What your favourite genre says about you as a reader (and as a person)
As readers we usually have a favourite genre, or an area of literature that we feel most comfortable in. There can be a lot of talk around the merits of reading outside of your comfort zone, or expanding your reading horizons, trying something new. But there will always that one kind of book that you will gravitate towards.
If we didn't have carefully defined, and well labelled, genres then how would we ever narrow it down? I recently read a brilliant article by Dan Sinykin called “What was literary fiction?”, and note the use of “was” rather than “is”, where they point out:
“In 2000, some 10,000 new works of fiction were published. In 2020, that number climbed, by some counts, into the hundreds of thousands”
With that many books, it would be impossible to wade through it all to find “the one” without someone to show you the way. And that someone is the book publisher.
I think it's easy to forget that every single detail surrounding a book, its release, and its marketing, is carefully strategised. Because books need to sell, to make profit, to make more books, to keep the capitalism wheel a-spinning. It's just business.
Yes, I think authors drive the evolution of genres and categories, but ultimately, the publishers are the ones who decide whether or not a genre is a genre worht pushing anymore.
For instance, consider your trips to your local book store over the last few years. You'll see shelves move, be relegated to the back of the shop, then brough back up front, expanded, and then forgotten about again. The easiest one to point to for this is Young Adult. Genre, or age category? I argue the former, then then latter, but either way, YA has had its most recent peak and bookshops are putting less emphasis on the sale of these books. The table displays are smaller, the shelf space is shrinking, and the model seems to be moving more towards the sale of special and limited editions.
But once upon a time, YA was the hottest ticket in town and bookshops would display these titles prominently, with pomp and ceremony. YA was the genre.
Not anymore.
The thing is, publishers know exactly who you are. If you're a Science Fiction girly, a Spicy Booktok connoisseur, or a literary fiction hun, they know how to make you part with your money, even in this economy.
Sorry, my title might be misleading, because I'm not going to list what kind of person being a Horror fan makes you. But publishers know. They have built a whole business off the back of knowing.
Do you still get breakout books? Absolutely. And I love these anomolies. I like to imagine big publishers hitting a big red button when an indie author, or a small press, start selling their books faster than toilet paper during lockdown. I like to imagine the big marketing brains scratching their heads with a tablet pencil and trying to figure out how fast they can follow the trend.
See: Fourth Wing (because if we don't see every book in the next 18months trying to replicate the success of this I'll be surprised)
Can success be paid for? Yes. Sort of. Publishers can throw money at a marketing push, but if they book isn't resonating with readers, it's like throwing rocks at a window. You can't ignore it, and it even makes it inside your house because you've been suckered by it, but it's just left an annoying hole in your window (and your bank account). Does this metaphor follow? I don't know. This is why I'm not a published author innit.
What I'm saying is, readers aren't so dumb as consumers that they don't see when a mediocre book is getting pushed too hard (probably to try and recoup some kind of giant author advance, whoops).
Thanks to the internet, and the loosey-goosey nature of data sharing, publishers have even more information on you, as a reader, and can see how you interact with books in your genre, which titles you're looking at, favouriting, listing, saving for later, and then which ones you choose over others… Plus things like where you shop, how frequently, and takes platforms like Booktok into great consideration.
Can you cheat the system? I suppose you could just go rogue and buy/borrow/listen to books from all genres, all the time, without resting on any particular category. But also, for what end?
At this point, we just have to accept that the alogorithm has us in its clutches and hope it keeps beinging us things that we actually enjoy, rather than tricking us into thinking a certain book is “perfect for fans of” (when it's nothing like :/ )
Genre readers unite! What's your favourite?
Written by Sarah
