“Literature precedes genre. Genre is a bookstore problem, not a
literary problem. It helps people know what section to browse, but I
don’t care about that stuff. I’m trying to stay close to language
first and foremost and make sure that the paragraphs sing, that it
sounds like music to me. What genre it falls under is only of interest
later.” – Rick Moody, author of The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions

Genre. That seemingly simply, yet deceptively devious detail which can define your book. It is how people will talk about your novel, “Oh, isn’t that chick lit?” or “Have you read that new horror book by YOUR NAME HERE.” But how much does genre really matter in the beginning? Can it make or break a query letter or potential book deal? Many authors stress over what to call their novel, is it literary fiction, women’s fiction, romance, fantasy, literary-paranormal-romantic-suspense-thriller-with-historical-sci-fi-elements – the list goes on and on. Here at Between The Lines we’re on the case. We’ve asked a couple literary agents what they think about genre classification in query letters. Here’s what they had to say about genre:

“It’s not all that important to me, although I usually encourage people to at least try and classify their work in their query. I usually encourage people to avoid getting caught up in narrowing down their genre overly specifically, but rather just try and guess which section of a bookstore their book would be stocked in. Publishers ultimately decide how a book is marketed, although usually the genre is clear from the beginning.” – Nathan Bransford, Curtis Brown, LTD

“Genre classification helps show me that an author has been researching the genre she’s writing in and understands the market. It also helps me weed through submissions to see
what I might be in the mood to read when reading submissions. However, I do think authors spend far too much time stressing over which sub-genre their book might be in.

I think authors should in fact put their manuscript into a genre. Is it a mystery, a romance, thriller, women’s fiction, etc. Agents know that this genre might change depending on the market, but targeting the right agents for your work also means knowing who the audience is. If you don’t know who the audience is for your work, meaning the genre, it’s going to be hard to find the perfect agent.

The agent will decide how it will be marketed to publishers while the publisher will decide how it will be marketed to readers.” – Jessica Faust, Bookends, LLC

With that knowledge, let’s assume you know a) what your book is about, and b) who will want to read your book (and “everybody, of course!” is not an acceptable answer). Then genre becomes a marketing issue, which you have little control over. In some extreme cases your book may be marketed to an entirely different age group.

In a recent New York Times article, “I’m YA, and I’m O.K.,” by YA author Margo Rabb, several authors spoke of finding out their “adult” novels were being published for a much younger age group. “’I assumed I was writing a book about a young person for adults,’ Peter Cameron told me about his most recent novel, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, which was published as Y.A. last year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.”

This doesn’t mean that adults won’t like the book, or won’t “get it.” At a recent panel on young adult literature, George Nicholson, senior agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, said of Cameron’s novel “there is no doubt in my mind that it was published as a YA because that was a novel that young adults would not have found otherwise.” There you have it, that move was all about exposing the book to the widest possible reader base.

Let’s move onto one of the biggest components after your book has been published: bookstores. Where are people going to find your book so they can buy it and you can see your name in the New York Times Bestseller list? Turns out, this part is pretty random and subjective. In libraries, for example, whoever catalogs the book decides where it will go and what Dewey decimal number it will have. It’s completely subjective. In large, corporate bookstores, it depends on the buyer of any particular genre. If the romance buyer likes a book, guess what shelf it ends up on? Romance. In a recent exercise we did here at TED, we looked at one book in particular, Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler, to see where the major booksellers listed it. Here are the results:

• According to WorldCat, which is a global library catalog that libraries use for cataloging purposes, Time Traveler’s Wife is either Domestic Fiction or Fantasy Fiction.

• Amazon lists is as Women’s Fiction, Romance and Fantasy

• In AgentQuery it is listed as Literary Fiction

• Both Barnes and Noble and Borders simply list it as Fiction

• The upcoming movie is categorized as Romance and Sci-Fi

So it would seem that genre is still a seemingly simple, yet deceptively slippery detail. It’s important, no doubt, but authors, we implore you, spend your time writing your next novel instead of fretting over every sub-genre your manuscript will fit into. After all, if you’ve done your job right, it should find a home in more than one genre anyways.

To read the Between the Lines guide to fiction genres, click here.