Genre

[alg]

Genre as a marketing category!
Publishers and editors do not think about genre the same way authors do. Here's an explanation.



... Now I write an ode to spinach:

spinach,
you
are green
and
i wish i had more
of you than
what I ate
(yum yum yum)
at five in the morning,
dawn
creeping
up
you are
(my sunshine and)
the perfect delivery method
for salt and
garlic.

Comments

confusing

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

I wrote a hard sci-fi. When I sent it to my little circle - I kept being told it was very romantic and oh, la, la... sexy.

So I pitch it as a SF Romance now (which everyone is interested in - so yeah!), but I still always think of it as hard sci-fi, I almost feel like I'm perpetrating a fraud.

I keep wondering if SF readers will be more tolerant of the sex (yeah, romance, whatever...) or if Romance readers will be more tolerant of the science...

Would you ever *leave out* genre info, (in talking about a book) just because you think it will confuse the issue?

Thanks!

JD

PS - Spinach, yum...

Re: confusing

[alg.livejournal.com]

Once the book is being sold to B&N, etc., we can't leave out the genre info. In fact, before we buy the book, we have to decide what the genre is, because we need to put it on the schedule, and our schedule gets sorted by SF, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, etc.

There are three questions you need answers to:

1. Did you really write a hard SF novel?

2. Who are the people telling you that it is romantic? Are they romance readers, or SF readers? Do you know any hard SF readers who are willing to read your book and tell you what they think?

3. Do you care? If you send your hard SF novel to an editor who wants to shelve it in romance, and everyone who reads it thinks it's a romance, and the editor is convinced it will do well as a romance... do you *really* care that it is not shelved in the SF section?

Re: confusing

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I didn't mean leave out completely - I just meant if there are different genre elements... leaving out mention of that element.

1. Yes - it has actual science in it. Space Elevators, Quantom Processors, a molecule that can be turned into any other molecule, flying cars...

2. Some of the readers are hard, some are fant/sf readers, some are romance (They made me read Gabaldon - damn them!)

3. Hummm, I do care. Not enough to be a deal breaker, but I do care. And I think it wouldn't make a good romance offering because it would be too *hard* (in both ways). But my *thoughts* on romance genre may be outdated as I rarely have read them unless there is some sort of genre element.

JD

Re: confusing

[alg.livejournal.com]

Yes, we often leave the myriad subgenres out when discussing books. It's much easier on the sales force and the booksellers if we tell them, "This is a romance novel set in the future," than if we tell them, "This book has a mystery plot and a huge romance plot, and is set in the future, and has a lot of sf elements."

Re: confusing

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

JD

Re: confusing

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I keep wondering if SF readers will be more tolerant of the sex (yeah, romance, whatever...) or if Romance readers will be more tolerant of the science...

A little of both. I have cross-over fans from Romance, although some would have preferred to see the relationships more in the foreground. But, that wasn't the story I was writing, so there we have an example of expectations running up against the reality.

Some SF readers have complained about the distraction of the relationships, but not too many.

I have heard that Romance readers are more willing to cross over into other genres than other genre readers are to cross into Romance, so if you have a book that's primarily SF, it may be a good idea to sell it as that, because the Romance readers will find it anyway and not necessarily the other way around.

All that being said, I felt funny pitching my books to Romance readers, even though I was advised to do so since they did receive some buzz from that quarter. And if I had it to do all over again, I would still pitch my books as adventure/espionage with hard medical detail, because I don't think the relationships stand out enough to qualify as even borderline Romance.

And if I sound confused about all this, it's because I am.

I should introduce myself, I think. Sent over this way by jaylake and others.

Re: confusing

[alg.livejournal.com]

Hi, welcome!

Romance readers will, in fact, leave the romance section of the bookstore. Other readers will too, but romance readers do it the most.

It is a confusing thing -- it's all confusing. Genre is mostly fluid -- readers will read what they like, usually, regardless of where the bookstore puts it. On the other hand, if the bookstore doesn't put the book the book's audience is looking, not too many people are going to go out of their way searching.