What's my Genre?

It sounds to me like for the purposes of finding an agent or marketing if you are self-publishing, you will need to describe your book as fantasy/sci-fi. Look for similar books and find out who the agent was, if you can. Even if folks on the street might immediately think elves and spaceships, professionals in the industry are going to know the genre is broader than that. I think SFF fits it better than does paranormal, which (not a definition here, but how I think of it) tends to be real-world settings with weird stuff going on.

You may want to consider 'Urban Fantasy' which is the use of fantasy elements in a modern world, broadly speaking. Dresden Files sorta spear-headed the genre, but there's plenty to pick from for examples. Kelley Armstrong is a prolific Urban Fantasy writer, Kim Harrison too, though these generally have a more serious or gritty tone than an avalanche of jumbo gummy-bears rolling downhill.

May be something to consider, it's a bit more precise than Fantasy/Scifi

Contemporary Fantasy might also be a good label. I hear that agents are weary of Urban Fantasy but that will probably change next week as the fads blow about. You could also say something like "Mythic Modern Fantasy"

If you're querying agents, I'd stick with fantasy, and let the letter itself describe the specifics. Gaiman and Adams are shelved in bookstores in the same section as Tolkein and Asmiov. I don't think people have assumed fantasy = elves for some decades now.

Subgenre is a different animal entirely, and I'd encourage you to read as widely as possible until you find some books you consider decent comps.

Fantasy and SF are broad genres, and with the exception of bookstores that specialize in those genres, they tend to be "shelved" together in bookstores. On Amazon and other online booksellers, fantasy is also a category, but the subgenres often seem arbitrary and inconsistent. For instance, one fantasy I read that is set in a totally made up world that really isn't based on a historical setting or situation, is also listed as historical. I'm sure people who read real historical novels love that.

Perhaps your novel is urban fantasy, if it's set in a contemporary setting that contains some fantasy elements, but readers often expect UF to contain supernatural beings and magic existing as a sort of hidden element in the "real" world, and with traditional UF, the city itself--it's culture and nature--itself is a major story factor. But there is a lot of disagreement about what UF is these days, or even when it started. I always read that Emma Bull's The War of the Oaks was the first UF novel, but some people push the origins of the genre back further, and someone up thread say the Dresden books started it. I think UF is about a certain feel as much as anything else.

As lizmonster said, very few people (and certainly not agents or editors who work in the genre) think all, or even most, fantasy is like Tolkien these days.

If you use fantastic elements, then you are writing fantasy, regardless of what else you might use. There are many subsets of fantasy, but an agent will help you to decide exactly where you fit in.

Cephus said:

If you use fantastic elements, then you are writing fantasy, regardless of what else you might use. There are many subsets of fantasy, but an agent will help you to decide exactly where you fit in.

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Somewhat OT, but I'm going to give my standard advice here: Nail your subgenre. Do not, under any circumstances, leave it to other people to determine.

If you're not sure of your subgenre, read in your genre until you've figured it out. This may take some time. It's worth your trouble.

99% of the time, your agent will properly determine your subgenre, as will your publisher and (most importantly) their marketing team. But if your work falls into that 1%, you'll want to have the answers, and you'll want to be able to defend your work. The consequences of your publishing team misreading your subgenre are huge.

This is your business. Treat it as such. Nobody else is going to have the skin in the game you do. Know what you're selling before you sell it.

lizmonster said:

Somewhat OT, but I'm going to give my standard advice here: Nail your subgenre. Do not, under any circumstances, leave it to other people to determine.

If you're not sure of your subgenre, read in your genre until you've figured it out. This may take some time. It's worth your trouble.

99% of the time, your agent will properly determine your subgenre, as will your publisher and (most importantly) their marketing team. But if your work falls into that 1%, you'll want to have the answers, and you'll want to be able to defend your work. The consequences of your publishing team misreading your subgenre are huge.

This is your business. Treat it as such. Nobody else is going to have the skin in the game you do. Know what you're selling before you sell it.

