genres
genres

genres

Genres for the Independent Author

Genres are a fascinating part of the writing profession. They mean nothing and everything; they are both limiting and freeing; they are arbiters and arbitrary in near equal measures. I began my career as a traditional author. As such, genres were the purview of publishers and booksellers. I wrote the book and then they told me what genre it was in. That didn’t mean I didn’t know what genre my books were in; it just meant I didn’t care if they decided it was something different. It was their job to sell those books, and if they thought it would...

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Signaling Your Genre from the Start

If you’re an independent author, you’ve probably done a lot of work on your title, blurb, and cover. Don’t screw it all up with the first line of your book. When a person picks up your book, or uses the look inside feature on Amazon or other sites, they’re going to read the first few lines of your book. It’s likely the final thing they’ll look at before buying your book. So, not only does it have to be a good intro into your book, it also has to not screw up the sale. But how do you do that?...

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Speculative Fiction — The Big “If” Umbrella

More and more, books and publications that were once exclusively science fiction or fantasy or horror are calling themselves “speculative fiction.” But what is speculative fiction and why does it matter? Though the term “speculative fiction” has been around for a long time, it really came into vogue within the last few decades. And whereas at its inception, it was purely a replacement term for science fiction, it has come to mean most any genre that falls into the category that I call the “What If?” genres. These genres ask the “what if?” questions, where the supposition is definitely not...

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