# Science Fiction & Fantasy or Romance? You can't have both.



## Paranormal Piper (Sep 24, 2012)

Sorry if it's already been shared but didn't see anything about it. Amazon has made a slight change to their page with romance category keywords. At the bottom, it now says this -

*Do not add books from any Romance category to these categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children's.*

Just an FYI for anyone writing science fiction romance.

Link - https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A19G4ONBAU6NO3


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## BreakTheBar (Jul 7, 2016)

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I would assume that the notice is because they have been receiving complaints about heavy romance books getting listed in those "as well" - so a supernatural werewolf romance getting listed in 'fantasy' and possible getting top rankings there because Romance sells so well, even though the general idea of 'Fantasy' for most buyers in that category is not a werewolf romance story.

Not saying this is right or wrong, but if Zon gets complaints about sexy times they shoot first and ask questions never.


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## karalockharte (Oct 8, 2015)

Thanks for posting this!


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Interesting.  I do think there's a difference between Romances that are fantasies (like Nora Roberts might write) and Fantasies that have a romance central to the plot (like Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters series).  And since I was recently looking at the top 100 lists for both because I think one or the other is what I'll write for my next series I can say that the distinction does not exist in Amazon's charts right now.


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## dgrant (Feb 5, 2014)

I can definitely see where this is coming from, given that the Military SciFi fans have been complaining for years about Romance taking over their top slots and making the lists unusable. They're generally, as a genre, much more closed-door on sex and in depth on military tactics than, ah, the Romance-SF books that take over tend to be. 

Heck, right now #12 in scifi - military - space marine is "mated to the alien" with a nekkid male torso. If that's not a perfect example of wrong category, I don't know what is. 

On the other hand, this is going to hit hard on things like Bujold's A Civil Campaign, which is a regency in space, or Catherine Asaro's Quantum Rose, which is a scifi and a romance, and faithfully done to the tropes of each genre.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

As someone that reads SFR and fantasy romance, I expect to find them under romance-fantasy and romance-science fiction. I would not expect them to be in the regular SF or fantasy category. That of course goes the other way too, a non romance science fiction novel should not be listed in romance-science fiction either. 

But there is so much mis-categorizing going on that as a reader, browsing categories has become pretty useless anyway.

And I have to point out that sex does not equal romance. Its nothing to do with that. There is sex in non romance books. The amount of sex in a book does not determine if something is romance or not.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

Alright then, I'm going to put my fantasy romance just in fantasy.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

katherinef said:


> Alright then, I'm going to put my fantasy romance just in fantasy.


yup, same here.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

But then folks like me would never see you. I never go into the fantasy or sci fi category as I don't read them. But I read Science fiction romance and fantasy romance. 

I guess this is a matter of there being just too many darn romances?  . Not a new issue though is it. Its always been a pretty big genre with lots of books.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

So what about the category Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Romantic?


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## John Van Stry (May 25, 2011)

Considering that Romance has taken over both the Fantasy and Science Fiction Categories, making it very hard to find things that aren't romance, I'm not surprised.
A few months ago I tried searching for a particular scifi genre, and every single result on Amazon was a romance novel. Every single one. 
For a scifi topic that wasn't at all romance. I guess people are starting to complain, it has gotten extremely out of hand.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Warning: heavy generalizations follow. I know there are a few, a very few exceptions, but by and large, the following is, I believe, 99% spot-on:

Romance (genre) is like obscenity: you may find it hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Anything with naked torsos is suspect, and so is a romantic embrace cover, because we all know that's cover code for the Romance genre. 

Setting is and has always been a subset of Romance, not vice versa. Historical romance is romance with a historical setting, not history with romance thrown in. Sci-fi romance is Romance with a sci-fi setting, not sci-fi with a romance thrown in etc. If it's science fiction with a romance in it, it's science fiction, not Romance. We all know it, and that's why this change needed to be made. Nearly nobody cruises the sci-fi category looking for any sort of Romance, because if they want Romance, they go to Romance categories.

Categories are there for a reason. The definitions are good for discovery, good for consumers. Miscategorizations help nobody. Arguing by extreme, if there were no categories, there would be almost no discovery. The more well-defined categories, the better for everyone.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content removed. I don't consent to the new TOS of 2018.


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## Adrian Howell (Feb 24, 2013)

Even prior to the indie publishing revolution, so many books fell into gray areas between genres that they were difficult to place. Today, it's near impossible, which is a problem for everyone: readers, writers, Amazon. The issue seems to stem mainly from the fact that Amazon's categories still reflect the primary genres of the Print Age, and not what is really out there now. Amazon wants our books to sell just as much as we do, so hopefully they'll tweak their system some more to better reflect reality.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Cora, thus comes the "know it when you see it" principle. Your covers don't scream Romance. They don't look out of place on the sci-fi lists. That's the first hurdle. And "strong romance elements" isn't necessarily romance either. If it's not clear-cut, personally, as a reader and an author both, I'm not going to complain. It's the "taken by the alien shifter" type books that I guarantee are miscategorized.


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## Lark Watson (Feb 2, 2017)

I can't help but wonder if this is the beginning of a complete overhaul/self-policing movement of all the categories. The reader in me wouldn't mind. The author in me...well, let's see how it goes.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

Try having a look at the "Fantasy Romance" category some time, and see why those of us who write actual fantasy blended with romance want somewhere else to put our books. If Amazon wants to overhaul the categories, that would be awesome. But do ALL the categories, not just one.

And give us some sort of option to use a keyword (like magic or swords, both of which are very relevant to my fantasy romance) without putting us in a category we didn't select!


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> Setting is and has always been a subset of Romance, not vice versa. Historical romance is romance with a historical setting, not history with romance thrown in. Sci-fi romance is Romance with a sci-fi setting, not sci-fi with a romance thrown in etc. If it's science fiction with a romance in it, it's science fiction, not Romance. We all know it, and that's why this change needed to be made. Nearly nobody cruises the sci-fi category looking for any sort of Romance, because if they want Romance, they go to Romance categories.


Even with a generalisation warning, this over-generalises things.

I write sci fi romance and erotica where the sci fi isn't just a setting, it's integral. I'm not writing shifters in space, I see myself following in the wake of such authors as Asimov, Heinlein, Le Guin, Delaney, Farmer or Sturgeon. A couple of younger classics have also already been mentioned.

This is a silly move trying to deal with something they cause themselves. They need to provide fixed categories for at least military scifi, hard scifi and space opera. They also need to stop pushing erotica authors under the table and man up enough to set up a solid erotica category with parental controls and in-category search functions so that those who want to buy it can navigate and find hard core porn and erotica.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of romance. It's not a slight against the genre, it's hugely popular for a reason after all, but for me, I dislike it. Which has meant that finding books on most Amazon lists has been a pain for sometime. The only way around this is to type in the search box something like : Sci-fi Science Fiction Fantasy -romance -erotica 

This then brings up everything with the above keywords, but excludes any book with romance or erotica in their keywords or categories. Finally, I could find actual scifi and fantasy stories again without all the billionaire shifter naked torso books which just don't interest me. 

Putting books in the wrong categories is a huge problem. Romance readers at least will be vocal about any book in their categories that aren't actually romance. As a reader, this change is a good thing. As a writer, this could be the start of a category shakeup that is even more restrictive, rather than actually fixing the categories properly or just putting in a filter so you can exclude certain genres if they don't interest you.


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## Dhewco (Apr 10, 2016)

I'm not comfortable with calling 'A Civil Campaign' a scifi-romance. Yes, the character tries to romance a woman. But, Miles Vorkosigan is a character that has been in a long-running series by this point. He just happens to be trying to find a lady friend in this book. The series is most-definitely scifi and has earned its place in the category. I don't know about the others mentioned up thread, but this one isn't out of place.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

It seems I've had some of the same problems searching Amazon as some of you folks have.

When looking for a classic fantasy or science fiction story I find the categories completely surrounded by bare torsos, shapeshifting, lover, billionaire, love stories. 

It's really frustrating that romance genre stories have been allowed to flood almost every category to the point that it becomes very hard for people to find the non-romance books (in the non-romance) categories.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

oakwood said:


> ...in a genre that traditionally has just about no graphic sex at all.


This is quite, I might say blatantly, incorrect.

I cited further above just a few classic and in several cases also hard SF sci fi authors, and I could very easily add another few dozen names. There have been authors during all eras of sci fi who wrote such which was hinging or even dealing with sexuality. Some of that so graphic, that a very young me tossed off to some of these stories. Today you find them on lists of "must have classic SF" or cited as sci fi which defined the genre at the time they were written. Just because you haven't come across or read any of these doesn't mean they didn't exist.

Mind, I get your frustration about not finding what you want to find, but trying to re-define what sci fi is and was isn't a good way to do it. You can't just shove what rightfully belongs into the genre off into romance, just because people happen to fall in love, procreate, live together or have graphic sex. Books have always been able to straddle genres. That didn't just happen this week. There have been erotic sci fi stories published before WWI.

Bladerunner? Talk about influential.


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## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

I've looked at that list.
But then there's no Romance/SciFi category on that list to put an actual book in.

So if you've written a book with a foot firmly in each camp and you can't put it in SciFi where does it go?
Am I missing something? It seems weird to bar you from using a category but then not give you somewhere to put it.

Where do the post apocalypse romance books go if there's no soldiers or vampires in them?

And when you go into the SciFi categories for key words there is this : Science Fiction & Fantasy/Romantic
I'm confused.   And I haven't even published my alien invasion romance yet....


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## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

Rinelle Grey said:


> So what about the category Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Romantic?


Yes I agree. Doesn't make sense.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Paranormal Piper said:


> Sorry if it's already been shared but didn't see anything about it. Amazon has made a slight change to their page with romance category keywords. At the bottom, it now says this -
> 
> *Do not add books from any Romance category to these categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children's.*
> 
> ...


I have to ask, though: how many people actually SEE the page linked here? Not only do a lot of writers not know that the keyword page exists there (maybe newbies who haven't uploaded/published any books), but those keywords are pretty much pointless since they're so obvious and common.

Category: Romance/Paranormal/angels --> keyword of "angel." Duh.

If they want to caution writers on how to categorize their books, maybe Amazon should put that warning at the top of the page where we actually choose categories.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> Where do the post apocalypse romance books go if there's no soldiers or vampires in them?


I'd bet not all PA romance books have soldiers and/or vampires. Not all plain PA books do.

I'm thinking about all that advice we give about making the cover represent the genre. This would mean that SFR books with manly man chests should be in Romance, while a cover that doesn't have that (or the embracing couple or the like) would indicate it's likely more on the SF side.

To me, this is just the result of lots of customer complaints -- and those of more than a few writers -- to keep the categories from being overrun with books that aren't suited to them. Amazon normally drops a tactical nuke, sometimes badly aimed, and then there's fallout. We'll adapt.


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## StarWriter (Jan 18, 2014)

Isn't this what subgenres were for? i.e. Romance\Fantasy


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

What would be more useful would be to give people the option to exclude categories from the chosen category. Want your a Sci-fi without romance? Click the cross next to the romance subsection!

I really think the whole thing would be simpler if Amazon gave us a few extra subcategory choices, and stopped using keywords. For example, my sci-fi romance is in military sci-fi not because I put it there, but because of a keyword that is perfectly appropriate under the romance genre. 

Using an ineffecient system leads to this kind of mess.

Of course, there are a lot of people who are putting their books into entirely the wrong categories, but I don't see any way to stop that other than actually checking each book. The women's fiction/fantasy category is full of billionaire love stories.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

oakwood said:


> *snip*
> I'm not kicking knees. I write romance too  and I think Romance writers will benefit from a better genre segregation in the long run.
> Anyway, it is 100% inevitable seeing how the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres have been overrun with graphic romance.. in a genre that traditionally has just about no graphic sex at all. Bad customer experience.. the pitfall that will always make Amazon shake the boat.


Graphic sex and SF/F are not mutually exclusive. Graphic sex does not equal Romance/Erotica. Romance is determined by the percentage of focus on the romantic relationship between characters.

I feel for the authors who have a more even split between the romance and the speculative elements. In my opinion, you can focus on romantic relationships and still be a fantasy or science fiction book. I mean, what if your story is trying to prevent the end of the world (like a lot of epic fantasy is) but the only way to do so is to work with your worst enemy (focus of the story is on the relationship and how it grows, without it there wouldn't be a story, so a Romance). So you've got this epic story that would appeal to Fantasy readers with a compelling romance (and an HEA) that appeal to Romance readers. With this new change, you'll only be able to reach one set of those readers. (At least through categories on Amazon).


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

I'm curious how this is going to affect Bella Forest. She dominates both paranormal romance and urban fantasy (and probably a crap-load of other categories). Having read only a few of her books, I'm not sure where I'd put them. 

Then again, she's a super-seller and I have a feeling Amazon is going to be making exceptions (like with trade published books).


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

If you choose the main cat of Romance, it offers a sub-cat of Science Fiction. I understand that Zon is trying to purge the shifter erotica out of SF and children's cats. And if you're surprised that they aren't very subtle in how they're handling it, you haven't been around very long.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

You'd think with all this it would be easy for someone like me to find my SFR or fantasy romance. SFR is one of my favorite subgenres, but I want substance and story. I don't want shifter alien erotica, at least not most of the time. I don't even consider shifter stuff SF. I consider it Paranormal, like in PNR.

I can't browse the sci fi romance categories as that is all there is listed and I wouldn't go to the regular sci fi category as I couldn't trust those books to be actual romance. I wouldn't expect romance to be in SF. 

Sure, this might help those that don't want to even hear the word romance, but it doesn't really help readers overall at all. 
SFR is one of the absolute hardest genres for me to find books in. That and time travel romance. I don't read shorts or novellas, I don't want to read about billionaire shifter aliens, so where so I go.  
Considering its one of my favorite genres, I read very little in it for the lack of content. Amazon listings have become a scary place. And I say this as a romance reader. If I can't find anything in a genre many are saying is taking over everything, what does that say. SFR is not the only subgenre in romance I have these issues with though. 

I am curious though, how can they fix the overall issues. Have people do the categorizing and not keywords? How can they make the store usable again for many of us readers to find what we are looking for. Because right now, I cannot browse there anymore.


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## Kal241 (Jan 11, 2017)

Well if they're phasing-out shifter erotica into categories other than SFF, we might be saying goodbye to The Hyperion Cantos in that listing (Yes, erotica is only a huge theme in Kassad's story arc, but


Spoiler



having sex with a woman who turns into the alien antagonist


 qualifies as shifter to me). If I ever write sci-fi romance, I'll remember this.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Anyone who thinks that naked male torsos and ladies wearing no fabric but three pieces the size of a ladies hankerchief knows little of SFF history. Even Andre Norton book covers went for the bikini clad cover woman (e.g., Perilous Dreams) long before the late great Carrie Fisher sent up the image. Norton's books were not devoid of sex.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

For me that kind of blows. My books are definitely equal parts both: the focus is on the romantic relationships and there is sex. But it doesn't follow a standard romance formula much, the fantasy world is well-developed and there is a developing war and various cultural issues in the background. My number one influence is shoujo manga, the very broad category of manga and anime that usually includes romance but also everything else. And my readers are split between paranormal romance, urban fantasy and high fantasy readers. 

