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Chain Mail 3: Book View Cafe | AMAZING STORIES
Here's my answer:
I’m going to sound like a gangster and respond, “Who’s asking?” If the reader is asking, what they really want to know is how to find good (or great!) books. The genre distinctions offer the illusion of making that search easier, but what happens is that large numbers of books that the reader would adore then become invisible. True, some readers want only one particular kind of reading experience (Big Ideas! Slice-of-Life! Happily-Ever-After!), and they want some way of sorting out their preferred genre from all the others out there. Hence, the separation of genres on bookstore shelves.
If who’s asking is an author, then the implied question is how can a book be positioned or marketed for maximum success? In this age of 25-words-or-less blurbs and elevator pitches, how can I reach the readers who will love my book? Easy labels, snappy slogans, and pigeonholes “R Us.”
If the question comes from a librarian – pause for a moment while said librarian tears out her or his hair – it’s a bit more complicated because afore-mentioned nearly-bald librarian must simultaneously play match-maker between reader and book, and discern the proper placement of the book within the larger body of works-of-words. Please note that the Library of Congress does not distinguish between science fiction and literary fiction. It’s all fiction. Such a boon this is to those of us who read widely across genres – we can actually find all the works by a given fiction author in the same place, under the same call number. (Not so most public libraries, which shelve science fiction or mysteries separately, although I once found Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books under “Historical Fiction.”) Then, of course, we authors get pressured into using different names for different genres, with the result that unless some astute librarian realizes we are really the same people, our work ends up scattered-by-pseudonym, rather than scattered-by-genre.
Here's my answer:
I’m going to sound like a gangster and respond, “Who’s asking?” If the reader is asking, what they really want to know is how to find good (or great!) books. The genre distinctions offer the illusion of making that search easier, but what happens is that large numbers of books that the reader would adore then become invisible. True, some readers want only one particular kind of reading experience (Big Ideas! Slice-of-Life! Happily-Ever-After!), and they want some way of sorting out their preferred genre from all the others out there. Hence, the separation of genres on bookstore shelves.
If who’s asking is an author, then the implied question is how can a book be positioned or marketed for maximum success? In this age of 25-words-or-less blurbs and elevator pitches, how can I reach the readers who will love my book? Easy labels, snappy slogans, and pigeonholes “R Us.”
If the question comes from a librarian – pause for a moment while said librarian tears out her or his hair – it’s a bit more complicated because afore-mentioned nearly-bald librarian must simultaneously play match-maker between reader and book, and discern the proper placement of the book within the larger body of works-of-words. Please note that the Library of Congress does not distinguish between science fiction and literary fiction. It’s all fiction. Such a boon this is to those of us who read widely across genres – we can actually find all the works by a given fiction author in the same place, under the same call number. (Not so most public libraries, which shelve science fiction or mysteries separately, although I once found Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books under “Historical Fiction.”) Then, of course, we authors get pressured into using different names for different genres, with the result that unless some astute librarian realizes we are really the same people, our work ends up scattered-by-pseudonym, rather than scattered-by-genre.
