Question regarding Romance Subcatagorization

artemis31386 said:

I know this may sound like a ridiculous question, but I am really not sure about this.

For a romance set during and around WWII (1938-1946), would it be categorized as a contemporary romance? I was reading somewhere that romances have to be set prior to WWII in order to be classified as historical.

If anyone can answer that for me, that would be great. Thank you.

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Oddly enough, I had the same issue with a women's fiction book. Some agents regard WW2 as historical, others don't.

I saw an agent's blog yesterday. She said she was looking for contemporary romance and considered historical to be 1900 and before.

On the other hand, I entered the first 250 words of the novel in a blog contest, judged by an agent. The agent said it was 'historical'.

*headdesk*

Perhaps wiser posters will have a clear answer because I sure as hell don't.

Sorry, there's no easy answer to this one. It becomes another one of those things you're really going to have to tailor to the agent or the pub. >.<

For example, my 20s book. I'm pretty sure Harlequin's guidelines say 1900 and prior for historicals (or at least, they did at the time I was subbing it) but they considered it both for their category and single title lines. It missed out for other reasons, not coz of the period. But I'd sent in based on a face-to-face pitch at the national convention.

"Pre-1900" has long been the rule of thumb for historicals, but more and more houses are letting that slide up to WWII. I think I'd call your time period historical rather than contemporary...but that distinction erodes somewhat if you're positioning the book as mainstream commercial fiction rather than squarely in the romance genre.

Basically, as we move further into the new millennium, the "historical" line will creep along behind us, until some terrifying day in the future, Harlequin Historicals will develop a 1980s line .

What you might do -- look up WWII romances/women's fiction published in the last year or so.
See what editors bought it.

That might tell you how the publishing houses are parcelling it out -- and give you targets for when you or your agent submit.

Humph...I actually had a response from an editor who said they liked my book (set in basically the same time period) but wouldn't take it because it "fell in between" historical and contemporary, and they didn't have a place for it.