That is true. Often they will classify a story as something close for a number of reasons, and ‘sales sizzle’ is one. I think the only genre one really has to be careful about is romance. If there is no HEA (Happily Ever After) which, as I mentioned, has broadened in recent years to at least an HFN (Happy For Now) readers will penalize the book/author.

With thriller/suspense, most writers don’t know the formal definitions, so a lot of readers don’t either and are pretty lenient on classification. Sometimes a book might not be selling too hot classified one way, so they modify the category. Or a legacy publisher might be full up on their ‘docket’ for thrillers but find a crazy good thriller they WANT, so they fudge classification. Since these genres are close kissing cousins there is a lot more leeway.

Horror, is a good example. It used to have it’s own section in the bookstore. Then the slasher movies of the 70s and from that point on gave horror a really BAD reputation. What most people don’t realize is horror is probably the closest genre to literary. Some of the finest literature of the 18th, 19th and 20th century was actually horror (Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe). After the slasher flicks around the time of the Vietnam War, horror was considered base (which is very far from the truth).

So authors like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, etc. were suddenly slated under suspense, general fiction, science fiction, and speculative fiction to distance from the ‘bad reputation’ that horror suddenly had.

Thank you Matt and wonderful to meet you!

No dragons, though. I don’t like dragons.

Thanks for blog post. Added you to my feed.

Literary is usually cast into ‘General Fiction’ then other categories narrow to specificity. Like ‘Joy Luck Club’ is listed as Literature & Fiction, Women’s Fiction, and Asian American Fiction. My advice would be to look at a book similar to yours and see what categories they’re using to add specificity.