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I agree, but I'll be honest here, and this has nothing to do with the OP, but if a writer has no idea where they are at, then they're probably not ready for prime time to begin with. They probably have not read broadly enough, as you said, or they lack the experience to be producing work likely to be sold. It is hard to get to a sub-genre without understanding its intricacies up front. It's why I said to find someone to help you identify where it fits. It may not be as effective as writing to market and understanding the audience you're aiming for, but at least it might help narrow down your readers for the time that something eventually sells. Just being all over the place with no rhyme or reason doesn't tend to be conducive to sales. You need to know where you're going before you're likely to get there.

lizmonster said:

If you're not sure of your subgenre, read in your genre until you've figured it out. This may take some time. It's worth your trouble.

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I agree. It's possible you've written something that falls under the subgenre of "science fantasy", but you'll be able to pinpoint that by reading other science fantasy books. Reading some contemporary fantasy will give you a feel for whether that's more your speed.

Also, if you do intend to query in search of an agent in the future, you'll need comp titles for your query letter anyway, which are recent books similar to yours. The fact that the authors you've listed are not recent (save Gaiman, whose last book was in 2017 iirc) leads me to wonder if you're reading very much current sci-fi and fantasy. Finding books that are similar to yours in some way (and trust me, no matter how unique your ideas are, there's something out there comparable to it) will help you determine your subgenre.

Cephus said:

I agree, but I'll be honest here, and this has nothing to do with the OP, but if a writer has no idea where they are at, then they're probably not ready for prime time to begin with.

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My warning is based on personal experience.

In fairness, for some genres, subgenre definitions are pretty fuzzy, and they shift. That's why it's important to read recently if you can.

And like I said: 99% of the time, this won't be an issue. Your agent and your publisher will properly figure out where to market your work. But you shouldn't be passive about it. Know going in where you believe you belong, and if you find they disagree with you, have your evidence in place. You may be persuaded that they're right, but start from a place of knowledge.

Cephus said:

I agree, but I'll be honest here, and this has nothing to do with the OP, but if a writer has no idea where they are at, then they're probably not ready for prime time to begin with. They probably have not read broadly enough, as you said, or they lack the experience to be producing work likely to be sold.

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Not true, actually - and a bit patronising to boot. Writers write what they write, whether they publish or not.

I do agree with Lizmonster that the publishing side of the business must be treated as a business, but the writing part need not be entirely constrained by the business-side.

A few big names (Sanderson and others) have gone on at length about the evils of trying to write in a particular way because of the idea that it might more closely fit reader expectations.

One reason I love him. He's big in the "write the story you wish to write" camp.

He also defined success for himself, pre-agented days, as having a closet full of unsold manuscripts he loved instead of a single sale or agent.

Woollybear said:

A few big names (Sanderson and others) have gone on at length about the evils of trying to write in a particular way because of the idea that it might more closely fit reader expectations.

One reason I love him. He's big in the "write the story you wish to write" camp.

He also defined success for himself, pre-agented days, as having a closet full of unsold manuscripts he loved instead of a single sale or agent.

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We're getting off topic, but I believe this, and my most beloved stories and novels are the ones that never got published. My heart wants to write for the love of writing the story I would love to write.

But my most successful stories (i.e., the ones that got picked up the fastest--I've never had any measure of commercial success) are those I wrote just to see if I could write something for a particular market and get it picked up. Even if the specific market didn't take it, the next one did.

I've read widely in fantasy all my life, and I read a fair diversities of styles, periods and settings in fantasy. But I still had trouble pinpointing the exact subgenre of my first novel, and will likely have the same issue with the second. It had elements of low fantasy, but with magic at the center of the story, it wasn't quite that. I mean the magic wasn't spectacular, D and D style magic, it was more subtle, but I wouldn't call the world "low magic." Not was it "low" in the sense of having a nihilistic plot or simply being a rollicking, swashbuckling adventure (I have seen two definitions for what low fantasy is--one being a story with smaller, more personal stakes with an emphasis on adventure, and one being simply a low-magic setting).

