Billionaire, Second Chance at Love, Fake Dating, Forced Marriage, etc.
Here are some of the titles of top selling Romances on Amazon right now:
- All the Way Out: A Billionaire, Enemies-to-Lovers Romance
- The Girl Who Survived: A Riveting Novel of Suspense with a Shocking Twist
- The Girl Who Was Taken: A Gripping Psychological Thriller
- Bring Me Back: A Dream-Come-True, Late-in-Life Romance
- The Second Life of Mirielle West: A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs
- Loveswept Shores: An Enemies to Lovers, Fake Marriage, and Back to Enemies Because He Never Puts Down the Toilet Seat So She Marries the Plumber Romance.
Okay, I made up that last one, but you can see how specific categories have become. Readers obviously like to know up front exactly what kind of plot a book has.
So How Do You Figure Out Your Genre?
It’s not easy, especially since genres are so fragmented in today’s book market. And new genres are being invented all the time. Romantasy, anyone?
It helps to look at the “comps”: the comparable books that are currently on the shelves. (Don’t compare your work to the classics. Comps need to be books that publishers are putting out now — or at least in the past 10 years.)
Have a coming-of-age novel? Maybe set in a swampy part of the American South? Then look at something like Where the Crawdads Sing, and don’t just look for that book’s categories, but also the “also-boughts.” Those are the books Amazon puts in the same genre and subgenre.
And some writers are saying, “Wait! A lot of those books are literary fiction. Do I call my book literary fiction? Isn’t that the kiss of death?”
Not really. You can compare it to “literary coming-of-age-books like Where the Crawdads Sing.”
“No!” The writer stomps her little foot. “I thought Crawdads was a terrible book. I don’t want to compare my opus to that.”
Too bad. Your query or product description is not about flaunting your chops as a literary critic. It’s about telling publishers where to put your book on a shelf. Are you sure you don’t want your work to be next to a book that was at the top of the NYT bestseller list for 2 years?
Remember what I said about publishing being a business? You’re not in school anymore. This is about thinking like a businessperson.
Genre Can Be Fluid
If you started your book while taking a college creative writing course, you’ve probably been taught to write literary fiction. So go ahead and call it literary fiction. “Literary” used to mean plotless, murky, MFA experiments full of flowery prose, but thanks to Amazon, that’s changed.
As with the case of Crawdads, “literary” isn’t a value judgement. It’s about who your audience is.
If an agent loves it, they may decide to sell it as a different genre altogether. That happened to Catherine Ryan Hyde with Pay It Forward. She wrote it as a pretty intellectual adult novel. But YA was exploding at the time, so her agent and publisher sold it as a book for children.
And it worked. Pay It Forward was a huge bestseller and became a major motion picture. Would that have happened if it hadn’t been mislabeled? Nobody knows. But many years later, Catherine wrote a special version of the book actually aimed at kids, leaving out the more adult aspects of the story.
But with her third (kind of literary) book, Electric God, the publisher tried to sell it as “Christian fiction,” which it was not, and the book failed to earn out its advance.
Catherine was lucky enough to find a new home with Lake Union, an imprint owned by Amazon, and her books are proudly advertised as “Literary Fiction” on her buy page. It hasn’t hurt her sales one bit.
These Days, Subcategory is as Important as Genre.
A lot of today’s bookselling happens on Amazon, so Amazon categories may be more important than traditional genres.
If your book is set in the American West and has guns and horses and guys wearing cowboy hats, you probably want to call it a Western. But go to Amazon and find similar books, and you may want to call it a “Coming-of-Age Historical Western,” and if there’s a lot of romantic goings-on and a happy ending, then by all means, call it a Western Romance. (Those sell much better than traditional westerns.)
If your book is a thriller, it helps a lot to pinpoint what kind of thriller it is. Domestic Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Spy Thriller, Romantic Suspense Thriller, Military Thriller, Action Thriller, etc.