If I must choose, they'll go in fantasy only, but it's too bad.

From a reader point of view, I understand, the categories are a mess. I have to find other fantasy romances along the lines of what I read by following chains of also-boughts, never from browsing the top 100! But this doesn't seem like a good way to fix it. I agree that they need to resolve issues with keywords automatically throwing you into an unrelated category, for starters. Sci-fi seems especially bad with this. One of my friends, all his books go into "super hero" and "alien invasion", neither is appropriate. I guess because the key words include "hero" and "alien"

I guess we'll also see if they enforce this. Right now all my categories are still the same.


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## ############# (Nov 2, 2016)

I'm sorry for any authors this manages to mess up. 

As a reader, I'm glad it's happening to those books that are the extreme and don't belong there. I had gotten to the point that I went by recommendations, books in signatures here, and their also boughts. Browsing categories was a lost cause.

I'm also an author who is finishing up a book that will sit squarely in the SciFi/Space Opera category, and having to wade through the naked torsos and alien princes romances to find books on the charts that were even similar to what I was writing was depressing.


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## Athena Grayson (Apr 4, 2011)

Yeeeeeaah, I didn't read about my first six-member group marriage in my romance novels.  The "science" in science fiction includes the social sciences, too.



Atunah said:


> SFR is one of the absolute hardest genres for me to find books in. That and time travel romance. I don't read shorts or novellas, I don't want to read about billionaire shifter aliens, so where so I go.
> Considering its one of my favorite genres, I read very little in it for the lack of content. Amazon listings have become a scary place. And I say this as a romance reader. If I can't find anything in a genre many are saying is taking over everything, what does that say. SFR is not the only subgenre in romance I have these issues with though.
> 
> I am curious though, how can they fix the overall issues. Have people do the categorizing and not keywords? How can they make the store usable again for many of us readers to find what we are looking for. Because right now, I cannot browse there anymore.


::waves to Atunah:: Come find us on Facebook at the Sci-fi Romance group and the SFR brigade fanpage. We are small, but plucky, LOL, and have resources to guide you to the SFR you're looking for (PM me for linkies--I don't want to adverti-spam). I do feel your pain. My stuff falls firmly in the center of Sci-fi and Romance--writing it to prevent one genre from overrunning the other is hard enough. Doing covers is an exercise in headdesking while being a complete crapshoot--whatever your cover cues, you'll only be attracting half your audience while putting off the other half.

IMO, this is where Amazon dropped the ball from allowing readers to tag books. I know there were issues with "tag gangs" and all, but community curation would really help, at least at intersections of genre like this one. Allowing readers to choose from pre-determined tags, and limiting their selection to some percentage of the total can keep them from abusing the system too terribly. In theory. It's imperfect, and yes, someone will probably figure out how to game it based on hot tags or something completely out of left field, but it's better than "guess and be cursed." It would be nice to be ableo to remove keywords like "billionaire" and "shifter" in category browse to strip out the books that belong in Paranormals.

I guess all we can do is brace for impact and course-correct as best as we can.


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## Guest (Feb 20, 2017)

PRAISES BE TO THE GODS! Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. I've been complaining about this sort of thing ever since Twilight got crammed into my horror genre. 

Romance is a separate genre from sci-fi and fantasy. And I don't care how much authors argue otherwise, no, your book cannot be both. You can't serve two (or three) masters.

A romance, at its root, *specifically* focuses on romantic love between two people, with an emotionally satisfying ending (usually, happily ever after, or HEA). In a romance, the relationship itself is the most important and driving motivator of the plot.

A fantasy, at its root, *specifically* focuses on magic and the supernatural as the primary motivators of the plot, presented within a self-contained world. In a fantasy, the presence of magic and the supernatural is the driving motivator of the plot.

A sci-fi, at its root,* specifically* focuses on fantastic but logically plausible creatures and technological developments while looking at the consequences of such developments. It is generally defined as writing rationally about alternative possibilities.

The fundamental problem is that too many authors neither understand nor respect the meaning and function of genre categories. Genres exist to help READERS find the type of stories they want. As others have said, I can't use Amazon to search for fantasy or sci-fi anymore because half the search results come up as romances. Your romance might be set in a futuristic setting, but that doesn't mean you are serving the needs of the science fiction genre. Just because the hero in your romance is a werewolf doesn't mean it is a fantasy. It just means you took your romance and gave it a paranormal cosmetic makeover.

This is particularly frustrating since Amazon DOES, in fact, have rather substantial sub-categories that can call out your fantasy-leaning or futuristic leaning romances. There is zero reason to take a romance novel and shove it into a non-romance category.

For me, it is about showing the proper respect for both readers and authors in those genres. I would NEVER consider taking The Doom Guardian, for example, and shoving it in a romance category. Even though there is a romance sub-plot and the book has a HFN. But despite having a slight romance sub-plot, the book is NOT a romance because the romance between the two characters is not the central, motivating action of the plot. I would not insult romance readers by cramming the book where it doesn't belong simply to piggyback on the romance readership.


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## Patrick Urban (Oct 22, 2016)

This is an extremely welcome change. 
The various comments on blurred lines, with categories being overtaken by inappropriately listed books is incontrovertible. Wading through lists, scratching my head at the baffling inclusion of this or that selection, trying to find a book that actually reflects the search filters is an experience I've shared many times. It hurts readers access and therefore hurts us all.
The relatively uncommon books that are true hybrids straddling the genres are not the issue, nor do I think  their visibility will be hurt if the authors of such books are clever and attentive in their keywords and category choices. Well... I hope this is the case. In any event, at least we've traded down in the scale of the problem.


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## Patrick Urban (Oct 22, 2016)

I also enthusiastically second Julie's post.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> PRAISES BE TO THE GODS! Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. I've been complaining about this sort of thing ever since Twilight got crammed into my horror genre.
> 
> Romance is a separate genre from sci-fi and fantasy. And I don't care how much authors argue otherwise, no, your book cannot be both. You can't serve two (or three) masters.
> 
> ...


All of this. Nothing to add here.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

JaclynDolamore said:


> For me that kind of blows. My books are definitely equal parts both:* the focus is on the romantic relationships* and there is sex. But it doesn't follow a standard romance formula much, the fantasy world is well-developed and there is a developing war and various cultural issues in the background. My number one influence is shoujo manga, the very broad category of manga and anime that usually includes romance but also everything else. And my readers are split between paranormal romance, urban fantasy and high fantasy readers.
> 
> If I must choose, they'll go in fantasy only, but it's too bad.
> 
> ...


Surely then this would mean your books belong in the romance and romantic fantasy sub category. Not in the main fantasy category. From your own words, your book has a rich fantasy setting as backdrop for the romantic story with the HEA. If you put it in just Fantasy because of this change, you will be losing out on the romance readers and the hardcore fantasy readers will be put off because its just a fantasy setting for a romance.


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## Catana (Mar 27, 2012)

I'm sick and tired of clicking on what I expect to be a science fiction novel, and find out that it's basically a romance. So if this works, good on Amazon. Of course, that won't keep romance writers from simply going undercover, more or less. I don't care how well the SF aspect is developed, if you put a romance at the center, you're likely to find your book returned for a refund.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> PRAISES BE TO THE GODS! Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. I've been complaining about this sort of thing ever since Twilight got crammed into my horror genre.
> 
> Romance is a separate genre from sci-fi and fantasy. And I don't care how much authors argue otherwise, no, your book cannot be both. You can't serve two (or three) masters.
> 
> ...


As a writer of romance novels, and as a reader of SF and Fantasy, I totally agree with this. The focus on Romance is the couple and their emotional journey. Any external plot is secondary to the main plot of the couple's journey to a Happy Ever After or Happy For Now. So, you can have a Romance with a B plot that is SFnal, or Fantasy or Mystery or Thriller or etc. The B Plot may be more or less important, but always and forever, the romance will be the focus. If you transgress, romance readers will crucify you in the reviews.

You can have an SF or Fantasy or Thriller or Mystery, etc. with a B-Plot love story and that is a frequent kind of B-plot. But it is always the B-Plot and doesn't always result in a happy ever after or happy for now, so it doesn't qualify as a romance. It can be "romantic" and the romance may be more or less important, but it is always the B-plot and not the A plot. If you transgress, SF and F and Thriller readers will crucify you in the reviews.

SO... Taken By The Lizard Alien Commander is a Romance with a B-plot of alien invasion. It should be in Romance > Science Fiction NOT Science Fiction > Alien Invasion.

Because romance is such a hot genre, Taken By The Lizard Alien Commander with a B-plot of alien invasion where the hero and heroine meet will sell more copies than Alien Invasion Force that has a B-Plot of a love story between the Commander and his buxom Communications officer named Uhura. 

I think this move is intended to clear up misclassification that probably had a LOT of complaints coming from readers who want the latter rather than the former.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

catlife said:


> Yes I agree. Doesn't make sense.


For me the distinction is the degree of worldbuilding between the two. I read some of Nora Robert's fantasy romances and she sort of hand waves the fantasy elements. Sure, a character is a vampire or they have to go to another world to fight the evil enemy or some guy time travels, but you could almost take those elements out of the story and the series would still work as long as book one was an instalove couple, book two was a couple that seemed like a good fit but needed more time, and book three was the couple you never thought would get together.

Compare that to Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters books where the Celtic mythology is central to the story. Yes, two characters meet and it's about them getting together by the end of the book, but if you take out the fantasy elements the story doesn't work.

My mom is a huge romance reader and what I've found is that she really doesn't like the fantasy novels that have romance in them because she gets too confused or isn't interested in the fantasy worldbuilding aspects. Whereas Nora Roberts? She re-reads those books over and over again. So to me the distinction is pretty clear and there's room for Romance>Fantasy and Fantasy>Romantic and most books really do belong in one or the other.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

RandomThings said:


> Surely then this would mean your books belong in the romance and romantic fantasy sub category. Not in the main fantasy category. From your own words, your book has a rich fantasy setting as backdrop for the romantic story with the HEA. If you put it in just Fantasy because of this change, you will be losing out on the romance readers and the hardcore fantasy readers will be put off because its just a fantasy setting for a romance.


Having read the first book in Jacqueline's sig, I would classify it as fantasy, though the romance is very central. The suspension of belief necessary to enjoy the book takes it out of the romance category. Would the story work without the romance? Yes. Would it work in a different setting? No, it would have to be a different story.

One of the things that I saw celebrated in indie publishing a few years ago was the freedom to break free of strict genre guidelines. My books straddle genres, and it's difficult to fit them into Amazon's categories. As to SFR, the argument against it has often been an argument against women writing SF. Linnea Sinclair and Anne Aguirre have done a great job of writing SFR, and they are definitely SF. Some on this board write great SF, but the romance is inextricably intertwined in the stories.

Billionaire shifter erotica is a different matter. I don't think either romance writers (even PNR writers) or SFF writers want it mixed into their buyers' searches. Until someone invents a magic solution to separate steamy PNR/SFR/UF from erotica, then we're going to continue to have this problem.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

This may be hypothetically a good move, but if it's done in isolation, I don't think it's going to work so well, as Nic and Rinelle and others have pointed out. They need to make the romance and erotica categories more effective (carrot) in conjunction with restricting romance and erotica to those categories (stick): greatly expand subcat choices, especially in erotica; get rid of keyword-generated subcategorization, which is hard to control, in favor of letting authors/publishers select subcats by checking a box; and install an "adult" toggle rather than search-penalizing books with content people tend not to want their kids to see. I'd also suggest building in a genre-blending category with combos like sci-fi/fantasy, fantasy/romance, literary fiction/sci-fi, etc., where authors who feel their books truly do bridge genres can place their stuff. Maybe readers will go for it, maybe not. There's no harm in experimenting. If it doesn't work, readers will stop using those blended categories, and so will authors, and we'll have our answer.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> One of the things that I saw celebrated in indie publishing a few years ago was the freedom to break free of strict genre guidelines. My books straddle genres, and it's difficult to fit them into Amazon's categories. As to SFR, the argument against it has often been an argument against women writing SF. Linnea Sinclair and Anne Aguirre have done a great job of writing SFR, and they are definitely SF. Some on this board write great SF, but the romance is inextricably intertwined in the stories.


Yes, there is a lot more freedom for writers to WRITE books that straddle genres and categories and to me, it's a good thing to have that freedom. BUT we all have to remember that this is a market and it has certain marketing rules that make it difficult to categorize some books because they don't fit nicely into genres or categories.

That's the price of writing books that don't fit easily into the broader marketing categories. You have the freedom as an Indie to write those books, but there is never any promise that they will sell because there may not be a big market for those books, and they may not fit easily into conventional marketing categories.

Those categories are premised on past sales data and historical reading and marketing patterns. Until those change and it makes sense for the retailer, those marketing categories will remain in place. We authors have to adapt and find other ways of finding our audiences than relying solely on conventional retailer marketing categories.

Amazon will never adjust categories to suit authors. It will only be to suit customers. Until customers complain, the existing marketing categories will remain. Sure we authors can complain all we want. Complaints will get us nowhere and is not an effective strategy since authors have little to zero influence on Amazon's decisions about marketing categories. Best tactic is to write great books and find innovative ways to reach your audience if your book doesn't easily fit into existing marketing categories.

I personally have an SF Romance series I want to write. The SF element is primary and the love story is secondary but very prominent. I realize that I will have a harder time marketing it because of that. The SF plot may be bigger than a traditional romance reader may like and the romance element may be bigger than a traditional SF reader may like. I have to find my perfect audience and so I realize it will be work. My Venn Diagram has a smaller shaded area than if I wrote a straight SF or straight Romance, but that's life.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Frank Frazetta

Boris Vallejo

Achilleos

Rowena

The reason why I can't post these covers here is the no-nudity rule on kboards... This to no sex and no nudes on SFF covers in the past.

Edited: I'd give my right arm to use art like the Achilleos cover for the first Raven book on one of mine. I've read the series up to a point and it is classic fantasy with enough sex to qualify for this discussion. It wouldn't classify as erotica or as romance.

