What do you like to read? Have you ever thought about the genres that books come in?
Recently, the library in Buda, Texas, which I frequent most often, has begun to rearrange their books by genre. I was startled to find this, because, as an editor of many books, I find that a lot of modern books are not written to a ‘formula’ and do not fit in a single genre.
Genres:
When we started out, Gypsy Shadow Publishing created a unique set of genres with definitions for each one. As we enter our 7th year of life as a company, I am again struck with the need to find out what the readers want!
Gypsy Shadow’s 12 Genres
Click through and see our books!
I love to read and I love to work with writers on their books. However, without readers, writers don’t get the feedback they desire and the books, ideas, thoughts, information and emotions remain ‘on the shelf’ undiscovered and undiscussed.
The Challenge
My mother is also a voracious reader and pointed out a flaw in the genre sorting at our library. One of the authors she reads creates a lot of romance books. The book that Mother selected and brought home turned out to be a dramatic and traumatic story based in Europe in World War II, it was not a romance novel by any stretch of the imagination. It was placed in romances because of the author’s name.
Yep, that would be a flaw. And at Gypsy Shadow Publishing, our authors are not restricted to any particular genre at all! Therefore, when you click through the genres on our sites, you will find the books in a number of different genres.
What do you think? Are the ten standard genres sufficient? Most distributors allow us to select up to 3 for each book. Are the Gypsy Shadow genres helpful?
Have a great day and READ!
Gypsy Shadow Publishing will be celebrating its seventh year in business in September. We are primarily an eBook publisher based online, although we have almost 50 books in print! Please drop by and check out our more than 250 eBooks by almost 100 authors. (Including the owners of the company!
Denise Bartlett is Gypsy Shadow Publishing’s Chief Editor and acquisitions editor. She delights in working with established authors to tighten up their manuscripts and their messages and in working with brand new authors to bring their dream of being a published author to fruition. Visit her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/DeniseBartlett.ChiefEditorGSP/
Steven R. Southard says
August 7, 2016 at 6:36 amGreat post, Denise! Traditionally, libraries arranged non-fiction books by topic, and fiction books by author’s last name. That’s fine if you find a favorite author and want to read everything that author wrote. Not so fine if you want to find out what similar books are being written by others. The genre method helps to solve that problem, but it (like all filing or organizing systems) breaks down at the boundaries. I call it the ‘duck-billed platypus’ problem; do you file it under Birds or Mammals? Your solution at GSP is good for ebooks–you file genre-straddling books under all genres that apply. It’s more of a problem at a library that purchases a single copy of a book and must file that one copy in only one place.
Denise Bartlett says
August 7, 2016 at 11:24 amHey Steven,
Good point about the platypus. I believe the move to Indie publishers and our resultant publishing what we like, has caused a shift to genre-straddling.
I believe a good example of this would be your recent story “Ripper’s Ring”
At first blush, as a member of the “What Man Hath Wrought” series, it could be placed in horror, since it brings Jack the Ripper to mind immediately. But as I contemplate it, it is also science fiction, since it involves time travel and even fantasy, since the ring is magical. Ripper’s Ring on Amazon
Your excellent blog entry on Jack the Ripper makes it clear that the book could be called Historical Fiction and Crime Fiction. http://stevenrsouthard.com/jack-the-ripper/
Curiouser and Curiouser, as Alice cried.
Thanks for stopping by!