Why Genre Matters
Genre isn’t just important for bookstores and libraries trying to organize books. A genre sets expectations for the reader. We actually use genres all throughout our lives.
Understanding the purpose of genre and how your writing fits into (or doesn’t fit into) a genre can change how you market your books to readers.
Let’s take a look at what genre is so we can use it to our advantage.
Any writing with recognizable patterns and created for a specific purpose and audience is a genre.
According to this definition, grocery lists and blog posts are genres. You would recognize a grocery list right away because all grocery lists contain similar elements (a pattern). Plus, their purpose and audience are clears.
The purpose is to remind the reader what needs to be purchased at the grocery store
The audience is whoever is going to do the shopping.
Books are sorted into genres so readers know what to expect.
Imagine picking up a book in the mystery section and finding out the main character is more interested in figuring out why there’s only one bed in the hotel room they’re sharing with a colleague than solving the crime committed in that hotel. You’d be disappointed, right?
You went to the mystery section because you expected something specific. You expected the book to follow the same patterns and have typical conventions. For example, mysteries tend to have
a problem to solve or a crime revealed within the first chapter,
a detective or sleuth,
a villain,
a trail of clues,
a red herring,
a dark turn, and
a solution or the mystery is solved.
Not only did you pick up the book because you expected to read about a crime but because you wanted the suspense of a mystery.
The purpose of a mystery is to keep the reader entertained and guessing who committed the crime. The audience is someone who enjoys puzzles and suspense.
Authors need to understand genre to understand their readers.
Understanding what readers expect allows you decide whether to surprise your readers or guide them. There’s nothing wrong with sticking to the patterns expected in any given genre. Just like there’s nothing wrong with straying from those expectations. What’s important is you know when you’re doing it.
If you want to write a book that classic Agatha Christie fans are going to love, then you’d better know exactly what they want. If you’re writing a book that explores what readers expect from certain authors, you’ll want to know what people expect and know when to subvert those expectations.
A great example of the latter is Beach Read by Emily Henry. The book is often classified as a romance, but it doesn’t follow all romance conventions. The protagonist is a recently jaded romance writer herself, so it makes sense that the book follows some conventions but not others.
Genre is important for marketing your book.
Authors often like to think about writing as this pure form of creation. Sadly, your books don’t exist in a vacuum, and in order to make a living and keep writing, you will have to think about how your book fits into the market. That means understanding what marketing strategies will work best.
And guess what. Knowing where your book fits in a bookstore or a library will make marketing that much easier. Each section of a bookstore has a few different kind of people who shop there. If you can tell your team where you see your book, they can tell you who they think will pick it up. Then they can create a strategy based on that.
In the end, genre is important because understanding it allows you to connect with your ideal reader.
We write to connect, and that’s beautiful. So make it easier on yourself and think about genre as you write!
If you’re not sure where your book fits or if it’s too different for anyone—It’s not! I promise you there’s someone out there into the same things you are— book a discovery call with me and we’ll chat about who you see reading your book.