So what you'll now get are people who'll keep placing this in the SFF categories, advertising the facts even less than before.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Athena Grayson said:


> ::waves to Atunah:: Come find us on Facebook at the Sci-fi Romance group and the SFR brigade fanpage. We are small, but plucky, LOL, and have resources to guide you to the SFR you're looking for (PM me for linkies--I don't want to adverti-spam). I do feel your pain. My stuff falls firmly in the center of Sci-fi and Romance--writing it to prevent one genre from overrunning the other is hard enough. Doing covers is an exercise in headdesking while being a complete crapshoot--whatever your cover cues, you'll only be attracting half your audience while putting off the other half.
> 
> IMO, this is where Amazon dropped the ball from allowing readers to tag books. I know there were issues with "tag gangs" and all, but community curation would really help, at least at intersections of genre like this one. Allowing readers to choose from pre-determined tags, and limiting their selection to some percentage of the total can keep them from abusing the system too terribly. In theory. It's imperfect, and yes, someone will probably figure out how to game it based on hot tags or something completely out of left field, but it's better than "guess and be cursed." It would be nice to be ableo to remove keywords like "billionaire" and "shifter" in category browse to strip out the books that belong in Paranormals.
> 
> I guess all we can do is brace for impact and course-correct as best as we can.


Oy, I pretty much gave up on facebook. I just cannot figure that site out or find anything. I am pretty sure someone gave me a link to a SFR group there, probably the one you are talking about. But I usually can't find them anymore and when I do, I can't figure out how to navigate the groups and see anything other than the middle feed thing. For me facebook is the worse site to find books. There is no central place for anything so unless I scroll down on that feed thing for days, I can't see anything. Just not for me. But I have a website that I check at times, something galaxy for SFR. I have it saved, I can't remember all the names. I need sites where the info is static, so I can go look at reviews. There is nothing like that on facebook as its all mumble jumbled together and constantly moves. I can't even search for reviews on facebook. Goodreads has some lists and stuff and a group there. At least I get a listing of books there. But still most times its not what I am looking for. It might just be its not a very popular sub genre. Just like time travel romance.

As to the tags. We had tags for customers. They had to take them down as there was mass tagging circles done by authors. Now this was done on other products too of course, but for me it was an issue with books. The tags didn't have any meaning anymore with all the mass tagging. There were lists for most tagged things so authors tried to get on there. I think there was even a thread on this board for mass tagging each other.

It works well on goodreads as the tags are also shelves. So its a bit more involved and one has to shelf the books in order to "tag" them. So thankfully that is still mostly reader driven.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Nic said:


> Frank Frazetta
> 
> Boris Vallejo
> 
> ...


HAHA! Thanks for posting that. It gives this discussion some historical context and some real facts. 

There are trends in SF and F in terms of content and covers. Trends come and go. The market is different now, but some things won't change or change quickly. The market will eventually determine what is considered acceptable. We have to adapt.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

As a reader and writer of fantasy romance, I'm glad to see this change. I'm sick and tired of seeing shifter books and others that don't belong in fantasy mucking up the lists. I just want to find what I love and to be honest, it seems a bit disrespectful to readers when authors blatantly categorize their books wrongly like that. I think there is a fine line though—as one poster here said if your covers are clearly not in the fantasy genre then they shouldn't be in that category. I've been waiting a long time for this change because finding the books I love has been difficult without checking Goodreads first, which is bunk. I hope this is a change for the better.


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## geronl (May 7, 2015)

Nic said:


> They also need to stop pushing erotica authors under the table and man up enough to set up a solid erotica category with parental controls and in-category search functions so that those who want to buy it can navigate and find hard core porn and erotica.


or decide not to sell those at all.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Nic said:


> Frank Frazetta
> 
> Boris Vallejo
> 
> ...


These covers worked because the books were published before girls learned how to read.  The ebook revolution not only helps men hide that they're reading romance, it helps women hide that they read SF. Ain't technology great?

Hate to date myself, but I saw a bunch of book covers that I own.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

brkingsolver said:


> These covers worked because the books were published before girls learned how to read.  The ebook revolution not only helps men hide that they're reading romance, it helps women hide that they read SF. Ain't technology great?
> 
> Hate to date myself, but I saw a bunch of book covers that I own.


A lot of female friends and relatives of my age group own or owned these books.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

geronl said:


> or decide not to sell those at all.


They want to earn money. Erotica, erotic and steamy romance is what sold the Kindle.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

brkingsolver said:


> Having read the first book in Jacqueline's sig, I would classify it as fantasy, though the romance is very central. The suspension of belief necessary to enjoy the book takes it out of the romance category. Would the story work without the romance? Yes. Would it work in a different setting? No, it would have to be a different story.
> 
> One of the things that I saw celebrated in indie publishing a few years ago was the freedom to break free of strict genre guidelines. My books straddle genres, and it's difficult to fit them into Amazon's categories. As to SFR, the argument against it has often been an argument against women writing SF. Linnea Sinclair and Anne Aguirre have done a great job of writing SFR, and they are definitely SF. Some on this board write great SF, but the romance is inextricably intertwined in the stories.
> 
> Billionaire shifter erotica is a different matter. I don't think either romance writers (even PNR writers) or SFF writers want it mixed into their buyers' searches. Until someone invents a magic solution to separate steamy PNR/SFR/UF from erotica, then we're going to continue to have this problem.


I've not read it so I can only go by what was written in the comment where it said the focus was the romance. That to me would put it firmly in romance with fantasy sub categories. As a reader, if I found it in the fantasy cat and started reading to only come to the realisation that it was romance focused and not fantasy, I would be miffed.

This is why Amazon need to improve their categories, so readers can find the books. If you have a book with a focus on romance and stick it in fantasy, then you will lose some readers and the ones interested in romance/fantasy might not find it.


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## Fishbowl Helmet (Jan 12, 2014)

Paranormal Piper said:


> Sorry if it's already been shared but didn't see anything about it. Amazon has made a slight change to their page with romance category keywords. At the bottom, it now says this -
> 
> *Do not add books from any Romance category to these categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children's.*
> 
> ...


Well, at least it's a start. I know there are some writers who actually do SF or fantasy romance books, but the vast majority are simply romance novels with a sentence or two about SF or fantasy (if that) with an obviously romance focused cover placed in a honestly non-applicable category just to have a better chance of being seen. Sure, it sucks for the tiny minority who're actually writing honest SF or fantasy romance books, but it's great news for SF and fantasy readers who're trying to find actual SF and fantasy books, and don't want their categories flooded with marketing gimmicked romance novels.

Though a better solution would have been to add a subcategory for romance in the SF and fantasy categories, or vice versa. Without at least some kind of roughly demarcated categories it makes finding books by browsing practically impossible.


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## Fishbowl Helmet (Jan 12, 2014)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> PRAISES BE TO THE GODS! Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. I've been complaining about this sort of thing ever since Twilight got crammed into my horror genre.
> 
> Romance is a separate genre from sci-fi and fantasy. And I don't care how much authors argue otherwise, no, your book cannot be both. You can't serve two (or three) masters.
> 
> ...


I almost completely agree with this. However, I would point out that there is a clear distinction between *plot* and *setting*. Romance, as you say, is defined by it's *plot*. Two people meet and you get a will-they-won't-they style back-and-forth till the emotionally satisfying resolution. However, fantasy and science fiction, as you rightly describe them, are far more focused on *setting* than plot. Though you could easily argue for a Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey-style quest being the defining if cliched default plot for fantasy, you cannot say the same about science fiction. If fact, most attempts to define SF via plot fail utterly as they simply do not account for the vast variety of SF plots. Why? Because *SF is defined by its setting, not by its plots*. Many incredibly smart people have been trying to define SF for a few generations now and all have utterly failed because they keep focusing on plot. The few that come closest, whilst still leaving quite a few SF classics and award-winners technically out of their definitions, all center on defining the setting, not the plot. So yes, you could have an honest SF romance or fantasy romance. Trouble is, the vast majority of what's listed in both is solidly romance with some tourist SF or fantasy thrown in so they can falsely claim a higher slot in ratings and get more visibility from that false categorization. The history of SF and fantasy is littered with romance and romance leaning books. But those were at least honestly done. Most of what dominates the current SF and fantasy categories are not.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

RandomThings


RandomThings said:


> I've not read it so I can only go by what was written in the comment where it said the focus was the romance. That to me would put it firmly in romance with fantasy sub categories. As a reader, if I found it in the fantasy cat and started reading to only come to the realisation that it was romance focused and not fantasy, I would be miffed.
> 
> This is why Amazon need to improve their categories, so readers can find the books. If you have a book with a focus on romance and stick it in fantasy, then you will lose some readers and the ones interested in romance/fantasy might not find it.


Wanting to find the correct readers is why I think I'd have to choose fantasy over romance. I've been using Amazon ads for months now, and between those and also-boughts, I have a pretty good idea of who my market is. My best results on AMS are Mercedes Lackey, Jacqueline Carey, Anne Aguirre, Anne Rice, Ilona Andrews, Naomi Novik, Maria V Snyder, Katherine Arden, Diana Gabaldon... With that in mind, clearly I appeal to fantasy readers MORE than romance readers although I sell plenty to both. I haven't had a huge rash of reviews complaining that my book has too much romance even though it's in like 5 fantasy categories. I mean, the description makes it CRYSTAL clear that the main plot is romantic, if that isn't your cup of tea.

But in my own mind, I defined it as both. The plot is without a doubt focused on the romance. But I would agree with Fishbowl Helmet that to me, setting is what made it fantasy. And maybe theme. There are thematic questions raised ("what makes a soul"? etc.) that go beyond your basic romance novel.

If I really had to call it something it would probably be "coming of age" fantasy where the coming of age happens to be just as much about falling in love and sexual awakening as it is about learning magic or dealing with fantasy world politics, but is about both.

In the end, *shrug*...I'm guessing most of my readers come from also-boughts and ads and not people searching the Romance> Fantasy category. I doubt it will affect me.

But there is Fantasy > Romantic and Romance > Fantasy. Right now these lists have a ton of overlap. Maybe what they're trying to do is just force people to be in one or the other, and the sexy vampires and bear shifters etc. would end up in Romance > Fantasy while books like mine would be better served by Fantasy > Romantic. That would not be a bad change.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

As much as the thought scares me, I think it would be great if Amazon did away with keywording into categories (it's a silly game and it's easy to accidentally end up in the wrong category) in favor of allowing authors to chose a few categories (or just one or two) with strict definitions (like on iTunes). This would have to involve an expansion of romance and erotica subcategories, a legitimate erotic romance category that is not penalized, and an improvement of visibility for erotica books.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

I think Indie authors are doing what we do best, defining new genres and waiting for everyone else to catch up. Sounds like what is needed is a sci-fi romance category. I know that some subcategories, like time travel romance, shifter romance, have been working. But I've also written a vampire novella series and I've seen it put in fantasy romance a lot. It's generally considered a paranormal romance, but since romance has SO MANY subcategories, some websites and Amazon can't keep up with them. But, again, maybe we'll see the birth of a sci-fi romance category soon. ;-) I'm hoping.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

MarilynVix said:


> I think Indie authors are doing what we do best, defining new genres and waiting for everyone else to catch up. Sounds like what is needed is a sci-fi romance category. I know that some subcategories, like time travel romance, shifter romance, have been working. But I've also written a vampire novella series and I've seen it put in fantasy romance a lot. It's generally considered a paranormal romance, but since romance has SO MANY subcategories, some websites and Amazon can't keep up with them. But, again, maybe we'll see the birth of a sci-fi romance category soon. ;-) I'm hoping.


There already is a SFR category. 
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_158566011_nr_n_16?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cn%3A158566011%2Cn%3A6401744011&bbn=158566011&ie=UTF8&qid=1487623168&rnid=158566011

Kindle books -->Romance-->Science Fiction. They been around long before I ever heard of self publishing.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

> This is particularly frustrating since Amazon DOES, in fact, have rather substantial sub-categories that can call out your fantasy-leaning or futuristic leaning romances. There is zero reason to take a romance novel and shove it into a non-romance category.


I agree with everything in Julie's excellent post except this. The problem of cross-over of things like alien shifter romance into sf happened precisely because there weren't--and in most cases, still aren't--good categories in romance. Romance>sf didn't exist as a category when I originally posted my backlist in what were once called futuristic romances. It's only recently that Amazon actually added the subcat.

All categories could be refined and improved, no matter what the genre, but romance, which is a huge pool of books, is seriously underserved, imo. For example, there is no "western" subcat under romance>historical. You can choose "Victorian", but that isn't the same. But Amazon seems to believe that Western romances are exclusively contemporary....even though they have some very successful Western historical romance authors!


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## Athena Grayson (Apr 4, 2011)

And here's the thing that we're all overlooking--we are not the Genre Police. Neither is Amazon. One reader's "too much kissy-bits" is another reader's "hey, look, characterization!" and still another reader will be scratching their head and muttering, "there was a romance in there?"One reader's "wallpaper sci-fi" is going to end up being another's "richly developed world" and there will always be pie-fights over whether or not this flavor of Unobtanium is or is not A Thing.

Genre is both a literary device and a marketing device, and does different work in each context. Getting people to agree on them is like herding cats. Stories don't like to be categorized by nature--it's what makes them unique, even when they speak of the same set of events.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Athena Grayson said:


> And here's the thing that we're all overlooking--we are not the Genre Police.


It would be a thankless job, but I'll be glad to make the hard decisions for everyone. Just give me a dollar a book and I'll sort it all out.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I hope they expand this to other genres as well. I'm sick of all the vampire/shifter erotica dominating the superhero chart.

What Amazon really needs to do is trash the whole "use the right magic keywords to get in the right subcategories." It's completely senseless. Instead of only giving us two categories to choose from a far-from-expansive list, give us an up-to-date list of all the categories and subcategories and let us choose something like 5-10 from that list.

That makes it easier for authors to categorize their books and it prevents miscategorization from vague keywords. Also makes it easier to hold those intentionally miscategorizing accountable--hard to claim you "didn't mean to" when it's a specific box you have to tick.



Athena Grayson said:


> And here's the thing that we're all overlooking--we are not the Genre Police. Neither is Amazon. One reader's "too much kissy-bits" is another reader's "hey, look, characterization!" and still another reader will be scratching their head and muttering, "there was a romance in there?"One reader's "wallpaper sci-fi" is going to end up being another's "richly developed world" and there will always be pie-fights over whether or not this flavor of Unobtanium is or is not A Thing.
> 
> Genre is both a literary device and a marketing device, and does different work in each context. Getting people to agree on them is like herding cats. Stories don't like to be categorized by nature--it's what makes them unique, even when they speak of the same set of events.


Genre's not perfect and there will always be books that blur the line. But what's the alternative, just have one large fiction section with no genre divisions? I know I certainly wouldn't want that.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

Atunah said:


> There already is a SFR category.
> https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_158566011_nr_n_16?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cn%3A158566011%2Cn%3A6401744011&bbn=158566011&ie=UTF8&qid=1487623168&rnid=158566011
> 
> Kindle books -->Romance-->Science Fiction. They been around long before I ever heard of self publishing.


