Women buy more books – women read male authors more than male authors read women authors.

But in fiction, the genre I read depends on what I want at that time. Confusing? You should see the books I’m reading: a cozy mystery, a paranormal (excuse me – 2 paranormals that could be niched as romance), a nonfiction about auditory hallucinations, and a nonfiction about Gettysburg (the Battle). Oh, wait – I forgot the nonfiction about crows.

Maybe this is why I love Amazon – I can cross the aisle without moving my lazy butt.

Unfortunately – I really think the genres have appeared in the last few decades as the marketing departments of the growing publishing conglomerates began deciding what to publish – instead of editors.

This may be why there are some very good writers going the self-pubbed route or the small press route. They would love an editor – just not the marketing department – until they’re ready to…uh…market the damn book.

But JMHO

Women buy more books – women read male authors more than male authors read women authors.

But in fiction, the genre I read depends on what I want at that time. Confusing? You should see the books I’m reading: a cozy mystery, a paranormal (excuse me – 2 paranormals that could be niched as romance), a nonfiction about auditory hallucinations, and a nonfiction about Gettysburg (the Battle). Oh, wait – I forgot the nonfiction about crows.

Maybe this is why I love Amazon – I can cross the aisle without moving my lazy butt.

Unfortunately – I really think the genres have appeared in the last few decades as the marketing departments of the growing publishing conglomerates began deciding what to publish – instead of editors.

This may be way there are some very good writers going the self-pubbed route. They would love an editor – just not the marketing department – until they’re ready to…uh…market the damn book.

But JMHO

The bad news, however, is that the big time bricks and mortar book retailers force publishers to categorize titles with something called BISAC codes. A certain chain based in Ann Arbor makes life even more difficult for publishers by having their own categorization system. This makes it virtually impossible to ‘tag’ a book in the same way that Amazon’s “recommendations” feature does (though, shockingly, many of Amazon’s tie-ins are paid for as well) and why it’s hard to cross-pollinate categories within the physical store.

And that, in turn, is why (notwithstanding the fact that I love browsing bookstores) the web is really the only place I look for books these days.

My writers’ group has six members, three of whom are multi-published genre fiction writers, and they fret constantly over the niche-ifying of their books. Two of them have branched into other genres, but had some difficulty getting those manuscripts accepted. The most frequent reason given by editors for rejection: “We love the book, but we can’t figure out how to market it.” (Another reason, hinted at but not expressed by some rejecting editors, was doubted that the authors could really “write” properly in the new genres.)

Eventually my friends found publishers willing to take a chance on them in the different genres, fortunately for my friends’ careers and for the reading public (who otherwise would have missed some great books).

Nevertheless, circumventing the limitations of genre-niching remains a frequent topic of discussion at our weekly meetings. One author who started out writing historical romance took a male-sounding pseudonym for her historical mysteries, and yet another masculine name for her espionage thrillers. That’s because statistics showed that many men simply will not buy books written by female authors (although women authors have no issues with buying books written by male authors).

(FYI, I’ve been reading the Booksquare blog for around three years. I don’t recall how I came across it–probably a link on a webpage or another blog–but Booksquare is the first blog that caught my interest enough for me to read it regularly, which led eventually to my deciding to create a blog of my own. I have an RSS feed to Booksquare on my Yahoo home page now, so I won’t miss any posts.)