genre

A lot of books these days are hybrids of several genres. The Cassie Palmer series, for example, appeals mainly to fantasy, mystery and romance fans. The question I get asked most frequently is, does trying to please the readers of so many genres, each of which has its own rules and expectations, cause any problems?

Sometimes literature is defined by its content and other times simply by its target readership. There is ‘black’ literature, ‘feminist’ literature, ‘Christian’ literature and ‘gay’ literature; and somewhere I’m sure there’ll be black, feminist, Christian gay lit too! It may be argued that these are simply marketing niches rather than literary categories ...

Do you package the novel to appeal to the widest audience possible, or do you target the core readership of the genre? Solaris has an imformative article, Marrying Authors to Their Market, that explores the pros and cons of marketing methods for genre fiction.