Yeah, but it doesn't have any subcategories. And the bestseller list is filled with so many science fiction romance, such as The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller, The Lives of Tao, The Rebirths of Tao, ICE (Dr. Leah Andrews and Jack Hobson Thrillers Book 1), Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega Book 1), and Twilight, which all definitely sound like pure science fiction romance... Oh, wait. No, they don't.  Amazon should be fixing the problems that caused this mess and create more subcategories and more options for readers to find the books they want, and so far it doesn't look like they're doing any of that. Also, using keywords to get into subcategories is annoying because it never works right. You either end up in the wrong subcategory or the keyword doesn't work at all.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Atunah said:


> There already is a SFR category.
> https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_158566011_nr_n_16?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cn%3A158566011%2Cn%3A6401744011&bbn=158566011&ie=UTF8&qid=1487623168&rnid=158566011
> 
> Kindle books -->Romance-->Science Fiction. They been around long before I ever heard of self publishing.


That's not the same thing as Kindle books -->Science Fiction-->Romance. Which is not available and where authors run into a problem. They have a SF story with a romance and not a romance with a SF setting. Which can be two very different things.

I like this move as a reader. As an author - if I write a SF/romance I would put it in SF categories and use romance keywords. If I write a romance/SF, then I'd put it in romance categories and use SF keywords.

Romance BOOKS (not ebooks) also has this little-used category called "Action/Adventure" which I find to be a great replacement for both Romance/SF - since Romance/SF typically gets you put in with shifters - and SF with romance keywords, since that's typically not what SF readers are looking for.

However, in Romance/Action/Adventure you don't get as many eyeballs. But you probably get "better" eyeballs than if you were using SF instead of romance. (If you have a true romance).


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## skylarker1 (Aug 21, 2016)

dgrant said:


> On the other hand, this is going to hit hard on things like Bujold's A Civil Campaign, which is a regency in space, or Catherine Asaro's Quantum Rose, which is a scifi and a romance, and faithfully done to the tropes of each genre.


I was thinking of Bujold too, particularly her 'Sharing Knife' series, in which the romance is central to a very sci-fi exploration of cultures.

As a lifelong f/sf reader and a romantic, I try hard to do equal justice by both aspects of my fantasies and think some of them - at least the adventures - belong in both categories.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

PeanutButterCracker said:


> That's not the same thing as Kindle books -->Science Fiction-->Romance. Which is not available and where authors run into a problem. They have a SF story with a romance and not a romance with a SF setting. Which can be two very different things.
> 
> I like this move as a reader. As an author - if I write a SF/romance I would put it in SF categories and use romance keywords. If I write a romance/SF, then I'd put it in romance categories and use SF keywords.
> 
> ...


I think there is a SF-->romantic. Pretty sure. But in any case, many genres have romantic elements. Does every single book in any other genre that has a romantic element need its own romantic categories? I personally don't think so. If is SFR, it fits in the romance-->SF category. That is where I would look for. That is if I could still use amazon category for browsing.



katherinef said:


> Yeah, but it doesn't have any subcategories. And the bestseller list is filled with so many science fiction romance, such as The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller, The Lives of Tao, The Rebirths of Tao, ICE (Dr. Leah Andrews and Jack Hobson Thrillers Book 1), Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega Book 1), and Twilight, which all definitely sound like pure science fiction romance... Oh, wait. No, they don't.  Amazon should be fixing the problems that caused this mess and create more subcategories and more options for readers to find the books they want, and so far it doesn't look like they're doing any of that. Also, using keywords to get into subcategories is annoying because it never works right. You either end up in the wrong subcategory or the keyword doesn't work at all.


True, there are not enough sub-sub categories in romance. Like someone said earlier about HR, there are only 4 listed. There is no georgian time period listed, nothing for western HR, nothing for american historicals that are not western. Nothing for non british isle historicals, etc. I also agree with all the mis categorizing that is done in pretty much all romance categories. Lots of stuff I look at is not romance, which is why I always groan when folks say they want everything that has any kind of romance, romantic theme stuffed into romance. Its already stuffed with non romance titles. And yes, when I look at SFR in that category, the best seller list is useless. Much is not romance. Totally agree.

But how much of that is done on purpose by the authors to get romance eyeballs on, how much is just ignorance and lack of knowledge of the romance genre and how much is keywords going bavarian ninja on the publisher. 
Its all of the above. So if they make many more subcategories within the subcategories, will some of the publisher/authors still continue to just mis categorize, just now with even more places to do so?

Not sure how they can fix this mess this late in the game. I say scrape it all and start from scratch.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

************


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Took the dog out for the walk. Of course, two feet out the door I knew that what I SHOULD have said about categories is:  Why doesn't Amazon just freaking open up ALL the categories and subcats and let us pick?  Even limiting it to two when you have a real option is better than the idiocy we have now.

But now I see Perry already covered it.


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## TWLuedke (Nov 8, 2013)

Rinelle Grey said:


> So what about the category Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Romantic?


Exactly my question.

Take a look at the category as it currently stands on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Romantic-Fantasy/b/ref=dp_brlad_entry?ie=UTF8&node=13922577011

This category has about a 40/60 blend, >> 40% fantasy books which are not romance, and 60% fantasy romance books.

Amazon is saying, "get your romance out of our fantasy categories" but they don't seem to give a crap if non-romance books are sitting in the 'romantic fantasy' category.

I'm totally scratching my head on this one.

The reality is this: If you have books that contain fantasy, paranormal, or scifi elements, and they also contain romance, you're going to see those books in a number of different categories, some being romantic, and some being fantasy-paranormal-scifi. Its the nature of the beast with cross-genre fiction. I can see no other way to handle it.

I suppose one way to do so would be to create all the little subgenres of fantasy, paranormal and scifi within the romance genres. I do mean all. Including genetic engineering, space marines, first contact, arthurian, dark fantasy, myths & legends, etc. etc....

If Amazon put up a mirror image of every subcat there is, nestled within the romance cats, then it would make sense to have the two kinds of fiction strictly separated.

Ex: Take a look at SFR cats. You'll find The Atlantis Gene, which is _definitely not SFR_. Atlantis trilogy is scifi adventure, or a dystopian thriller or scifi thriller. *It is not SFR*. But all three of those Atlantis books are squatting in the SFR categories, taking up the top slots, pushing genuine SFR novels out of the mix. Do you really think that ladies who enjoy nekkid blue chested alien warrior romance want to read a Dan Brown style of thriller novel about Atlantis and worldwide plagues? Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the books. The Atlantis Gene is a wonderful book. So is the Atlantis Plague. I highly recommend them both.* But they are not SFR!!!!*

So, what's the solution?

Amazon says the solution is to kick out all the smexy books from other categories. What I'm saying >> fair's fair. Get all the non-smexy books out of the smexy categories. And while you're at it, make sure we have all the appropriate subgenres of smexy so its all nicely delineated in the appropriate smexy bestseller lists.


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## TWLuedke (Nov 8, 2013)

Felicia Beasley said:


> Graphic sex and SF/F are not mutually exclusive. Graphic sex does not equal Romance/Erotica. Romance is determined by the percentage of focus on the romantic relationship between characters.
> 
> I feel for the authors who have a more even split between the romance and the speculative elements. In my opinion, you can focus on romantic relationships and still be a fantasy or science fiction book. I mean, what if your story is trying to prevent the end of the world (like a lot of epic fantasy is) but the only way to do so is to work with your worst enemy (focus of the story is on the relationship and how it grows, without it there wouldn't be a story, so a Romance). So you've got this epic story that would appeal to Fantasy readers with a compelling romance (and an HEA) that appeal to Romance readers. With this new change, you'll only be able to reach one set of those readers. (At least through categories on Amazon).


Your example defines some of the best stories ever written. Epic tale. Compelling romance. HEA. These are the stories that make blockbuster films. They have the broadest appeal. How do you decide which direction to market such a book if romantic content is strictly segregated in the category lists?


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## TWLuedke (Nov 8, 2013)

katherinef said:


> Yeah, but it doesn't have any subcategories. And the bestseller list is filled with so many science fiction romance, such as The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller, The Lives of Tao, The Rebirths of Tao, ICE (Dr. Leah Andrews and Jack Hobson Thrillers Book 1), Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega Book 1), and Twilight, which all definitely sound like pure science fiction romance... Oh, wait. No, they don't.  Amazon should be fixing the problems that caused this mess and create more subcategories and more options for readers to find the books they want, and so far it doesn't look like they're doing any of that. Also, using keywords to get into subcategories is annoying because it never works right. You either end up in the wrong subcategory or the keyword doesn't work at all.


Zactly!

Bring on the appropriate romance subcats! Please!


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## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Perry Constantine said:


> What Amazon really needs to do is trash the whole "use the right magic keywords to get in the right subcategories." It's completely senseless. Instead of only giving us two categories to choose from a far-from-expansive list, give us an up-to-date list of all the categories and subcategories and let us choose something like 5-10 from that list.
> 
> That makes it easier for authors to categorize their books and it prevents miscategorization from vague keywords. Also makes it easier to hold those intentionally miscategorizing accountable--hard to claim you "didn't mean to" when it's a specific box you have to tick.


This would be great! Perpahs it would also help reduce some of the ridiculous keyword-stuffing in titles that some authors use to get their books into so many categories. While looking up "Mail Order Bride Historical Romance" for example, I found an author who has over 140 books (short story collections) with subtitles like "_(Amish Romance Highland Romance Mail Order Bride Jewish Romance Contemporary Billionaire Shifter Fantasy Romance)_." Big surprise, each product page shows a huge list of categories. If Amazon were to enforce their own rules about keyword stuffing in titles, they'd eliminate a lot of the miscategorization -- or at the very least, a lot of the deliberate category manipulation and abuse.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Please take a look at the Top 100 list in this category:

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror > Dark Fantasy

If you click on each of the books and look at their primary categories, you'll end up with hundreds of cats. You'll also discover that your definition of Horror is much different than Amazon's. The whole category/search/keyword system is broken. Someone programmed it ten years ago, and they patch it instead of redesigning it. My prediction is that this discussion will still be going on ten years from now.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

Edward M. Grant said:


> It's really not that hard to tell, in most cases. _Taken by the Alien Alpha Barbarian_ is not Military SF just because it's set in space and the barbarian beats up a few people.


I am the only person who just went to look on Amazon thinking that was a real book....?


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

Atunah said:


> I think there is a SF-->romantic. Pretty sure. But in any case, many genres have romantic elements. Does every single book in any other genre that has a romantic element need its own romantic categories? I personally don't think so. If is SFR, it fits in the romance-->SF category. That is where I would look for. That is if I could still use amazon category for browsing.


Again, there is NO category for SF--> Romance. It does not exist. Which is why this problem exists. You don't get to decide what is and isn't SF or Romance. The author does. And enough authors feel that their books are #1 SF and #2 Romance, that they choose SF as one of their main categories and use Romance only for keywords. And will continue to do so unless there is some gatekeeper to stop them. Which might happen, but has not happened yet.

If you're writing this kind of book - either in fantasy or SF, you should just decide if your book would appeal more to romance readers or SF/F readers. And then choose one or the other as categories, then use the other for keywords.

The main problem Amazon is having is that it's very easy to rank in the Top 100 in almost all SF categories compared to Romance. Which is why the romance authors are doing this. They want that Top 100 ranking even if it's a bad move for them. SF authors do this all the time too. They put their SF book into Romance--> SF because that IS a category. And why not? If they have a Romance, do it. I'm not saying it's right (or that it's good for authors), I'm just saying there is a solid logic behind some of the reasoning and it comes from the lack of a SF--> Romance category.

And SF--> Romance and Romance--> SF are NOT the same kind of book. At all.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

AliceW said:


> I am the only person who just went to look on Amazon thinking that was a real book....?


I wager it will be by the end of the week.



PeanutButterCracker said:


> Again, there is NO category for SF--> Romance. It does not exist. Which is why this problem exists. You don't get to decide what is and isn't SF or Romance. The author does. And enough authors feel that their books are #1 SF and #2 Romance, that they choose SF as one of their main categories and use Romance only for keywords. And will continue to do so unless there is some gatekeeper to stop them. Which might happen, but has not happened yet.


PBC is correct, there is no SF > Romance category. I just checked. There's Romance > SF but not SF > Romance.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

AliceW said:


> I am the only person who just went to look on Amazon thinking that was a real book....?


I assumed it would be a real book by now .

But I just took a quick look at the Military SF Top 100, and at least three of the top 20 look like obvious Romance or Erotica books just from the title and cover.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

PeanutButterCracker said:


> Again, there is NO category for SF--> Romance. It does not exist. Which is why this problem exists. You don't get to decide what is and isn't SF or Romance. The author does. And enough authors feel that their books are #1 SF and #2 Romance, that they choose SF as one of their main categories and use Romance only for keywords. And will continue to do so unless there is some gatekeeper to stop them. Which might happen, but has not happened yet.
> 
> If you're writing this kind of book - either in fantasy or SF, you should just decide if your book would appeal more to romance readers or SF/F readers. And then choose one or the other as categories, then use the other for keywords.
> 
> ...


Yes, the one I saw was not SF, but Fantasy. My bad. No reason to take my head off please. 

I stand by what I say though. If it is a romance, SFR, that its a romance. If its a SF with some romantic elements, that does not make it automatically a romance. Many many genres have romantic elements. A thriller with romantic elements is not automatically a romantic suspense, which would be romance. So this goes both ways. SF readers have to deal with SFR being put into SF and SFR readers have to deal with SF being put in SFR. Since fantasy has a romantic sub thingy listed, maybe ask amazon to put one of those also in SF? Or use the filter that Phoenix was talking about. One can checkmark non romantic and romantic while in the SF genre. Now it would help if they made it more prominent.

I just think they are getting so many complaints from SF readers about stuff they don't want to see, they are trying to fix it this way. I don't think its going to work, but its Amazon. They'll figure it out eventually.

And I disagree with only the author deciding what is or isn't a romance. I decide as the reader of such genres.


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## Linn (Feb 2, 2016)

PeanutButterCracker said:


> I'm just saying there is a solid logic behind some of the reasoning and it comes from the lack of a SF--> Romance category.


It looks to me like Romance--> SF is a subcategory of Romance. I'm skeptical that adding SF--> Romance as a subcategory of Science Fiction would solve this problem, because the Science Fiction subcategories aren't mutually exclusive. If you add it like this:

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
--FANTASY
--SCIENCE FICTION
----Alien Invasion
----Colonization
----Military
----ROMANCE
----Space Opera
etc.

&#8230;there is nothing to prevent the Romance books from being listed in the other subcategories as well. However, adding it like this might be a solution:

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE

If that's what you meant, I completely agree. Make it a main category rather than a subcategory.


