Researching the market for your book’s genre is essential if you want to successfully target your book and win the
attention of publishers and agents.
Here are some examples of genres:
Mystery
The characters of mystery books are usually fictional but they behave in realistic ways. There is a problem that needs
to be solved. A mystery may include a detective or a spy as a main character.
Biographies
A biography is a book of true stories about the life of a real person. The author is a different person than the book is
written about. The person in the biography can be dead or alive. The author describes how the person affected others.
Fantasy
A fiction story where there is a struggle between good and evil. Often there is also magic. The characters or objects do
things that couldn’t happen in real life.
Poetry
This usually touches your feelings. It may or may not be written with rhymes. Poetry books are often read aloud.
Realistic Fiction
The characters behave in realistic ways. There is usually a problem or conflict to be resolved. The book is set in modern
times.
Historical Fiction
Some characters may be real and others are fictional. The story takes place during a period in history. Real events from
history can be mixed with fictional events.
Science Fiction
These stories are written with future ideas such as space travel and new technology. The characters are fictional.
Non-fiction
These books provide true facts and information about different subjects.
Romance
A story about character’s relationships, loves, affairs or engagements.
Horror
A story designed to scare or frighten the audience, through suspense, violence or shock.
Reference
These books provide true facts and information. Some examples include: dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, thesauruses, and
encyclopaedias.
Your Book’s Genre
Your job as a writer is much more than just writing. Anybody can sit down and write a story, that’s simply a matter
of sitting down and typing three or four pages a day until its done. But not every book is saleable, not every saleable book
will find an audience, and not every book that finds an audience will be able to bring the readers back for more of what the
writer is selling.
It is essential as a writer to know everything about your book before you begin writing it. You must know the genre, other
authors who write for that genre, the readers, etc.
When preparing your book for submission to an agent or publisher, it’s essential that you define your book’s
genre correctly.
The reason for this is that the genre of your book will determine the agents and publishers you will eventually approach.
Get it wrong and your book will be rejected time and time again.
Publishers are set up to sell one type of genre. Even large publishers are split into genre defined departments and imprints.
Selling a cook book is very different to selling a horror novel. They have different readers, but also different marketing
approaches and design aspects. This means publishers have an internal team dedicated to selling one type of genre. It’s
your duty as a writer to correctly define your book’s genre and then choose the right agents and publishers who can
sell books of your chosen genre.
How you determine your book’s genre is not as straight forward as it may seem. The development of online bookstores
such as Amazon, have created some debate over a definitive list of genre. The reality is that though all of the publishing
industry agree on the broad genres, there is much debate about sub-genres.
My advice for a first time writer is to turn to Amazon to help define your book’s genre. Collect a list of five to
ten titles you feel are similar to your own, then look on Amazon to see how each is categorised. This should give you a good
idea about your own book’s genre.
