Category Archives: genre

October 01, 2012   Jane   advice, genre, Jane, opinion  
7

Typecasting – good or bad?

So last Thursday I read this interesting  piece  in The Wall Street Journal and it got me to thinking (again) about whether being slotted into a category is a good or bad thing.

I say “again” because long ago when I was the publisher of World Almanac Publications and my employer wanted to branch out into areas far from our popular reference book line, I went to the book buyers – Dalton, Walden, and Ingram – and asked them their opinion.  Every one of them opined adamantly that no matter how good these proposed books might be, they wouldn’t buy them from us.  We were the publishers of popular reference books, they said, and that is the way it was going to stay, as far as they were concerned.  Ultimately, the decision was made by my colleagues to go ahead with the new products.  Knowing what would surely happen, I left the company and became an agent, and that publishing program ultimately failed miserably.

So, what about someone like J.K. Rowling and her foray away from the Harry Potter world into the adult nonfiction category?  Notwithstanding the success of The Casual Vacancy, should she have taken this chance?  And if the book doesn’t sell up to expectations, what will that mean to her career?

Many of my talented self-published clients ask this same question.  They understandably want the ability to publish in more than one category, but the question is, always, will their readers, their fans, “follow” them?  I often find myself advising that an author should build up his/her sales in one category, become a best seller and then do whatever s/he wants.

A terrific example of this is Mitch Albom. Michael Crichton is another author who mixed it up in his bestselling novels. And what about all of the thriller writers recently who have found their way into the children’s category?

So, I am curious as to what you think.  Should an author, bestselling or not, publish in more than one category or would they be better served by “sticking to their knitting”?

June 15, 2012   Lauren   fun, genre, Lauren, opinion, reading  
5

Diversity

One of the greatest things that publishing has done for me (besides pay my rent, for which my landlord is surely grateful!) is broaden my horizons dramatically.  As the DGLM old guard will surely attest, I showed up here as a huge snob, albeit a snob without much love for the classics.  This meant, as you might imagine, there wasn’t much variety in the books that I enjoyed.  Much of the advice I received when I started here was along the lines of “Get over yourself” because of my great wiser-than-thou proclamations on what was just not good enough for me.  It’s actually a testament to his restraint that Jim has never punched me in the face, actually.  I was insufferable.

 

But more than that, I was wrong.  Holding books to a high standard is important, and I still do it, but it took me a while to recognize that books don’t all have to serve the same purpose to be worthy.  Now I’m lucky that when I found myself in Barnes & Noble yesterday, where I’d gone for a magazine but needed to buy a book to hold to my 2012 rule about not walking out of any bookstore without a new book in my bag, I felt like I had all the choices in the world.  Ultimately I was weighing my options between a book of critical cultural essays and young adult historical fiction—a debate that took me about 7 minutes of standing thoughtfully near an escalator, deciding whether to go up or down a floor.  But I could just as easily picked up a new paranormal romance or thriller, or a sports book or political polemic.  That’s the great thing about books—whatever experience you’re looking for, there’s always different book to turn to.

 

Working in publishing, particularly as an agent, I find I sometimes forget that not all readers read this way.  When selecting a book for the book club I started with friends, several people decided to bow out based on the choice, because it’s not their kind of thing.  It startled me to realize that I’m not the kind of person who’d feel that way anymore—if it wasn’t my kind of thing, I’d want the social pressure to read it and experience something new.  I might still have my tastes and preferences, but I’m now someone who is always willing to give a book a shot.

 

What about you?  Do you stick to what you know you love (because, frankly, whatever the category you’re unlikely to run out of books!) or branch out?  Do you love books across genres and categories or prefer to stick to one or two?  And if you’re a writer, how do you think the diversity or lack thereof in what you read impacts your writing?


May 15, 2012   Brenna   Amazon, Brenna, genre, independent bookstores  
1

Did your city make the cut?

The Huffington Post came out with a great article today about Amazon’s second annual list of the most well-read cities in the US. This list is, of course, based on Amazon’s sales, and as the Huffington Post points out, doesn’t properly represent places where a lot of people are still visiting traditional bookstores. Indeed, our own city doesn’t make the top ten, but I’d like to think that’s because you’re never far from an independent bookstore or a Barnes & Noble.

To that end, the lovely folks at Huffington also provide people in the #1 town of Alexandria, VA with a list of alternatives to Amazon. Still, it’s always interesting to see who’s buying what online.

Which leads me to my questions for the day: What are the top genres you tend to buy online? And which ones do you tend to buy in person?

I’m going to investigate my own book buying habits tonight, and I encourage you to do the same!

February 23, 2012   Jessica   culture, fiction, genre, Jessica  
3

Genre Trends

Interesting piece in Salon about the (arguable) demise of chick lit that includes a broader survey of genre trends that have come and gone.

