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

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 But my *thoughts* on romance genre may be outdated as I rarely have read them unless there is some sort of genre element.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