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## AnnaB (May 14, 2016)

Call me cranky, but as an avid SF/F reader who seldom likes too much romance in their SF/F, I just want the world-building and whatever other speculative elements I fancy at the moment to be what really shine in what I pick up.

So unless the courtship & relationship mores, the gender politics and roles and so on qualify as speculative (think 'The Left Hand of Darkness') and really contribute to convey the world, I don't want the romantic elements to take over the page count.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

AliceW said:


> I am the only person who just went to look on Amazon thinking that was a real book....?


I didn't check because it's not a genre I usually read.  Now we know what your guilty pleasures are.


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## Melisse (Jun 3, 2012)

I think Perry's idea would work. The keywords throw my very romance-y SFR into categories like space opera all the time. I do make sure my covers scream romance in space to make it easier for readers.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> I didn't check because it's not a genre I usually read.  Now we know what your guilty pleasures are.


Oh thats just one of many... throw in some bear shifters and I'd be in guilty pleasure heaven


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## Lisa Blackwood (Feb 1, 2015)

JaclynDolamore said:


> For me that kind of blows. My books are definitely equal parts both: the focus is on the romantic relationships and there is sex. But it doesn't follow a standard romance formula much, the fantasy world is well-developed and there is a developing war and various cultural issues in the background. My number one influence is shoujo manga, the very broad category of manga and anime that usually includes romance but also everything else. And my readers are split between paranormal romance, urban fantasy and high fantasy readers.
> 
> If I must choose, they'll go in fantasy only, but it's too bad.
> 
> ...


I'm in the same boat. My one series is Epic Fantasy Romance and the other is Urban Fantasy Romance. 50:50 Fantasy/romance. My books don't have naked man chest covers. So if amazon pulls out it's tactical nuke, yep, my stuff will be going into the fantasy only subcats because they don't belong with the naked man chests (too much world building/plot vs romance).


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Lisa Blackwood said:


> I'm in the same boat. My one series is Epic Fantasy Romance and the other is Urban Fantasy Romance. 50:50 Fantasy/romance. My books don't have naked man chest covers. So if amazon pulls out it's tactical nuke, yep, my stuff will be going into the fantasy only subcats because they don't belong with the naked man chests (too much world building/plot vs romance).


Having read your stuff, I think your books would definitely fit in both. I'd probably categorize them more as fantasy than romance because though the romance is a big part, the fantasy aspects are also really in-depth.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

I don't read a lot of romance (some, but not a lot), but I do like a good romance in most everything I do read, and I mostly read fantasy. So while I definitely don't want a billionaire shifter alien erotica if I'm looking for a sci-fi or fantasy, I'd hate to see every sci-fi/fantasy book that has a strong romance element shuffled off into the romance category. So I kind of hope that authors who write the kind of stuff I like continue to put things in the SF/F category instead of romance, since they now have to choose. If that annoys people who don't want a scrap of romance in their SF/F, then so be it. Genres are kinda BS anyway. IMO, both romance and horror shouldn't really be considered genres of themselves so much as some kind of check-boxes that can be added to any other genre.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

AnnaB said:


> So unless the courtship & relationship mores, the gender politics and roles and so on qualify as speculative (think 'The Left Hand of Darkness') and really contribute to convey the world, I don't want the romantic elements to take over the page count.


"The Left Hand of Darkness" qualifies. "The Silver Metal Lover" would as well, as do countless others. Readers have a choice, and if there was a genre category SFR alongside SF and F, then things would be easier on readers. That doesn't solve the problem for people who write spec fiction about sexuality, which is a valid spec fiction topic, whether some like it or not.



Atunah said:


> There already is a SFR category.
> ...
> Kindle books -->Romance-->Science Fiction. They been around long before I ever heard of self publishing.


That is not what SFR is to me and what I write. The SF is not circumstantial to these stories, it is integral. The romances and erotica I write there couldn't happen without the speculative background. Neither could be taken out, neither takes the centre place, they are firmly meshed.



Atunah said:


> I stand by what I say though. If it is a romance, SFR, that its a romance. If its a SF with some romantic elements, that does not make it automatically a romance.


Even if there is a fullblown romance in it, that doesn't necessarily mean it is a romance with a scifi tapestry. If you can't take out the sci fi, then the story IS sci fi and belongs there. See above for examples.

I'll add here that very traditionally what I call SFR and write has always been listed under SF, the romance genre already in the 1980s being too narrow for these books, and these days being even worse in that respect. The very fact that SF explores what will happen if technology or the future changes life and existence per se is what makes a story about speculative future sexuality and romance something which doesn't fit the current ideas of the romance genre. There's a reason why, at the time, the Gorean tales for instance ended up firmly in the field of SFF. You couldn't then and wouldn't now mistake them for FSoG, even though the basic tenets are similar.



> And I disagree with only the author deciding what is or isn't a romance. I decide as the reader of such genres.


That shouldn't keep an author from being able to decide what it is that he writes.

Also, this whole discussion hasn't tackled the other end of the problem, which is that where there are romances, there also are erotica. Or at least spec fiction dealing with sexuality in the future or in fantasy. I'll say it again, this is a classic thing, has been so at least since "Dracula", which was rabidly sexual and erotic fare during the Victorian era.

I think there is a need for clearcut main categories, two of which need to be "military SF" and "hard SF". Then people will be satisfied at finding what they look for right there. Personally I am miffed by the extreme amount of military SF clogging up the genre. I do not want to read about military conflicts and would be relieved to not have to wade through those books.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> If only there were something like a checkbox that would filter out those SF books also in romance. Or filter by just those books in both SF and romance.
> 
> If only Amazon had thought to include such a filter for its poplist/navigable categories.
> 
> Oh wait. There already IS such a filter. (Click it and see!)


10 points to Phoenix!

I went to look, thinking that there are no 'remove categories' checkboxes, but there is is, clearly on the sci-if category, you can choose 'non-romantic' (about 3000 titles) or 'romantic' (a few hundred). Clicking non romantic takes all the romantic books out! Seems like the solution is already there!


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Rinelle Grey said:


> 10 points to Phoenix!
> 
> I went to look, thinking that there are no 'remove categories' checkboxes, but there is is, clearly on the sci-if category, you can choose 'non-romantic' (about 3000 titles) or 'romantic' (a few hundred). Clicking non romantic takes all the romantic books out! Seems like the solution is already there!


Where?


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

On the left hand side, under the category list, is a section called 'Refine by Genre'.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Rinelle Grey said:


> On the left hand side, under the category list, is a section called 'Refine by Genre'.


Ha! But this is new, right?


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Lisa Blackwood said:


> I'm in the same boat. My one series is Epic Fantasy Romance and the other is Urban Fantasy Romance. 50:50 Fantasy/romance. My books don't have naked man chest covers. So if amazon pulls out it's tactical nuke, yep, my stuff will be going into the fantasy only subcats because they don't belong with the naked man chests (too much world building/plot vs romance).


There's romance in your books? ::goes searching through Lisa's books looking for naughty bits I missed::


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2017)

Athena Grayson said:


> And here's the thing that we're all overlooking--we are not the Genre Police. Neither is Amazon. One reader's "too much kissy-bits" is another reader's "hey, look, characterization!"


Except the conversation is NOT about "too much kissy-bits." It is about whether or not a novel is a Romance (i.e. the relationship between the hero and heroine is the CENTRAL, DEFINING ASPECT of the story and it ends in a HEA/HFN. There is a fundamental difference between having a "romantic" sub-plot versus actually being a romance novel. GENRE EXISTS FOR A REASON. It helps readers find the types of books they want to read and get a good idea of what to expect when they open the book. Making this about "too much kissy-bits" is insulting to true Romance authors, who know that their work is about more than "too much kissy-bits" and insulting to readers who simply don't like the romance genre.

Deadpool had a "romantic sub-plot." But nobody classifies it as an actual Romance.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2017)

And just to reiterate because some posts seem to be confusing the two:

There is a fundamental and real difference between "romantic" elements and the Romance genre. Romance is a firmly established genre with well-defined reader expectations. A book can have romantic elements and NOT be a Romance. In fact, the majority of novels will have some degree of romantic tension or romantic elements just as a part of writing about people. The mere presence of a romantic element, however, IS NOT THE ISSUE. Nobody is arguing that characters in Sci-fi aren't allowed to have sex.

Just because two characters kiss, that doesn't mean the book is a Romance.
Just because the protagonist is 15, doesn't mean the book is automatically Young Adult.
Just because the protagonist is a female, doesn't mean the book is automatically Women's Fiction.
Just because the protagonist if African-American, doesn't mean the book is automatically African-American Literature.

The mere presence of an element does not automatically mean it should be shoved into a category. Genre matters. This has been one of my long-running pet peeves. People act like they are creating something new when it reality they simply lack a basic understanding of what these genres mean and how they developed. The goal of genre is to help classify works by certain expectations and norms so that readers have a baseline understanding of what they are about to read.

I often use the restaurant analogy because it illustrates the point. If I walk into an Italian restaurant, I have an expectation that I will find Italian cuisine on the menu. If I order spaghetti and the waiter brings me a plate of beef Lo Mein, I'm going to be ticked off. I don't care how good the beef lo mein is or how much other people liked it. _It isn't what I ordered or expected._ Don't look at me and say "Well, beef lo mein technically has a form of pasta in it, so it can sort of be considered spaghetti, too." Don't twist it around like I am a bad customer because you don't know the difference between spaghetti and lo mein.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> And just to reiterate because some posts seem to be confusing the two:
> 
> There is a fundamental and real difference between "romantic" elements and the Romance genre. Romance is a firmly established genre with well-defined reader expectations. A book can have romantic elements and NOT be a Romance. In fact, the majority of novels will have some degree of romantic tension or romantic elements just as a part of writing about people. The mere presence of a romantic element, however, IS NOT THE ISSUE. Nobody is arguing that characters in Sci-fi aren't allowed to have sex.
> 
> snipping the rest


SFF as a genre is much older than romance as a genre. Or the other way around, when SFF was first written with a clear mind for the genre, genre romance didn't exist and instead was still a part of the more encompassing Romance/Romantic Fiction. The genre romance you keep getting all flustered about is something which was born in the 1950s and 1960s and in the beginning exclusively in the USA.

Just because genre romance authors wish to narrow down what they call romance doesn't mean everyone sees it that way. SFR needs not mean an RWA-blinkered version of a category romance with an SF backdrop. You know why? Because long before the RWA even started to blinker romance authors, there were SFF authors who wrote major romantic plots into their scifi, or even hinged the scifi on these sexual, erotic and romantic possibilities they saw in the future. Some of them moved the genre of SF forward doing this, and there's no need to constrain these authors to genre romance only. One major reason why they would be wrong there are the very specific expectations of readers the moment something gets published as genre romance.

This is exactly why there are SFR or Fantasy Romance authors who balk at categorising their books as genre romance. Their books fit the science fiction > romance bracket, and not the romance > science fiction one.

Again, we haven't even talked about where things are about a different take on sexuality and erotic behaviour, instead of about romance. Cecilia Tan's "Velderet" without a question is both scifi and erotica, and not erotica with an SF tapestry.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> And just to reiterate because some posts seem to be confusing the two:
> 
> There is a fundamental and real difference between "romantic" elements and the Romance genre. *Romance is a firmly established genre with well-defined reader expectations.* A book can have romantic elements and NOT be a Romance. In fact, the majority of novels will have some degree of romantic tension or romantic elements just as a part of writing about people. The mere presence of a romantic element, however, IS NOT THE ISSUE. Nobody is arguing that characters in Sci-fi aren't allowed to have sex.


No matter what authors may think, romance readers know what romance is, and will swiftly and mercilessly punish anyone who tries to define it as something different. Yes, you can write anything you wish. You can call it anything you wish. Please don't whine about all the 1 and 2-star reviews.


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## Lisa Blackwood (Feb 1, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> There's romance in your books? ::goes searching through Lisa's books looking for naughty bits I missed::


No graphic naming of parts. But Ishtar's Blade and my In Deception's Shadow series are still romances according to the RWA definition. "Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."

If I was to take out the spec fiction parts, they would still be 'boy meets girl' love stories at their core. And if I took out the love story, they would also still be solid fantasies.

There is no requirement for a romance to have page after page of graphic kissy-bits for it to still be a romance.

And then there's my Gargoyle and Sorceress Urban Fantasy series. Modern day Rural fantasy with central love story spread across the series, with gargoyles and fae and military and elements of horror. Cross-genre much.  It gets readers from both sides of the tracks (Urban Fantasy and PNR. Plus most readers of my other fantasy series go on and read this too.)

So in a nutshell. I agree that Naked Alpha Dragon Shifter Alien Warlord doesn't belong in Space Opera or Military Sci-fi because I'm pretty sure there isn't a lot in the way of Sci-fi tropes in that type of book, but where does that leave some of the other SFR that are 50/50 with strong world-building and space battles and central love story with a HEA?

I agree Amazon needs to clean up the lists, but I think the best way would be to get rid of keywords and just have clearly defined categories. Maybe even check boxes in KDP dashboard that asks some pointed questions about the title's genre and clearly defines genre by giving examples of well know books. Like is your book similar to book A, B, or C? (I know authors could still lie, but it would be nice if there were some checks and balances in the world of Amazon publishing because as it is now, the only way I find new authors to read is by following the trail of also-boughts of my favorite authors or by networking with other authors.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Nic said:


> SFF as a genre is much older than romance as a genre. Or the other way around, when SFF was first written with a clear mind for the genre, genre romance didn't exist and instead was still a part of the more encompassing Romance/Romantic Fiction. The genre romance you keep getting all flustered about is something which was born in the 1950s and 1960s and in the beginning exclusively in the USA.
> 
> Just because genre romance authors wish to narrow down what they call romance doesn't mean everyone sees it that way. SFR needs not mean an RWA-blinkered version of a category romance with an SF backdrop. You know why? Because long before the RWA even started to blinker romance authors, there were SFF authors who wrote major romantic plots into their scifi, or even hinged the scifi on these sexual, erotic and romantic possibilities they saw in the future. Some of them moved the genre of SF forward doing this, and there's no need to constrain these authors to genre romance only. One major reason why they would be wrong there are the very specific expectations of readers the moment something gets published as genre romance.
> 
> ...


I guess its good then if you guys are going to put that stuff into SF and Fantasy and not SFR. SFR is a subgenre of romance. Its really that simple. I get it. I see this a lot. Its often the "I write something that is more than just fluffy romance". This is how this comes across. As if SFR readers only want to read fluffy shifter aliens. As if we can't appreciate world building and brainy themes. 
I think you even brought in FSoG into the conversation which adds to the point I make. SFR doesn't mean it can't have serious tones, deep themes, gritty scenes, very heavy world building. Contrary to popular belief, romance is a huge genre among all subgenres with many varied tones and themes. I love historical romance, I love those with lots of research, lots of grit, depth and all that. I just read one that spend half of the book on the brutal battlefield in Portugal while the French are on their heels. Brutal deaths, just lots of grit. It was a historical romance published by harlequin historical.