Laura Miller writes “What kills a genre isn’t always clear. Supposedly, the readership for the western turned to urban crime fiction sometime in the 1970s. Why? Were they simply tired of cowboys and gunslingers, or had the myth of the Old West been too thoroughly undermined by counterculture critics and Native American activists?” You can still find battered old gothics in junk shops and used bookstores, but as an instantly identifiable genre they’re no longer being published.

Other “expired genres” she cites include gothic novels, adventure novels a la H. Rider Haggard’s SHE and Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories. Can you think of others? Or have you watched the fortunes of a favorite genre decline and fall? If so, do you care to speculate on the cause of death?

Here is one micro trend that I’m rather enjoying: namely, the other-cultures-create-better-parents polemic (see Amy Chua’s ubiquitous Tiger Mom and the present coverage of Bringing Up Bebe.) Perhaps my own wide-eyed expat experience in Cairo colors my reaction, but I’m sympathetic to the feelings of amazement/niggling inadequacy that author Pamela Druckerman channels.  The whole time I lived in Egypt, I felt faintly astonished by the comportment of Egyptian children, who accompanied their parents everywhere as a matter of course and seemed as indulged and adored as American youngsters, but infinitely more patient.  I’m not quite ready to write a book on my own unscientific musings, but I’m looking forward to other cultures weighing in, surely China and France cannot dominate the conversation!

December 08, 2011   Jessica   genre, Jessica, YA  
9

Fantasy as a Reading Rite of Passage

Adam Gopnik’s review of the newest addition to the Eragon series in last week’s New Yorker caught my eye (not because I’ve read these books, though as my sons gets older, I look forward to reading them together) but because Gopnik writes about the always-interesting relationship between kids and fantasy.  He writes “Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist, fights that never happened, all set against a medieval background.” I’m not sure it’s so odd, and indeed, I remember a time in my own reading life when I had an insatiable taste for magical books, almost to the exclusion of all else. That I outgrew it, or that my tastes broadened, or that I found less fantastical settings equally appealing might argue for my emergent Muggledom. Or perhaps, like Susan in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, I became interested in nothing “except nylons and lipstick and invitations” though as a girl, I hated this aspect of the final book, and could think of no worse fate.  In any case, Gopnik’s point is that it is not the otherworldliness that draws young readers. “Kids go to fantasy not for escape but for organization, and a little elevation, ” that it offers “familiar experience in intensified form.” He describes the Twilight books as representative “not so much the life that a teenage girl would wish to have, but the one she already has, rearranged with heightened symbols.”

What do you think? Did you go through a fantasy phase? What drew you to it then? Do you read it still?

October 06, 2011   Michael   audience, bestsellers, genre, marketing/publicity, Uncategorized  
5

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I’m here in New York this week, experiencing the lovely weather.  It doesn’t quite feel like fall at the moment, but it’s nice to see some trees changing, and the nights are a bit brisk.

It seems fitting that our book club meeting tonight is all about women’s fiction, which we read over the summer.  Women’s fiction, during the summer, at least, seems to be all about the beach.  The book I read involves four friends in their thirties renting a beach house, where they drink wine and share secrets, leading to better understandings of one another–and themselves.  I think a few of the books that other people read have similar set ups. Though I didn’t like my book (for a number of reasons), I do have to say that I enjoy a good beach read during the summer, as I know many people do.  Summer books seem to be lighter, more easily digestible, but perhaps a bit disposable.  They’re like the summer flings: enjoyable but fleeting.

But now comes fall and the “serious” books.  For our next book club, we’re all reading a heralded literary novel, one with stellar reviews and blurbs.  This book is quieter and slower, and will not be read in an afternoon.  Maybe it’ll feel a bit like going back to school.  My own reading patterns tend to follow the seasons, though I wonder if that has to do with my mood or what publishers are releasing.  Do I read the lighter books over the summer because I’m feeling light, or because that’s what’s dominating the shelves?  Now that I live in the land of eternal sunshine, I’m beginning to think it’s the latter!

What about you?  Do you read different types of books depending on the season?  Or are you able to ignore the marketing?

August 02, 2011   Stephanie   advice, genre, Stephanie, suggestions, writing  
6

Genres

Recently, I’ve encountered some challenges with my clients regarding genre. Very often, an editor considering a manuscript will pass if they feel that it doesn’t fit neatly into a specific genre. This can be challenging for writers, but it’s something to seriously consider, as it can often make or break a deal. This piece in Writer’s Relief lays it all out very nicely.

Have you ever encountered difficulty with adhering to a genre?

June 24, 2011   Rachel   genre, historical fiction, Rachel S., setting  
11

Living in the Past

When I was younger, I remember several times classifying my favorite types of books as specifically “about a girl my age during World War II.” And truly, looking at the bookshelf in my childhood bedroom, that preference is quite apparent. I’ve always enjoyed historical fiction, but it seems like I would go through phases of gravitating towards certain periods in history far more than others. In my later teens, it was Renaissance Italy and nothing else and I also remember a period of mid-1800’s frontier America. While historical fiction is in and of itself a clear literary genre, the case can be made that there are a myriad of sub-genres as well, divided up by era and place.