And of course, a Mystery can be a Cozy Mystery, Cozy Witch Mystery, Pet Mystery, Hardboiled Mystery, Noir Mystery, etc.
And don’t even ask me about the difference between Romantic Fantasy and Romantasy, and Urban Fantasy and Vampire Fiction. (BTW, Vampire saga Twilight is #1 in Young Adult Family Issues fiction at the moment. Yes. Family Issues.)
And Sci-fi has just as many branches and subcategories.
So, again, the best way to see what categories people are looking for right now is to go to Amazon and browse away.
Once you’ve done some browsing, buy a book or two or three (or buy them from your local independent book store.) Reading books that are selling right now that are similar to yours will not only help you categorize your book, but also give you some pointers about what your potential audience wants to read.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) May 19, 2024
What about you, scriveners? Did you have trouble categorizing your books? Do you prefer reading books with the genre, category, and trope in the title so you know what to expect? Do you miss general fiction?
BOOK OF THE WEEK
THE LADY OF THE LAKEWOOD DINER
A riveting, kind-of-literary, rock-and-roll mystery and later-in-life romantic comedy set in Maine.
(My publisher calls it a mystery.)
Someone has shot aging bad-girl rocker Morgan Le Fay and threatens to finish the job. Is it fans of her legendary dead rock-god husband, Merlin? Or is the secret buried in her childhood hometown of Avalon, Maine?
Morgan’s childhood best friend Dodie, the no-nonsense owner of a dilapidated diner, may be the only one who knows the dark secret that can save Morgan’s life. And both women may find that love really is better the second time around.
It’s a comedy that pokes fun at the myth of a Golden Age, making parallels between the Grail legend and the self-mythologizing of the Baby Boomer Generation.
“A page turning, easily readable, arrestingly honest novel which will keep you laughing at yourself. Who doesn’t remember crashing on a mattress at a friend’s apartment with the stereo blasting Iron Butterfly and no idea where you’ll stay the next night? A cultural masterpiece for the discerning reader.“…Kathleen Keena, author of Adolescent Depression, Outside/In
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I agree, Anne, that comparing your writing with other books similar to yours is an excellent approach.
However, making the decision more difficult is the appearance of new genres such as romantasy. Your choice might be rock solid today, but what about when you finish your book? If you take several years to write it (like Diana Gabaldon with novels in the Outlander series), you might be better off to select a different genre when you finally publish.
Kathy–That’s why I say genres are fluid. Your book may be Romantasy today, but by the time you get an agent, she may call it something else. Then the publisher will put it in a different category entirely. And those genres are constantly fragmenting. “Werewolf Romance” may break into “Shapeshifter Romance and Paranormal Later-in-Life Romance” or whatever.
This is food for thought when relaunching a book. If your book has failed to find its audience, change the blurb, the cover, and give some thought to the genre/sub/genre and categories it is in. Repositioning it as a different genre could make a big difference.
Carmen–You’re so right. With all these new categories emerging, your book may fit neatly into a new genre like Romantasy. It might make all the difference in sales.
Hey Anne — Great stuff, as usual. My last few novel-length manuscripts definitely fall in the contemporary teen category. That part’s easy. The comps are the challenge for me. I read at least a book a week (almost all teen), but that doesn’t even touch all the books coming out, & I’m not very comfortable using something I haven’t read as a comp. Gotta love this industry!
CS–Yes. We need to read, read, read. We also need to know what’s trending on Book Tok, even though being on the platform seems like more trouble than it’s worth. But checking the bestsellers on Amazon can help.
Growing up among non-readers I always thought „literary“ was just another genre – for mostly boring books that didn‘t fit anywhere else. Imagine my surprise when I learned that some people consider „genre fiction“ to be inferior!
I wholeheartedly embrace genres and subgenres as guidelines on what to expect from a book or what to put into it. I find it a little sad that surprises in books have become sort of a no-no, but having been surprised by spaceships in the middle of a book once I kinda get it.
