Forum: Author Hangout

I understand and respect that, but I find it disingenuous to select your primary book category as "Action Series:Romance", since you're simply trying to shoehorn in a couple extra female readers, rather than actually trying to sell a book about romance.

In general I agree. On the other hand if romance is a primary plot element, it is appropriate.

Think of movies like RED, True Lies, Mr & Mrs Smith.

In that case, conflict is a common plot element, as is betrayal, or faith in humanity. SO why not have "betrayal:history" as a genre, or "conflict:romance"?

Because betrayal and conflict are not considered stand alone genres.

All I'm asking is: why must every genre be redefined as a romance, if it's already present in virtually every book already.

1. It does exist as a standalone genre.

2. Romance, (or anything else) being present in a book as a minor plot or background element is not the same as it being a major plot element.

3. I don't consider it a redefinition of other genres. Rather it is a recognition that stories/books can fit into more than one genre.

However, unlike the other threads, this is a minor nit. It disturbs me that so many people are mislabeling their stories

I don't consider it a minor nit, I agree with you that mislabeling stories is a significant problem.

Apparently, no one else cares.

I care.

My only disagreement with you is where you seem to be suggesting that a story can/must fit into one and only one genre.

I think there are two major drivers which are increasing the prominence of books not specifically written as romances to the point that the books are being labeled as dual genre.

1. An increasing willingness to recognize that teens and even pre-teens are sexually aware.

2. The aging of the population. The average age of the US population has been increasing for decades, due to a combination of increasing life spans and decreasing birth rates. This means that for publishers to be profitable, more books must be targeted to adults, which means more books directly dealing with adult themes.

Another minor nit: I don't think "Romance" is, by itself, and "adult theme",

True, but many romances targeted to adults get into at least some sexual content (even if not all that graphic) which for better or worse is considered an adult theme.

After all, just how many women are writing Romance novels focused on sci-fi, who can't file catalogue it as either "Romance", "Sci-fi", or both?

If a story has both sci-fi and romance, why would you ever not categorize it as both. After all, the dual categorization yields a larger potential reader base than either single genre.

Okay, that's a bad example. How about this one, why do few book publishing sites accept "Paranormal" as a genre, yet they're now accepting "Romance:Paranormal"? That seems misguided, as if only women are interested/qualified to write paranormal stories.

This one I can also field. I read a lot in this category. As you note there is no general paranormal genre. This has developed as a sub-genre of romance. Generally these are romance stories involving characters that are "supernatural" creatures vampires, werecreatures, ghosts in a very specifically modern setting. This sub-genre of romance is hugely popular, which is probably why it rates a sub-genre

Non-romance paranormal stories get lumped in as either Fantasy or Sci-Fi, I don't know why.

By the way, the majority of genre fields, defined by some publishing group, are dedicated to non-fiction genres, with only a small handful (from a dozen to several dozen depending on who you publish with) being available for fiction. Adding dozens for Romance seems backwards, instead of simply creating more categories for everyone.

Agreed, I have no idea why they would do that and not simply add a bunch of independent genres and let authors pick more than one.

Perhaps, there is simply so much more being published as romance, that the publishers feel that they need to sub-divide it more than other genres.

That's yet another pet peeve of mine, that the "Paranormal" has been reinterpreted. Instead of meaning, 'extra-sensory' or 'otherworldly', it's been twisted to cater to this one particular market (handsome, young vampires, zombies and werewolves), which used to be categorized as "horror", but which no longer applies to these overly romanticized figures. Instead of creating an entirely new category (like YA), they adopted an accepted term which hadn't been used as a genre category yet--preempting it's more general adoption.

Well first the paranormal romance, isn't just romanticized horror figures. It also encompasses traditional paranormal characters such as ghosts, fantasy/high fantasy characters such as elves and faeries, again moved into a modern setting.

Perhaps they should have chosen a different term. Though short of coining a new word just for that purpose, I am not sure what they could have used that would have evoked the fantasy/supernatural elements and a modern setting.

The traditional paranormal story doesn't have the backing of the entire "Young-Adult"

Paranormal Romance is not targeted at young adults. All of the paranormal romance I read is very sexual and very graphic.

That leaves all of us who've been writing about mind-control, telepathy or other abilities out in the cold.

The traditional publishers were stuffing those kinds of stories into either Sci-Fi or Fantasy even before paranormal romance took off.

If the category is a second or third genre category, or if "romance" is added to the SEO listing (as a "search option"), I don't object to it, only the false marketing of material which aren't actually romance as "Romance books".

It has to be marketing. Observe the book displays at local stores where the distributor (wholesaler) stocks the shelves as well as supplying the merchandise. The display starts out well balanced in the basic genres. But over a period of time that balance disappears with the majority of the stock becoming the so-called "Romance" groups. There is a reason for that however, publishing houses/companies give a much better sales percentage for that category to the wholesaler. And as I found out years ago, if the book does not sale or get returned within a certain time frame the store bought it regardless (or as one bookstore owner put it the store "Ate it"). Of course that supplier will primarily stock the store with what gives him/her the biggest paycheck.