It had an element of manners fantasy, but the whole story didn't revolve around court intrigue or social class. There was a bit of flintlock, because that was the approximate technological era (early modern), but again the flintlock elements didn't drive the plot. It wasn't high fantasy, nor was it epic. The focus was on a couple of characters and on their personal stakes/issues but also on consequences of failure that were more local than worldwide. It had a dollop of grimdark, but it had an upbeat ending, and the lovers stayed together. Maybe dark fantasy, since one of the protags was a reluctant shadow mage? But the emphasis wasn't on demons or vampires or other dark creatures. It had elements of a romantic fantasy, but the story wasn't centered on the romance (though the romance was an important subplot). It wasn't historical fantasy, as it was in a made up world and not strongly based on a particular time and place. It wasn't YA, because the protagonists were past their teens, plus it wasn't told in that snarky, YA voice. I wouldn't call it LGBTQ fantasy either; though an important secondary character was gay, the two main protagonists were het.

I had to settle for simply calling it fantasy. Maybe that's why I couldn't sell it in the end. But quite honestly, a lot of the fantasy I enjoy also bends and weaves different subgenre elements, and I couldn't pigeonhole any of the fantasy novels I've read recently into a single subgenre. I don't always agree with other people's assessments of particular books' genres either, and people argue at length about whether a given book is UF or PNR or low fantasy or sword and sorcery. Given how many subgenres there are in fantasy, it seems like most novels would fall under multiple categories. They aren't mutually exclusive. The categories on Amazon are a random mess, imo, so looking at those for some books I enjoy is no help.

I think it's probably better to simply call a book fantasy, though, and let the agent decide if it's something they might possibly be able to sell based on the query letter. If you are self publishing, it's beneficial to assign subcategories, but it appears that most fantasy novels on Amazon and Goodreads are cross listed as many different types.

So I wouldn't agree that not being sure of your subgenre within fantasy means you are not widely read in the genre. In fact, the more fantasy I read, the more confusing I find the process of classifying.

Roxxsmom said:

I think it's probably better to simply call a book fantasy, though, and let the agent decide if it's something they might possibly be able to sell based on the query letter. If you are self publishing, it's beneficial to assign subcategories, but it appears that most fantasy novels on Amazon and Goodreads are cross listed as many different types.

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I don't think there's anything wrong with querying a book as "just" fantasy. A lot of books don't really cry out for a subgenre; often that's a marketing thing more than anything else, and a lot of subgenres have readership overlap. Mostly I bang on about it because I know what can happen if the marketing goes wrong. (And I have the sense that subgenre is more important for SF than fantasy, but that may just be because I'm more familiar with SF marketing.)

Re: categories - I don't know if it's an industry standard, but my stuff listed on my publisher's web site includes three BISAC Subject Codes, which correspond (roughly, or maybe exactly) to Amazon sales categories. I think having multiple categories for a published book is just a Thing, and it's a Thing you don't want them to get wrong.

This may or may not be helpful, but I think both Douglas Adams and some Neil Gaiman works are what I would call "absurd" or "surreal" sci-fi/fantasy. Your work sounds like it would fit that description too! They're not official genre terms as far as I'm aware (though "Absurd Fantasy" does have a Goodreads page full of Adams and Pratchett), but I think it immediately conjures up the right kind of image and sets it apart from sterner fantasy like Tolkien and GRRM or hard sci-fi like Asimov. Might be handy words to describe your work when querying!

lizmonster said:

Re: categories - I don't know if it's an industry standard, but my stuff listed on my publisher's web site includes three BISAC Subject Codes, which correspond (roughly, or maybe exactly) to Amazon sales categories. I think having multiple categories for a published book is just a Thing, and it's a Thing you don't want them to get wrong.

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I think it's pretty standard. As someone who self-publishes and uses KDP, I get to list two categories on Amazon, and with keywords (or by special request), you can get listed in others. More ways for people to find your books, plus certain categories are super crowded. (And publishers might have more options than I do.)

LJD said:

I think it's pretty standard. As someone who self-publishes and uses KDP, I get to list two categories on Amazon, and with keywords (or by special request), you can get listed in others. More ways for people to find your books, plus certain categories are super crowded. (And publishers might have more options than I do.)

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Actually, you can list more categories than that, you just have to contact KDP to add them. You can have up to ten categories per novel.

The more unusual your book, the broader you should go. Being narrow only eliminates options and confuses agents.

