When we’re first learning to write fiction, most of us know broadly what genre we’re targeting. You might tell people you're working on a Fantasy, or Thriller, or Romance novel. That's a great starting point, but it's not specific enough once you're trying to publish and market that book.
There’s nuance to the niche sub-genres on the major ebook retailers. In this episode, we're giving you our best tips to research your specific sub-genre so you can give readers exactly what they want.
Tip #1: Leverage the Amazon genre tree
Tip #2: Understand the popular tropes
Tip #3: Read books in your genre that are comparable to your own. Read a lot of them.
Bonus Tip #4: Listen in to find out!
Get a free worksheet to help you analyze your sub-genre when you subscribe to our weekly newsletter at AuthorWheel.com/stuff.
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Welcome to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy author of the Senyare Chronicles and the Rise of Lilith series.
Speaker 2:
And I'm Greta Boris, usa Today bestselling author of the Mortician Murders and soon to be released almost true crime series. To celebrate the release of our new course, tropes Stacking and Other Genre Magic, our quick tips this month are gonna be all about you guessed it tropes and genre. So we're gonna start with what genre actually is, what it means and how you can figure out where your book fits.
Speaker 1:
So first off, just in case you are relatively new to writing, we figured we should offer a quick definition of what genre is. And the word genre comes from the French word for kind or sort. So genre can be defined by the combination of, you know, subject, matter, tone, length and or technique for that book. Oddly enough, certain literary professionals will tell you that literary fiction isn't the same as genre fiction. But our argument is that in fact literary is its own genre. So there, I know, I heartily agree.
Speaker 2:
When we're first starting to write, most of us know broadly what genre we're targeting, so we know if we're writing a fantasy or a thriller or a historical or romance or so on. But there is a lot more nuance once you get down into the niche subgenres on the major e-book retailers, especially since digital shelf space is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. So here are our best tips for researching what it is you're actually writing.
Speaker 1:
So tip number one is to use Amazon. You can also use Barnes, noble or Kobo or the others as well, but Amazon has a beautiful genre tree that you can follow down to get to that lowest subgenre. So follow that little white rabbit. That alone is gonna give you a bunch of information about what you're writing and how it fits into the marketplace what's popular, what's not, how small, how narrow can you make your focus and you'll see things you know.
Speaker 1:
As you go down you'll be able to look at the titles of the books, the subtitles, series names, covers, the reader ratings and reviews for the best sellers in that genre, all without actually even clicking into the book. So just going through that process of traveling down that genre tree is going to give you a really good sense of what's happening in the market today. In some cases you can even click on specific tropes to find books that are the most like your own. So, for example I actually just did this today you can go down the genre tree for fantasy and then coming of age, and then, once you get down to the bottom, there's a bunch of little check boxes that have like character types you know as dragons or angels or demons or these different things that you could select, and it would pull up the specific books that have those specific tropes.
Speaker 2:
And speaking of tropes, we're going into tip number two. Tropes are sometimes confused with stereotypes, and some of them are, but tropes are just simply commonly used character types, objects, themes, premises or other elements that feel familiar to readers. Tropes will go in and out of style, so it is important to understand what is going on in your genre and the current, you know, zeitgeist. So what you will find is that certain genres have common tropes that actually help define that genre, as Megan said. So dragon fantasy books are both a sub-sub-genre and it's dragons or a tropes, so it's kind of both. It's a little interchangeable. So tip number two is just sort through some of the bestselling books you've already found and uncover the tropes that readers are gravitating toward. You can find that in the book descriptions, in reader reviews, sample chapters. All of that without having to read the entire book.
Speaker 1:
But, that being said, we do always recommend reading in your genre, and reading a lot. Tip number three is to pick up three or five or eight, if you're really feeling awesome, of those titles in your narrowest possible subgenre that appeals. You know books that appeal to you. Don't pick books you know you're not going to like, but books that are similar to what you're trying to write, similar to your own personal interests, and you can look at multiple subgenres as well to fit your book. It doesn't have to be just one. So pick those three, five, eight, however many books, and actually read them cover to cover or mostly. If you hate the book, put it aside. Pick things you like, because that's what you're trying to emulate. I have a bonus tip.
Speaker 2:
Oh, okay. So I was listening to Maddie Dowl Rimpel Show, the indie author podcast, which if you have not listened to that it's amazing and we're going to be on it pretty soon, and she was interviewing Nick Thacker. One of the things that they talked about was that sometimes people think they are writing a certain thing and then when they go to look at the books in that subgenre or in that genre category, they can't find anything that they would be interested in reading. And when Megan said, look at the books that appeal to you, that is really important because chances are, if you think you're writing a cozy mystery and then you look at Amazon at all the best selling cozy mysteries and you're like I wouldn't read that, I have no interest in that, guess what?
Speaker 2:
You're not probably writing. You're not probably writing a cozy mystery. That is a great tip. You may be writing something adjacent to that, but it is a little different than that. And when you find that sweet spot, it's both books that seem like yours and that look like books you really want to read. That's probably your subgenre.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, oh, that's a great tip. And I think, too, one thing as you're going through the books that do appeal and you're looking for those commonalities, if you're finding that they don't fit what you're trying to write as well, it might be that you've identified the wrong primary genre. But in fact, in this example, cozy mystery right, because it is actually your secondary genre rather than your primary genre. But we get more into that in the course.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, and we also have a worksheet that goes into a lot more detail on how to analyze your subgenre on Amazon. It's included in the Trope Stacking Another Genre Magic course but for listeners you can download it free from authorwheelcom slash stuff when you subscribe to our weekly newsletter. So until next time, keep your stories rolling.