It’s a tricky thing, writing a story that takes place in a time no one living has ever experienced, and there are many ways to go about doing it—some more successful than others. I’ve read authors who go the route of writing the entire narrative—style, structure and language included, as if they were not writing about a long past time, but instead are living it and writing as contemporaries would. This invariably, in my opinion, comes out sounding awkward and forced, no matter how accurately the form is rendered. Maybe that’s why I stuck with 20th century histories for so long; there’s less opportunity for authors to pretend they grew up in regency England.

Reading historical fiction is where I’ve gained a lot of my knowledge of, as well as acquired an interest in, history itself. Thankfully, the latter arose or else I’m sure I’d have come to believe a number of things happened or didn’t happen due to the artistic liberties allowed to authors. Novels led me to real research, reading factual historical texts on my own volition simply because I just had to learn more about certain monarchs, historical figures or events. The advent of Wikipedia has made this all the more accessible, and I sometimes have to stop reading to run over to my computer and look up some obscure or trivial piece of information simply because it played an interesting part in the plot.

My television and cinematic historical preferences, however, are wildly different from my literary ones. Recently, I’ve taken to hours spent watching episodes of Downton Abbey, North & South and Gosford Park, though I have only a small interest in books set during the same years.  My guess is that for me, some periods can be better displayed visually and others in writing, but that’s only a rumination.

Regardless, there will always be a place for historical fiction on my bookshelves, though some eras will clearly outweigh the others as my tastes change and evolve. What’s your opinion? Do you stand for historicals at all, and if you do, do you find yourself gravitating towards certain periods in history over others?

June 22, 2011   Stacey   cookbooks and food writing, drinking, genre, Stacey  
3

Thinking about Drinking

I’m working on a nonfiction project about vodka, and it’s a pretty fascinating subject. It got me thinking about drinking, and books on drinking, or more specifically, the drinks themselves that we drink. I actually blogged about this once before and thought I’d take it a step further.

An article an author of mine is working on cites a couple of books on his subject, including Linda Himelstein’s THE KING OF VODKA, which is about Pyotr Smirnov and his vodka empire. There have been so many ways alcohol and its long drunken history have been explored in books–from recipe cocktail books, which have been popular the last few years as the DIY movement has shifted to drinking and people are experimenting in their own kitchens, to practical books on wine, beer, and pairing foods with drinks.

What is interests me most, however, are the many excellent narrative nonfiction books about not only the drinks themselves, but the players behind them, like my own client Tilar Mazzeo’s bestselling THE WIDOW CLICQUOT, which describes the fascinating life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the woman who Veuve Clicquot brand. THE BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR was a bestseller that delved deeper into the story behind the world’s most expensive bottle of wine. Absinthe is another spirit that we talked about a great deal when thinking about ideas for Tilar. There’s a lot of interesting history there. I personally love these historical narrative nonfiction accounts that paint a broader cultural picture of a seemingly narrow subject. In the hands of a skilled writer, there is much to explore.

In doing some research, I came upon this Wall Street Journal article that lists a few titles that are worth looking at if you’re interested in this vast subject.

What are your favorite books about drinking? Are there any books on the subject you’d like to see that don’t already exist? It’s a little too early for me to start drinking, but the mood is definitely set for an evening cocktail!

June 17, 2011   Rachel   fun, genre, inspiration, Rachel S.  
12

I’d read it.

As anyone who’s ever seen an episode of Glee can attest to, the world loves a good mash-up. Whether it’s the collision of two songs or a DJ layering multiple tracks and styles, the mixing of songs and musical genres has long been a popular innovation.

The other night, a friend and I decided that since this works so well in music—wildly opposing styles that somehow come together to actually sound great together—the same should be true of literature. Why shouldn’t literary genres and “types” be cast alongside one another in a single novel? Of course, we’ve all seen the many “fantasy-ified” versions of classic literature, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, most notably, but what about a serious, measured take on seemingly opposed writing styles coming together? If artists like Girl Talk—who manages to incorporate Neutral Milk Hotel, LL Cool J and Jefferson Airplane, for one small example, into one song—can be critically acclaimed musical innovators, then why can’t a similar mixing of styles emerge in the literary world.

What began as a serious discussion soon devolved into a contest of who could come up with the most far-fetched, yet possibly plausible combinations. As we got more adventurous in our pairings, and the results got wackier, we realized, that if a writer were to ever pull any of our suggestions off well that it would be…well…pretty great.

Here are a few of my favorites:

–          Gothic alien invasion whodunit caper

–          Western comedy of manners coming of age story

–          Bodice-ripping under the sea adventure

–          Legal thriller with wizards

–          Futuristic sci-fi family drama

Surely you can come up with some better ones? What authors would be best capable of tackling such a feat?

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