Marketing can be tweaked, books can be adjusted, promotions can be spun. A book genre is sometimes more flexible than you might think, basically, so don't limit yourself! If you think you can query scifi to the scifi agent, go for it. Fantasy to the fantasy agent, go for it. I did that while querying and my agent did that while pitching; we both pitched as dark fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy... all the same book, different editors/agents.

fwiw, I'm apparently going to fall in Neil Gaiman's category now and being positioned as commercial speculative fiction in the American market, and simply fantasy in the UK market.


Cover and blurb will also cover a lot of ground. If me and my triplet sisters all release three books called "The Darkening", but one is literary fantasy, one is urban fantasy, and one is a thriller, we can likely rely on blurb and cover to alert readers to the different undertones of the novel.

Harlequin said:

Marketing can be tweaked, books can be adjusted, promotions can be spun.

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Also completely and thoroughly ****ed up.

As I've said, usually not. But don't get caught out. Know your market.

Yes, fair. I really did not nkow my market this time around, though. Or rather, I thought I did, and discovered I'm in a very different genre to what I assumed.

Also fair. And I expect some mis-genre-ings are worse than others. I remember (although I can't find a link now) a non-fiction book written by a journalist some years ago that her publisher chose to market as a memoir. The memoir readers fond it too clinical, and the journalistic nf readers never found it, because memoir is considered "soft." The author went public, and the marketing was changed, but the damage had been done.

I think in SFF, some divisions are more clear than others. Epic means a sweeping, usually multi volume, saga with multiple focal characters, civilization level stakes and a high word count. Other styles of fantasy can fit into this. For instance, Abercrombie's books are epic grimdark, while LoTR is epic high fantasy.

High fantasy generally means a sort of idealized medieval setting with swords and magic and a focus on good and evil with good prevailing.

Urban fantasy generally takes place in a modern setting, centered on a city. Usually there is a hidden underworld of magic in the real world, often mythical creatures and/or a community of magic users of some kind. The protagonists tend to be snarky pragmatists who straddle both worlds and try to solve problems in the fantasy world that may have spillover into the mundane one. However, there is now a lot of overlap with paranormal romance and sometimes any contemporary fantasy is categorized as UF. Plus some UF takes place in historical or fantasy cities.

Historical fantasy, as I understand it, takes place in a real historical period, maybe even with real-life history overlapping with the fantasy elements, which are "behind the scenes." But I've also seen more fairy tale versions of history, and alternative histories, like Naomi Novik's dragon books, categorized this way.

Portal fantasy focuses on a doorway or passageway to another world that someone (generally from our own mundane, not magical world) stumbles across, as with the Narnia books.

Even these categories can have blurry lines and overlap (like the Narnia books being high fantasy and a portal fantasy), but other categories get harder for me to parse.

Grimdark vs dark fantasy? Is sword and sorcery a type of low fantasy, or is low fantasy simply fantasy in a made up world with little or no magic? Or is low fantasy simply about personal stakes vs larger ones? And what is "hard" fantasy, exactly. I've heard this is fantasy where the world has internal consistency, and the magic system has defined rules, but doesn't that apply to most modern fantasy? And is Wainscot fantasy a type of urban fantasy, or is it distinct because there's a different kind of plot line and character involved. Is Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere an UF or a Wainscot fantasy, or both? How about Harry Potter? Plus all those "punks." Is there a difference between "mannerpunk" vs "fantasy of manners," and where is the line between steampunk fantasy, gaslight fantasy, and victorian-era historical fantasy?

Even something as clear cut as YA fantasy (as a marketing category, not a genre) can get confusing, as the "hard and fast rule" that the protag must be high-school age and the story must be told in the voice and from the sole perspective of that high-school-age character seems to have exceptions. Plus what is a high-school age voice when someone lives and matures in a completely different fantasy culture where things like teenage snark and adolescent rebellion might not be "things"? Plus what is a coming of age fantasy as something distinct from YA? I guess coming of age can take place later, on one's twenties, or be in a retrospective voice of an adult reminiscing about their teen years?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that reading lots of fantasy has muddied the waters for me, not clarified them!