So SFR can be as heavy on the world building as the story needs to be. The listing I posted for SFR is there. It doesn't mean what I like reading will be in there. Its not my fault that the alien shifters are at the top of the lists. I don't really see any way to sift through all the listings other than literally spend time to go page by page until the end. But the genre is a real genre. Romance is a real genre. It doesn't matter when it came about. It is.

One example is a book I read. On my quest of finding more SFR, it was recommended as good SFR. I still wasn't 100% convinced as my experience to find actual SFR as suppose to SF with romantic themes has not been good. But it was most promising. I started reading it and it was really a great adventure, great "team" so to speak. Unfortunately, what it wasn't was romance. I wrote a review about it and made it very clear that it is not a romance, even though at the time I bought it it was listed in romance-science fiction. I checked today and its listed now in regular SF-military, but still in romance under adventure. So the categories have changed since I got it.

But the book was a pretty good book overall, but it wasn't what I was sold. There was almost no interaction between the couple as a couple. And no, has nothing to do with sex. Romance does not have to have any of it at all to be romance. This goes for SFR also. But there has to be some furthering of the relationship, has to be believable. In this book they barely look at each other at one point during the adventure and the next scene many pages later they kiss and now apparently they are in love. That was it. Those 3 pages could have been cut out easily and the book would still be exactly the same, a space adventure. Which is what it really was. So that is what I shelved it and that is what I put in my review on it. And there are authors that will say it was romance because technically it had a HFN and a couple in there somewhere. But those are the ones not knowing the difference between the genre itself and any genre having romantic elements of various levels.

Really, Julie puts it much better. But in the end, I only have to look at the mess that the romance category is to know that many authors do not care about genre, don't want to know and basically want to do what they want to do because.

As a reader, it makes it difficult to trust.


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## Kal241 (Jan 11, 2017)

It sounds like we have a case of Author Intent vs. Reader Imposition here. I see a lot of "the readers know what this genre is and no one is going to tell them otherwise," as opposed to "I'm the author and I don't define my work as anything other than what I intended it to be." Arguments like this are bound to cause friction.

On one hand, clearer lines in genres would be nice for readers who are looking for what they want. On the other hand, there are always going to be stories that don't quite fit on either side of the line, and eliminating the middle ground that they typically occupy isn't helping those authors. So who is right in this issue? I haven't the foggiest idea


Spoiler



but it sounds like no one.





brkingsolver said:


> No matter what authors may think, romance readers know what romance is, and will swiftly and mercilessly punish anyone who tries to define it as something different. Yes, you can write anything you wish. You can call it anything you wish. Please don't whine about all the 1 and 2-star reviews.


(Unrelated question, but topical: Why is it that it never seems to matter what the writer wants/thinks? Does only the reader perspective matter? Can we really expect a reader to know the content of a story better than its actual creator?)


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Nic said:


> SFF as a genre is much older than romance as a genre.


Excuse me, but no. Romance is the oldest established literary genre, dating back to the beginning of the modern publishing industry in the 1700's. Presumably, identifying books as romances kept men safe from women's books.

Genre is a creation of the publishing industry, a way of categorizing books being sold. While SFF elements may have existed in stories and narratives for millenia, such fantastical stories had been categorized as general novels. They didn't coalesce into their own genres until the 20th century. If I recall correctly, the industry split out SF in the 1920's and fantasy in the 1960's.

So yes, when Lord of the Rings was published, there was no identifiable fantasy genre. That novel's unexpected success in the 1960's was the impetus for industry creating the fantasy genre. (Get that thing off the bestseller's list.) If you look back at fantasy written in the 40's and 50's, the stories often include just enough SF to wedge the tales into the SF genre because there was no better place. "The Compleat Enchanter" by L. Sprague De Camp is a perfect example of this. So is "The Dragon and the George."


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## mythsnake (Oct 22, 2014)

This has been a very interesting discussion; made me decide to take my one SFR out of the SFF base category and leave it exclusively in the Romance one. I think Amazon could head off a lot of the issues if they would just give a finer granulation to the Romance/Science Fiction category, because indeed looking at the SFR bestseller list is an exercise in frustration. I don't know if JD Robb's stuff is really science fictional at all--from what I remember when she came out with her first book, it was Patricia Cornwell-style crime fiction--but they're all over the place in there, and their covers look really out of place. It would be nice if Amazon at least gave some subcats to the popular themes of the SFR genre: alien warriors, cyborgs and robots, shifter aliens, etc. It would make it easier for readers to find what they're looking for and writers to reach their intended audiences. The category hijacking goes both ways, but in this case, the romance lists seem to be getting the short end of the stick thanks to their lack of granulated subcategories.

I also find the presence of Outlander in the SFR list questionable, and yet there it is anyway.


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## Thevoiceofreason (Jan 28, 2017)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> And just to reiterate because some posts seem to be confusing the two:
> nre is to help classify works by certain expectations and norms so that readers have a baseline understanding of what they are about to read.
> 
> I often use the restaurant analogy because it illustrates the point. If I walk into an Italian restaurant, I have an expectation that I will find Italian cuisine on the menu. If I order spaghetti and the waiter brings me a plate of beef Lo Mein, I'm going to be ticked off. I don't care how good the beef lo mein is or how much other people liked it. _It isn't what I ordered or expected._ Don't look at me and say "Well, beef lo mein technically has a form of pasta in it, so it can sort of be considered spaghetti, too." Don't twist it around like I am a bad customer because you don't know the difference between spaghetti and lo mein.


This. You are my new favorite person. Superhero has a huge problem because almost all the books in it are PNR/UF books. Don't come to me and say "Well they're superheroes to me." They aren't to the vast majority of people looking for superhero fiction. When authors policed themselves Amazon was hands off. Now everyone seems to be concerned about getting #1 in a category regardless of whether the category is right for their book. "Ooh the #1 book in Werewolf beaver mating rituals is 900,000. I'll just throw in my Military Sci-fi because the Captain has a pet beaver...." I understand people's desire to be successful, I really do. This, however, is a case of hurting us all. If people would stop putting their books in inappropriate categories Amazon wouldn't have to do anything. However, once reader experience is hurt you know they're going to come down like a two-ton hammer.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Kal241 said:


> (Unrelated question, but topical: Why is it that it never seems to matter what the writer wants/thinks? Does only the reader perspective matter? Can we really expect a reader to know the content of a story better than its actual creator?)


As I said, you can write what you want and categorize it as you wish. But when you ask people to give you money to read it, they expect truth in advertising, and they define their truth because they are spending their money. If you don't want to be paid, then the reader perspective doesn't matter. Remember the golden rule: She who has the gold makes the rules. You can argue, you can whine, you can try to sell compact cars to cowboys, but when they bypass your Volkswagon for a pickup truck, don't be surprised.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2017)

Kal241 said:


> (Unrelated question, but topical: Why is it that it never seems to matter what the writer wants/thinks? Does only the reader perspective matter? Can we really expect a reader to know the content of a story better than its actual creator?)


You can WRITE whatever you want. But the moment you place a price tag on it, yes, only the customer's perspective should matter to you. This is not a discussion about crimping your creativity. It is a marketing discussion about how to best reach the people most likely to want to spend their hard-earned money on your product.

Indies tend to confuse the act of creation with the act of selling. Write whatever you want. But when it comes time to sell it, make sure you are promoting it in a way that will reach the people most likely to want what you have. Again, my restaurant analogy stands. If you go into a restaurant and order a cheeseburger and the cook decided to give you a veggie burger instead because he was "feeling creative" and you should just eat whatever he gives you, you would not be happy.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

People keep pointing out that older sci-fi had sex in it, but I think the point that's being missed is that those books were sexy as written for men, while romance as a genre is usually sexy as written for women. Which are actually totally different approaches. The former isn't really even romance; most often it's just some dude getting it on with alien chicks because he's the manly hero. Both are a form of romantic/sexual wish fulfillment, but whose wishes they're trying to fulfill is totally different. By allowing the male-focused type of sex/romance in the sci-fi genre (it's mostly sex thrown in to an otherwise sci-fi story) but trying to weed out the female-focused type (where more time is spent on character/relationship-development so that it becomes more central to the story), it's almost like they're reinforcing this incredibly outdated idea that sci-fi is a men's genre and women need to keep their books over there in the women's books section so men don't accidentally stumble on it when they just want some good manly-man alien-chick-banging in between the blowing-stuff-up parts.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

First, sorry to burst a few bubbles, but there are definitely, 100%, without a doubt, books that tick off all of the boxes for SFF AND Romance. 

Just think about it:

Someone goes to war with an AI, and explores the ramifications of interacting with technology developing faster that we can react. That is clearly SF. 

Someone falls in love with a another person who is very different from them, and explores what it means to be human and develop a relationship against overwhelming odds. Clearly Romance. 

Someone falls in love with an AI, and explores the ramifications of interacting with technology developing faster that we can react, and learns what it means to be human while developing a relationship against all odds. That is clearly BOTH. 

And that is with about 2 minutes of thinking. I know I've personally read stories that could be either, and there are plenty more out there. 

Genre is really a convention of the old days, where paper books did not typically exist in a quantum state, and thus could not inhabit space on two different shelves at the same time. So authors (really publishers) were forced to choose a single category, and maybe a subcategory within that. The book was usually placed wherever it was thought it would sell best. 

We don't really have that anymore. So now a book could show up in ANY category.

Don't get me wrong:

THE AMAZON KEYWORD INTO CATEGORY SYSYEM IS BROKEN!

But don't always assume any book YOU see as miscategorized is an example of an unscrupulous author trying to game the system. 

I see this accusation thrown around WAY too often. (And almost exclusively leveled against romance authors.) I thought we were supposed to be supportive of each other. 

No self-respecting romance author is trying to muscle in on your territory. Do you expect them NOT to use magic or aliens or military as keywords when their books are full of them? It is not a romance authors fault that Amazon automatically puts books in categories. Most Romance authors I know would rather not be in categories where their books don't fit. It leads to clashes with reader expectations and poor reviews. But they are also not willing to leave out essential keywords that are invaluable to people who are actually looking for books like theirs. 

Sure, there are some "authors" trying to game the system. There always will be. 

But the issue with categories being a total mess right now is about 90% Amazon's fault for having such a crappy system in place.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Steve Voelker said:


> First, sorry to burst a few bubbles, but there are definitely, 100%, without a doubt, books that tick off all of the boxes for SFF AND Romance.
> 
> Just think about it:
> 
> ...


I continue to be befuddled. The third you listed is SFR. Just like the 2nd one you listed. Do people think that as soon as something is romance its nothing but fluff with wallpaper world building? Sure, some can be. Its the same with historical romance. Some are nothing more than historical wallpaper, others are more in depth and others are very deep and woven into historical events and rich in such historical worlds. Its the same with SFR. They can be a range of anything. As long as they follow the conventions of the genres, they can have themes and story and plot going anywhere.

If its not following the genre convention of romance that it is SF with romantic elements, if it has romantic elements in it.

I guess I am a bit confused. So if the romantic elements have a male gaze its SF, but if those romantic elements have a female gaze its automatically SFR even if its not following the romance genre conventions? This is about the post above the one I quoted, my touch challenged fingers can't get the second quote right.

I think at times this is all made way to complicated for whatever reasons. Part of the issue I think is that many folks think of romance as this one thing as they don't read it. They don't know romance is not all FSOG. Its not all alpha billionaire, its not all just one thing. It can have it all and eat the cake at the same time. Its also not a bad thing if something is actually a SFR. It doesn't somehow make it "less worthy".

No wonder that I have to stick with known authors and publishers that know the genres at times. . Its like Julie says, I go to pay for pizza, I open the box and there is a subway sandwich in there.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Be careful in using history as a guideline. Back in the 20th century, because there were fewer books flying about, romances with SF themes showed up in the SF section as SF books. These were objectively on the romance end of the spectrum, but they didn't flood out the market. (I remember skipping McCaffrey's because they were romances. No big deal. There was lots of other stuff to buy.) Today, the situation is different.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

Atunah said:


> Its also not a bad thing if something is actually a SFR. It doesn't somehow make it "less worthy".


No, and odds are it will sell better than most SF novels. It's just in the wrong place if it's listed under Military SF.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2017)

Steve Voelker said:


> Someone falls in love with an AI, and explores the ramifications of interacting with technology developing faster that we can react, and learns what it means to be human while developing a relationship against all odds. That is clearly


No, it is one or the other depending on the focus of the story. And, of course, assuming we are talking about an AI that is fully self-actualized (not just self-aware, as is generally the case with this type of story). For it to be a romance, both protagonists must be free to fully, of their own desire, commit to the relationship. This would require an AI that is fully self-actualized, not just self-aware or advanced enough to mimic human behavior. IF the AI is fully self-actualized, then the AI is being treated as a full protagonist, not a sci-fi plot device. The focus of the story is on the relationship, not the technology behind the relationship. For it to be sci-fi, the focus would be on the technology and how it impacts humans. Sci-fi isn;t just about science. it is about how advanced scientific discovers can impact humanity and civilization. In short, the decision point becomes is the AI merely a stand-in for being in a relationship with someone from a different social/economic/religious/cultural community? Or is the AI representative of the greater discussion of what defines humanity?

Sci-fi tends to ask the "big questions." Romances tend to focus on the personal relationship. You can set up all of the arbitrary scenarios you want, but at the end you have to look at the full body of literary history and drill down to what is the actual purpose of a story. What is the overall message being conveyed? At the end of the story, what was the underlying message the author was establishing? Is the underlying message that love conquers all? Romance. Is the underlying message that technological advances can create non-organic life, and what does that mean to humans? Sci-Fi.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Edward M. Grant said:


> No, and odds are it will sell better than most SF novels. It's just in the wrong place if it's listed under Military SF.


And I wouldn't find it there in the SF section if I am looking for SFR. Assuming of course it is actually SFR and not SF with romantic elements, which of course is not SFR. Otherwise, military SF would be the right place.

Which is really what genres are. And they are still very much alive, no matter how much some authors want to abolish them. I want to know what I am getting when I buy something. I am not into buying mystery boxes. I am also an adult and I know what I like and what I don't like. Just like any other product where I know what I get. I go to the store and things are in isles. There is a reason for that. Else I'll be spending hours hunting down everything I need. That is what genres are. I know where to go for the product I am looking for today. Tomorrow I might want something else, so I go and get it. From the proper isle.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

As a rough rule, if a book would sell more in the SF section, it's SF, and if it would sell more in the romance section, it's romance. If that doesn't clarify things, then ask yourself: which would hurt more, cutting out the romance category or the SF category?