The subgenre-craziness seems to be a mostly English-speaking-countries-thing, though. At least, I find myself frustrated browsing German Amazon looking for books like mine. I write mostly Urban Fantasy but there‘s no German word for this category so books get cramped into Paranormal and Vampire Stories. Not helpful when you‘re looking for werewolves. Found those under Dunkle Spannung (Dark Suspense) once, where I would never have looked.
„ Publishing is a business, and has to follow a strict set of rules“ was the most enlightening realization for me. To me at least, that makes it far less ominous than the cloudy Mount Olymp I always thought of before.
Thank you for another interesting post!
Tina–When I first worked in a bookstore in the 1970s, we were always arguing over whether to put books in a “pulp” genre, like Romance or Mystery, or the exalted shelves labeled “literary.” “Literary” meant something you might study in school. I remember getting yelled at when I put Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness in Romance instead of Literature. Of course, now it would go on an LGTBQ+ shelf, or “Women’s Studies.” There is a strict set of rules, but those rules are subject to change.
I love the phrase “Dunkle Spannung.” Sounds much more fun than “Dark Suspense.” But I wouldn’t have looked for werewolves there.
“You’re not in school anymore” – oh lovely observation, Anne! Yes, book selling is a business, and so many new writers don’t want it to be that. They want it to be a benevolent society for the nurturing of new writers, and alas, it isn’t that. Sometimes I wish it were. I had to learn that if you want to last as a writer, you have to move with the market. I’ve done that a few times, as new subgenres take hold.
Melodie–I hated learning that lesson. I was so sure my classical education and clever use of language would get me an agent and rocket me to bestsellerdom. Haha. There are no gold stars in publishing. Just sales or no sales. And you make more sales if you read the bestsellers. You have to keep up with the market. Like any other business.
Great information, Anne. I’m lucky that I write mystery, but you’re right about the subgenres. Lots of them.
While I was writing my first novel, I was reading a mystery by Hank Phillippi Ryan. She had a huge influence on my writing, and I even outlined her book to get a feeling for the flow of the story. I recommend that method to first-time authors.
Kay–That is a great idea! Find a writer in your genre that you love and outline one of their books. Better than most creative writing courses.
Anne and Kay,
Since I’m a pantser, I have never approached plotting a novel, but this idea of outlining an existing novel to understand its structure is invaluable.
I’m saving it to share with the senior writing group I help facilitate. (We’re at the end of our season, so this would be a great topic for one of our monthly “writing chats” next season. Would a post here about Kay’s technique and your critique of it be possible, perhaps a transcript of an interview or podcast?
Brass Castle–Kay’s idea is great. But she said she used Hank Philippi Ryan’s books, and we’d have to get Hank’s permission, and permission from her publisher, so that could be a hassle. Maybe Kay would like to do a classic for us sometime. (I don’t do podcasts–way too much tech for this old brain.)
I didn’t even know space opera was a thing until my publisher placed my first book in that category. So it does help to know the sub categories.
Alex–SciFi does have very strict categories. And then there’s Speculative Fiction, which is sometimes in Sci-Fi and sometimes not. Writers often don’t have a clue which flavor of scifi they’re writing.
Great advice, Anne. Being able to comp your books makes all the difference. Sub-categories can be trickier. I just bought Publisher Rocket to help find sub-categories that aren’t flooded with millions of books.
Sue–I think Publisher Rocket can help a lot with sub-categories. Finding one that isn’t saturated is hard on our own.
Thanks for this great share and diving in to category dilemmas. And so right, before Amazon came along, there were categories and ‘sub’ categories then were known as niches. 🙂 Categories matter. 🙂
Debby–Amazon has changed the market in so many ways. I worked in bookstores for years, and categorization was often up to the individual bookstore worker. Now, with Amazon providing millions of titles, categories need to be much more precise. This can be good and bad. It’s hard for an author who writes for a “general” audience, but doing the research helps.
I’m with you on all counts – especially the days when bookstore humans catergorized books. 🙂