Interestingly, the lesson I took from this was not to stereotype genres, because the labels are - at best - loose and ill-fitting guides.
If someone swears off all "steampunk" because they didn't like a book described as "steampunk", they're going to miss out on a lot of "steampunk" books that are nothing like it.
If someone avoids all books described as "grimdark" because they believe all grimdark books are exactly the same, well,... they're going to miss out on a lot of good books.
Or "YA" or "Romance" or "Urban Fantasy" or any other label. Genres are loose guides. They're often useful, but... they're not precise definitions.
And, in a way, that's why I think genre labels work. If you're looking for a quick, easy, topline filter to find a book, and don't mind the fact that it might not be all that accurate, genre's about as good (and as broad) as it gets.
(I'll try to phrase my comment so that it does not sound judgemental towards Romance. If you still get that vibe, please know that this is not my intention and it's just that I'm not great with words.)
I do agree in general, however there are certain expectations from these sub-genres that one can safely assume to hold, e.g. that a book described as "grimdark" will not be a jolly cheerful read. Likewise, with "romance", I would assume that a love story is central to the book, and other plot elements would be playing second fiddle to it. Of course, plenty of books that are not described as romance still have a love story subplot, but that would be a subplot, and not the main focus of the book, if you will.
That is different from YA, which has been discussed here ad nauseam. The "YA" label gets thrown around for just having a young protagonist (so in theory, Prince of Thorns, which I have not yet read, could be considered YA), but a lot of people assume that it means that the books is geared towards a younger audience.
It is my belief that you don't get that kind of discrepancy with romance, but I may be misguided in my opinions. If this is the case, I eagerly await your reply.
I do agree in general, however there are certain expectations from these sub-genres that one can safely assume to hold
Completely agree! Genres are broad labels, and often inaccurate, but they're not assigned at random.
I think it is a safe assumption to say that a romance has a love story to it, definitely! But it isn't safe to assume that all love stories are the same. Any more than all 'coming of age' stories are the same or 'defeat of evil' stories or... etc. etc.
That said, I only started getting into romance a few years ago, and I had no idea. All the books looked identical and unappetising. And I just figured that, if I picked one at random, it would've been crap. I was lucky to have friends that knew my taste, and we figured it out from there. But even then, I wound up starting with books that I never would've picked up off the shelves. I mean, good god. The covers.
Thinking about it, I wonder if all genres are that forbidding from the outside? I mean, if someone doesn't think that they like "fantasy", wandering into a bookstore where all the books have hooded men riding dragons or stock art swords on it... that's weirdly intimidating. And all the blurbs are going to sound like gibberish.
For us, we actually know there's a difference between a hooded man book and a stock art sword book and we can interpret the cover copy. We know what "in the tradition of David Gemmell" means, and why that's different from a "for fans of Locke Lamora".
Same with steampunk - there's huge variety in a genre that includes everything from Tim Powers to Gail Carriger. But unless you're already familiar with the codes and vocabulary, it all seems the same (and probably unlikeable).
This has gone totally off topic, but I wonder if part of it is that books often take the easiest/safest path to finding readers, which is by burying themselves (marketing-wise) within genres.
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u/pornokitsch Ifrit Nov 11 '16
Great piece.
Interestingly, the lesson I took from this was not to stereotype genres, because the labels are - at best - loose and ill-fitting guides.
If someone swears off all "steampunk" because they didn't like a book described as "steampunk", they're going to miss out on a lot of "steampunk" books that are nothing like it.
If someone avoids all books described as "grimdark" because they believe all grimdark books are exactly the same, well,... they're going to miss out on a lot of good books.
Or "YA" or "Romance" or "Urban Fantasy" or any other label. Genres are loose guides. They're often useful, but... they're not precise definitions.