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> And just to reiterate because some posts seem to be confusing the two:
> 
> There is a fundamental and real difference between "romantic" elements and the Romance genre. Romance is a firmly established genre with well-defined reader expectations. A book can have romantic elements and NOT be a Romance. In fact, the majority of novels will have some degree of romantic tension or romantic elements just as a part of writing about people. The mere presence of a romantic element, however, IS NOT THE ISSUE. Nobody is arguing that characters in Sci-fi aren't allowed to have sex.
> 
> ...


100% I love this post. Nothing else to add here!


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I hate to throw a sexist note in here, but are there any women arguing about what Romance is or is not, or have a problem differentiating between SFR and SF with a bit of romance?

(Not saying all men don't get it, obviously some posters do. Just asking if there are any women who don't.)


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Shawna Canon said:


> People keep pointing out that older sci-fi had sex in it, but I think the point that's being missed is that those books were sexy as written for men, while romance as a genre is usually sexy as written for women. Which are actually totally different approaches. The former isn't really even romance; most often it's just some dude getting it on with alien chicks because he's the manly hero.


Andre Norton was not a man and inspired a generation of SFF authors of female provenance including Ursula LeGuin author of The Left of Darkness. Neither of them were writing romances, but neither were they willing to stick to writing children's stories as that is what the male commissioning editors thought that women should be restricted to. Norton also wrote the first sci-fi book I ever read (The Last Planet) although it was from her more childrens writing focused days (the book was in the childrens section of the library and I was 7 or 8 at the time).

Whether something is a romance has nothing to do with gaze and everything to do with the plot drivers. Someone mentioned the Tao series above. It has a burgeoning romance at its heart but its not a romance as the climax is not the romance. The same couple appear in two further volumes so it is clearly not a romance as two thirds of the series is about an established couple. That would not stop Amazon spiders deciding it was a romance, after all Kobo decided by short about domestic violence was a romance, presumably because the word husband appeared in the blurb.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Atunah said:


> I continue to be befuddled. The third you listed is SFR. Just like the 2nd one you listed.


Wait. What?
The second example had literally NO speculative element in in whatsoever. I'm pretty sure two people falling in love is just Romance. 

What I'm saying is:

If you have a hard and fast list of things that a book must be to be considered Romance, and you also have a hard and fast list of things a book must be to be considered SFF, I can guarantee you there are books that tick off every box on BOTH lists.

It doesn't mean that a great deal of the books people are complaining about aren't miscategorized. Just that there are definitely books that deserve a home on both lists.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Atunah said:


> Which is really what genres are. And they are still very much alive, no matter how much some authors want to abolish them. I want to know what I am getting when I buy something. I am not into buying mystery boxes. I am also an adult and I know what I like and what I don't like. Just like any other product where I know what I get. I go to the store and things are in isles. There is a reason for that. Else I'll be spending hours hunting down everything I need. That is what genres are. I know where to go for the product I am looking for today. Tomorrow I might want something else, so I go and get it. From the proper isle.


This, exactly right.

I just got home from the grocery store. I went to buy canned coconut milk. It has always been in the aisle with the rest of the canned milk (evaporated, condensed, goat, etc.), been there for years, logical place to put it. Today it wasn't there, not even a slot for it that was just out of stock.

I stopped at customer service to ask if they had discontinued carrying canned coconut milk. No, they told me, it is still here but we moved it to health foods because it is a gluten free item. I asked if they would be moving all the canned meats, vegetables, etc. to "health foods" because they are all gluten free. Of course not, and they will be moving the canned coconut milk back to its logical location and those looking for it will know again where to find it. The genre is canned milk, the subgenre coconut > gluten free, not the other way around.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Douglas Milewski said:


> Excuse me, but no. Romance is the oldest established literary genre, dating back to the beginning of the modern publishing industry in the 1700's. Presumably, identifying books as romances kept men safe from women's books.


Romantic fiction yes. I already said so, and it is far, far older than the 1700s. Genre romance, no. This is a very new genre which came to life in the 1950s and 1960s in the USA.

No one wrote romance according to the tropes and genre definitions of the RWA in the 18th century, nor for that matter in Ancient Greece. Pre 1950s romance featured no necessity of a HEA or HFN, quite a few couples ended up dead or forever apart. Tragedy was very much part of romantic fiction before 1950s.

The fantasy genre is quite a few decades, actually a few centuries older than Tolkien.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Sci-fi tends to ask the "big questions." Romances tend to focus on the personal relationship. You can set up all of the arbitrary scenarios you want, but at the end you have to look at the full body of literary history and drill down to what is the actual purpose of a story.


And you can keep stating your opinion like it is a fact all you want, but I still firmly believe that is it possible for a book to ask the big questions and also focus on the personal relationships.

Which one is more prevalent would really be a matter of personal preference.

In fact, I bet you could find books that some readers would consider mainly Romance, while other readers would swear they were more SFF. Because all readers are not the same. Crazy, right?

I even think there are cases where you could put a starship on the cover and give a book a scifi blurb, and have it be well received in Scfi, then take the EXACT same book, rewrite the blurb and put a shirtless alien on the cover, and have it do equally well in Romance.

Don't get me wrong, the VAST majority of books with SFF and Romance elements clearly belong in one or the other. My only point was that making them mutually exclusive was not going to be the right call 100% of the time.

As for the restaurant analogy. It holds up most of the time. But I once ate in a Chinese restaurant that served Mexican Pizza. It was delicious. 

But seriously, it works with the idea that people browse by category. But a lot of people enter what they are looking for right into the search bar. Amazon is like the second biggest search engine, after google. If people don't use certain keywords out of fear of being miscategorized, then their books might not be found by people searching this way.

To run with the food thing - One of the best places to get Mexican food in my area is a pizza place operated by a Mexican family. If I were just browsing by restaurant names, I would never know about it. But thanks to GrubHub, when I search for enchiladas, there they are. And when I search for Pizza, there they are. Because they do both. Well.

Authors want their books to be found. So they use keywords and blurbs that mention ALL of the elements of the book. That way, if someone is looking for that, they will find it.

The way the Amazon categories are set up right now clashes with this sort of thinking. Books are ending up in all sorts of categories where they don't belong.

Amazon needs to fix it.

Let us choose our categories. At least then, if an author is out of their lane, you know they did it on purpose!


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Nic said:


> Romantic fiction yes. I already said so, and it is far, far older than the 1700s. Genre romance, no. This is a very new genre which came to life in the 1950s and 1960s in the USA.
> 
> No one wrote romance according to the tropes and genre definitions of the RWA in the 18th century, nor for that matter in Ancient Greece. Pre 1950s romance featured no necessity of a HEA or HFN, quite a few couples ended up dead or forever apart. Tragedy was very much part of romantic fiction before 1950s.


I think that's a false distinction, Nic. You can see many of the tropes of modern genre romance in old romances. Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_ is pretty much the platonic ideal of genre romance, and the roots go back through Richardson's _Pamela_. At that point, we're near the birth of the novel as a form. You're right that many earlier works are romantic rather than romances, but the genre itself in its currently recognizable form is present way back. The genre's become so popular in the intervening years that it's now produced at very high rates, but those early examples gave it its shape. The only way I can see of separating out works like _P&P_ and _Pamela _is to claim they're literary fiction and thus cannot be classified with a genre romance, but that's just a fancy way of saying they can't be genre romance because they're good.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

brkingsolver said:


> No matter what authors may think, romance readers know what romance is, and will swiftly and mercilessly punish anyone who tries to define it as something different. Yes, you can write anything you wish. You can call it anything you wish. Please don't whine about all the 1 and 2-star reviews.


The genre (category) romance audience and the audience of SFR and spec romance are not necessarily the same, just as there has been a shift of readership with m/m. There as well you get readers not belonging to the typical genre romance audience.

A lot of readers of SFR and spec romance come from the fanfiction and nerdy crowd, their expectations are at least off at a tangent, if not downright different. They tend to be accepting far more of non-HEA romances and atypical romances.



Kal241 said:


> It sounds like we have a case of Author Intent vs. Reader Imposition here. I see a lot of "the readers know what this genre is and no one is going to tell them otherwise," as opposed to "I'm the author and I don't define my work as anything other than what I intended it to be." Arguments like this are bound to cause friction.


That's at least in the case of what I am talking about so because I am not talking about the readers represented by Atunah. I do not write my SFR and spec romance for category romance readers. I would not sell well if I declared my stories to be romance with some SF background. However, they also aren't SF with just "romantic elements" either. They'd still not be to the taste of genre romance readers.



Shawna Canon said:


> By allowing the male-focused type of sex/romance in the sci-fi genre (it's mostly sex thrown in to an otherwise sci-fi story) but trying to weed out the female-focused type (where more time is spent on character/relationship-development so that it becomes more central to the story), it's almost like they're reinforcing this incredibly outdated idea that sci-fi is a men's genre and women need to keep their books over there in the women's books section so men don't accidentally stumble on it when they just want some good manly-man alien-chick-banging in between the blowing-stuff-up parts.


You are right, in part. However, there always also were the stories of authors like LeGuin, Zimmer-Bradley, McCaffrey or Lee. They were ranged as SFF/spec without even the slightest protest at the time, and this should continue to be so.



Edward M. Grant said:


> That's what we call 'sci-fi'.
> 
> That's what we call 'romance'.


Let's see a few definitions by those who I trust more in giving good ones, and what can be noted is that none of these exclude romantic plots:

Robert A. Heinlein, 1947: "Let's gather up the bits and pieces and define the Simon-pure science fiction story: 1. The conditions must be, in some respect, different from here-and-now, although the difference may lie only in an invention made in the course of the story. 2. The new conditions must be an essential part of the story. 3. The problem itself--the "plot"--must be a human problem. 4. The human problem must be one which is created by, or indispensably affected by, the new conditions. 5. And lastly, no established fact shall be violated, and, furthermore, when the story requires that a theory contrary to present accepted theory be used, the new theory should be rendered reasonably plausible and it must include and explain established facts as satisfactorily as the one the author saw fit to junk. It may be far-fetched, it may seem fantastic, but it must not be at variance with observed facts, i.e., if you are going to assume that the human race descended from Martians, then you've got to explain our apparent close relationship to terrestrial anthropoid apes as well."

Isaac Asimov, 1975: "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology."

Christopher Evans, 1988: "Perhaps the crispest definition is that science fiction is a literature of 'what if?' What if we could travel in time? What if we were living on other planets? What if we made contact with alien races? And so on. The starting point is that the writer supposes things are different from how we know them to be."

Arthur C. Clarke, 2000: "Science fiction is something that could happen - but you usually wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though you often only wish that it could."



Douglas Milewski said:


> Be careful in using history as a guideline. Back in the 20th century, because there were fewer books flying about, romances with SF themes showed up in the SF section as SF books. These were objectively on the romance end of the spectrum, but they didn't flood out the market. (I remember skipping McCaffrey's because they were romances. No big deal. There was lots of other stuff to buy.) Today, the situation is different.


It can be argued that McCaffrey wrote "space fantasy" instead of scifi, though space opera would cover most of her oeuvre. She didn't write romance with SF elements however, her books fall under SFF.



Edward M. Grant said:


> No, and odds are it will sell better than most SF novels. It's just in the wrong place if it's listed under Military SF.


Only if indeed what you have is a genre romance with SF elements. If it is a spec story which also happens to be romance, then it belongs under SFF and would disappoint the genre romance readers.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Just curious if this is being enforced, as I just created a new book to see if there are any error prompts, and it allowed me to add it to both categories via KDP without any error messages. I also noticed one of Bella Forrest's new books is in various genres. (Romance, Mystery Thriller Suspense, & Science Fiction & Fantasy) 


> > Look for Similar Items by Category
> > Books > Romance > Action & Adventure
> > Books > Romance > Science Fiction
> > Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Adventure
> > ...


Has anyone been smacked down yet? I went ahead & made sure all of my books were listed correctly, but if I hadn't seen this thread here on KBoards I wouldn't have known it was a new thing. Thanks to the OP for posting.

As for the rest of the thread, yeah, I'm glad Amazon is trying to set some limits. I just wish they would set them for all books and all genres, not just books that are categorized as Romance. Many, many books on Amazon are grossly mis-categorized. It's not just Romance. Non-romance books are put into Romance categories all the time, and it annoys the crap outta me when I've been reading what I thought was a Romance and I never get any HAE or HFN.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> I think that's a false distinction, Nic. You can see many of the tropes of modern genre romance in old romances. Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_ is pretty much the platonic ideal of genre romance, and the roots go back through Richardson's _Pamela_. At that point, we're near the birth of the novel as a form. You're right that many earlier works are romantic rather than romances, but the genre itself in its currently recognizable form is present way back. The genre's become so popular in the intervening years that it's now produced at very high rates, but those early examples gave it its shape. The only way I can see of separating out works like _P&P_ and _Pamela _is to claim they're literary fiction and thus cannot be classified with a genre romance, but that's just a fancy way of saying they can't be genre romance because they're good.


Current genre romance used to be a *small part* of Romantic fiction and the romantic movements. So yes, of course there are tropes you can recognise, but Austen didn't write genre romance according to modern RWA rules and how genre romance is currently understood. And I'll give you the Bronte sisters, who also wrote Romantic fiction, as did for instance Thomas Hardy. I doubt you'll call "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" a genre romance, or "Wuthering Heights".

Earlier romantic fiction includes such works as "Don Quixotte" or "Tristan and Iseult". In the first the couple never comes together, in the other they die, yet both firmly belong to the literary genre of "Romantic Fiction".

The point in this is that we are not talking of the exact same things, and there is no reason why we should. I'm arguing that there is no need to foist a spec version of romance onto genre romance readers. It should stay where it belongs, which is SFF and spec. I also don't at all mind having genre romance straddling the genres in SFF, as I'm not hellbent on "cleansing" SFF of anything but hard Scifi, military Scifi and epic fantasy as some of the other men here seem to be. I'm mainly against miscategorisation.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Nic said:


> The genre (category) romance audience and the audience of SFR and spec romance are not necessarily the same, just as there has been a shift of readership with m/m. There as well you get readers not belonging to the typical genre romance audience.


There is no such thing as a typical genre romance reader.



> A lot of readers of SFR and spec romance come from the fanfiction and nerdy crowd, their expectations are at least off at a tangent, if not downright different. They tend to be accepting far more of non-HEA romances and atypical romances.


If it doesn't have a HEA/HFN, its not a genre romance, period. A lot of SFR readers also come from the romance community, which by the way also reads other genres, always has. Love Swept had a line back when with many SFR, fantasy romance, etc. There was also a line called Time Swept for time travel stuff. Those go back to the 90's.



> That's at list in the case of what I am talking about so because I am not talking about the readers represented by Atunah. I do not write my SFR and spec romance for category romance readers.


I am not a category romance reader. I have no idea where you got that image from. Trying to stuff me into some corner? No clue. I read actually very little category romance. Again, romance is huge. Those of us that read it know all these things.

There seems to be this need to put us romance readers into these neat boxes. We read a lot of genres, we don't just read one kind of romance, we don't just read category. We don't just read fluffy McFluffy. Our brains can handle quite a bit I promise.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> As I said, you can write what you want and categorize it as you wish. But when you ask people to give you money to read it, they expect truth in advertising, and they define their truth because they are spending their money. If you don't want to be paid, then the reader perspective doesn't matter. Remember the golden rule: She who has the gold makes the rules. You can argue, you can whine, you can try to sell compact cars to cowboys, but when they bypass your Volkswagon for a pickup truck, don't be surprised.


THIS. So much this.

Recognize that this is a market. In a market, people exchange money for commodities. They will return their merchandise for a refund if they think they've been conned with a fake or if their gadget doesn't work the way it promised in the ads. Books are commodities. There are categories and genres for a reason -- so that buyers can find what they're looking for.

Label your book appropriately or you will never sell and if you do, you will get a lot of returns and complaints.

It's really that simple.

The rest of the debate about the history of romance and genre and what was there first is all academic.


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

Many of my favorite stories in Science Fiction and Fantasy are those where the protagonist had a romantic interest in the story. I want my heroes to have something more in the game than themselves as their focus. On the other hand, I don't want that to be the sole focus in the story.

A very long time ago, I remember picking up a book in the SF/F section of the library that was anything but SF. Instead of two astronauts finding love in space, it was a romance story between two people involved with the space program. I was looking for an adventure story, not a romance with the space program in the background. As a young teenager, I had no interest in characters emptying boxes of tissues filled with angst over why X didn't show up for dinner. Worse, the story was very much Rated-G. Had it at least been Rated-R, I probably would have found it less boring. I let the librarian know, and the book was moved to the Romance section of the library. (Where I am willing to bet it floundered because Romance readers would have assumed it a was a Sci-Fi space adventure instead of rocket scientists in love.)

For this, I fully understand Amazon's move to clean house. I think readers of either genre would object as strongly to a book that was a stealth deposit in the wrong genre.

That being said, there is a strong case to be said about those books that do stand astride both genres. The author is going to have to take a good hard look at the story and draw a line of distinction about what the book is. Did the author write the story to be a romance? Or was it intended to be a science fiction? My measure would be does the plot focus more on the romance or more on the action in the story. That would decide it for me. If the two were so well intertwined, then I would farm it out to some friends as beta readers to get their opinion on it. If both groups (R vs. SF) come back and say, "No, it is the other genre," then I know I have failed and I have to retool the story.

If both groups reject it because they feel it belongs in the other genre, then it won't do well at all in either category. In this case, the story has to be retooled to make it more palatable to the readers of whichever genre I want to target. If you try to push it out and neither R nor SF readers like it, then you are screwed as an author; the book will never do well.

If both groups came back to me and said, "Yes, it belongs in this genre," then I will know I have successfully penned a masterpiece! At that point, yes, push it out to both groups. The book will do well no matter what. (Please note: this is obviously a rare circumstance.)

Getting back to having to retool the book to appeal to one or the other genre, this is where the author has to sit back and think for a while. Honestly, Romance has a bigger chance of selling more than Science Fiction---it's the biggest money earner of all the genres. Given the choices, it would be better to tweak the story to appeal more to Romance readers than science fiction. But if you really wanted a science fiction rating, then you'll have to take the focus of the story off the relationship between the protagonists and push it more to the events going on around them.

In the end, after giving it some thought, I agree and accept Amazon's move. But I hope they keep a sub-genre for speculative fiction that deals with romantic relationships.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Atunah said:


> And I wouldn't find it there in the SF section if I am looking for SFR. Assuming of course it is actually SFR and not SF with romantic elements, which of course is not SFR. Otherwise, military SF would be the right place.


I put my SFR in the SFF genre at least in part to avoid that someone like you, who very obviously is a genre romance reader, doesn't find them. You aren't my audience, even though my books have a central relationship plot and usually end in a HFN of sorts. You'd hate my take on relationships, as would most genre romance readers with the possible exception of LGBT readers. This is why I keep saying that it is nonsense to move such books from spec to genre romance.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Nic said:


> I put my SFR in the SFF genre at least in part to avoid that someone like you, who very obviously is a genre romance reader, doesn't find them. You aren't my audience, even though my books have a central relationship plot and usually end in a HFN of sorts. You'd hate my take on relationships, as would most genre romance readers with the possible exception of LGBT readers. This is why I keep saying that it is nonsense to move such books from spec to genre romance.


I am a genre romance reader, I am a genre historical fiction reader, I am a genre urban fantasy reader, I am a genre mystery reader. I am a reader of various genres. I have even been known to read some SF genre. Mostly a genre reader, yes.

Sexual orientation has nothing to do if something is romance or not. Not sure where that came from out of the blue. A romance is a romance. If its f/m, m/m, f/f, m/m/f, m/f/m, etc. As long as they follow the very simple to understand and very broad convention of the romance genre, they are romance. Doesn't mean all romance readers will read all themes and settings and plots. As any genre reader, most of us have some preferences to that. We get to pick within the genre what we want to read. Its a huge genre. I think I mentioned this a few times.

I think I have realized that its just futile to have these discussions about what is or isn't romance with folks that don't know the genre, but have some image in their head what the genre is and more importantly, what its readers are. And I find that no matter what one says, those stereotypes and preconceived notions are stuck, not to be moved.

So I'll continue to do what it is I do, read. And I will continue to report, review books that are not what they are sold as to me and I will continue to do this info sharing with other readers. Because we know.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Atunah said:


> I am a genre romance reader, I am a genre historical fiction reader, I am a genre urban fantasy reader, I am a genre mystery reader. I am a reader of various genres. I have even been known to read some SF genre. Mostly a genre reader, yes.
> 
> Sexual orientation has nothing to do if something is romance or not. Not sure where that came from out of the blue. A romance is a romance. If its f/m, m/m, f/f, m/m/f, m/f/m, etc. As long as they follow the very simple to understand and very broad convention of the romance genre, they are romance. Doesn't mean all romance readers will read all themes and settings and plots. As any genre reader, most of us have some preferences to that. We get to pick within the genre what we want to read. Its a huge genre. I think I mentioned this a few times.
> 
> ...


I'll just keep nodding in agreement with Atunah.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Atunah said:


> There is no such thing as a typical genre romance reader.


You can't have your cake and eat it too. The typical genre romance reader wants to read a typical genre romance.



> If it doesn't have a HEA/HFN, its not a genre romance, period. A lot of SFR readers also come from the romance community, which by the way also reads other genres, always has. Love Swept had a line back when with many SFR, fantasy romance, etc. There was also a line called Time Swept for time travel stuff. Those go back to the 90's.


That's what the excursion to what is romantic fiction was, further above. SFR doesn't need or have to be genre romance, because it isn't filed as genre romance, it is filed as SFF. That's why at least a part of us writers of SFR and SF erotica want to stay right where we are, and not be thrown in with genre romance, where we do not belong!

This has worked for me now for quite a while, and even though I am not trying to make a living on it, it has recently bought me a nice enough car.



> I am not a category romance reader. I have no idea where you got that image from. Trying to stuff me into some corner? No clue. I read actually very little category romance.


Make it "category and genre romance", and you're fine.



> There seems to be this need to put us romance readers into these neat boxes. We read a lot of genres, we don't just read one kind of romance, we don't just read category. We don't just read fluffy McFluffy. Our brains can handle quite a bit I promise.


As you do not cease stating, your brain can't handle romantic fiction or the kind of spec romance I write. So why do you insist that books like mine are SFR and need to be filed as genre romance?

Why m/m? Because there are a lot of m/m and LGBT romances which don't feature a HEA, have barely a HFN or are outright bittersweet, and contain tropes the majority of genre romance readers hate. Such as cheating for instance. The currently fastest growing area of m/m are non-genre romance, either original fiction or fanfiction.

We are talking of different things. I'm not even arguing that anything under the romance category isn't romance. I'm simply stating that SFR needs not be romance as understood by genre romance readers. That's all. The curious part in this discussion is that I do not even want to be part of the genre romance category, but you seem to be angry that this isn't the case.


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## smw (Mar 9, 2015)

sela said:


> THIS. So much this.
> 
> Recognize that this is a market. In a market, people exchange money for commodities. They will return their merchandise for a refund if they think they've been conned with a fake or if their gadget doesn't work the way it promised in the ads. Books are commodities. There are categories and genres for a reason -- so that buyers can find what they're looking for.
> 
> ...


This forum really needs a "Like" button so I can keep hitting it for posts like this.

IMHO, it doesn't matter what we as writers think about the particular minute facets of our work. It matters what the reader would think when they buy it.

The restaurant food example was very good.

Movies and TV are another good example. According to the standards put forth in some of the posts here, "The X-Files" could be considered a romance series. That is, of course, ridiculous, because while there is a pair whose romance develops over time and it has a HEA ending (HFN/HFTM if you count the later movie), that is not the *focus* of the show at all. Putting that show in a "Romance" listing would result in some very unhappy consumers.

Sure, there are gray area films (I'd be interested to hear what Romance readers think of the remake of "The Thomas Crown" affair -- the one with Pierce Brosnan --, which is often billed as a crime thriller / heist movie but to me is very clearly a romance movie wearing a thriller overcoat), but, overall, one can't go wrong with thinking about "what would a typical genre reader think of my work" and letting that guide the categorization. If your work *does* actually cross genres in a successful way, that's something your readership will spread all on their own for you.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Nic said:


> You can't have your cake and eat it too.


Why not?



Nic said:


> The typical genre romance reader wants to read a typical genre romance.


And that's all they are allowed to read?

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

crebel said:


> I'll just keep nodding in agreement with Atunah.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2017)

Steve Voelker said:


> As for the restaurant analogy. It holds up most of the time. But I once ate in a Chinese restaurant that served Mexican Pizza. It was delicious.


I suspect, however, you did not order the chicken lo mein and have them expect you to eat the pizza while insisting it was, in fact, lo mein...


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Atunah said:


>


I'll agree with Atunah as well . . . she has chocolate.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Nic said:


> Current genre romance used to be a *small part* of Romantic fiction and the romantic movements. So yes, of course there are tropes you can recognise, but Austen didn't write genre romance according to modern RWA rules and how genre romance is currently understood. And I'll give you the Bronte sisters, who also wrote Romantic fiction, as did for instance Thomas Hardy. I doubt you'll call "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" a genre romance, or "Wuthering Heights".
> 
> Earlier romantic fiction includes such works as "Don Quixotte" or "Tristan and Iseult". In the first the couple never comes together, in the other they die, yet both firmly belong to the literary genre of "Romantic Fiction".


I can agree with this. I might say that what we think of as romance used to be a small part of a huge body of romantic fiction, but romance became more and more popular, and now the preponderance of romantic fiction is romance, though the larger umbrella still includes stuff that isn't -- the Nicholas Sparks of the world, any number of literary novels, etc.


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## Kessie Carroll (Jan 15, 2014)

I knew the Sci-fi categories were full of miscategorized books, but Children's, too? I'm glad Amazon finally woke up and smelled the coffee. I'd hate to let my kids hunt for books to read and have to wade through Billionaire Shifter whatever.

I've noticed that their review system is getting more and more specific (is it well written, what's the pacing, etc.). It's been that way for the last year, so I figured there was a big shakeup coming in the way the search engine works.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Ann in Arlington said:


> I'll agree with Atunah as well . . . she has chocolate.


Er ... never mind what I was just saying ...


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Nic said:


> Current genre romance used to be a *small part* of Romantic fiction and the romantic movements. So yes, of course there are tropes you can recognise, but Austen didn't write genre romance according to modern RWA rules and how genre romance is currently understood. And I'll give you the Bronte sisters, who also wrote Romantic fiction, as did for instance Thomas Hardy. I doubt you'll call "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" a genre romance, or "Wuthering Heights".


I think that we (not just you) keep conflating "Romance", the selling category (genre), with "romance", the novel descriptor (not genre). They're two separate things. "Romance" the genre is used to put an HEA novel in front of eager readers who want to find HEA novels. It's entirely a buying/selling convention. The "romance" descriptor covers all the permutations of romance.


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## aimeeeasterling (Sep 22, 2014)

ebbrown said:


> Just curious if this is being enforced, as I just created a new book to see if there are any error prompts, and it allowed me to add it to both categories via KDP without any error messages. I also noticed one of Bella Forrest's new books is in various genres. (Romance, Mystery Thriller Suspense, & Science Fiction & Fantasy)
> 
> Has anyone been smacked down yet? I went ahead & made sure all of my books were listed correctly, but if I hadn't seen this thread here on KBoards I wouldn't have known it was a new thing. Thanks to the OP for posting.
> 
> As for the rest of the thread, yeah, I'm glad Amazon is trying to set some limits. I just wish they would set them for all books and all genres, not just books that are categorized as Romance. Many, many books on Amazon are grossly mis-categorized. It's not just Romance. Non-romance books are put into Romance categories all the time, and it annoys the crap outta me when I've been reading what I thought was a Romance and I never get any HAE or HFN.


At least in regards to fantasy and romance crossovers, it's been enforced for months...but possibly sporadically? My Moon Magic box set includes both PNR and UF, so we tried to put it in both fantasy and romance. But Amazon wouldn't list the former in the ebook store once we put our ebook in the latter. (It still shows up in both under "Books", which combines paperbacks and ebooks.) So we took out the romance category and used a different secondary category instead.


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## CJArcher (Jan 22, 2011)

I don't see anyone mentioning how iBooks get around this problem. When I upload my book to Apple, I choose 5 categories but my book will only be BROWSABLE in the store via the top-most category I chose. It can still appear as a "new" or "hot" book on the main promotional pages of categories 2 to 5 and I can still include it in promos (if asked) for categories 2 to 5 but for browsing the top-selling lists, it's only visible in the first category. So my book could be #1 in the entire store, but will only appear as #1 in the Fantasy category if I chose Fantasy as my primary category, not #1 in the Romance category even though Romance sub-cats were my second, third and fourth choices. It forces authors to think long and hard about the primary category. 

Would this solve Amazon's problem? Or make it worse?


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

CJArcher said:


> I don't see anyone mentioning how iBooks get around this problem. When I upload my book to Apple, I choose 5 categories but my book will only be BROWSABLE in the store via the top-most category I chose. It can still appear as a "new" or "hot" book on the main promotional pages of categories 2 to 5 and I can still include it in promos (if asked) for categories 2 to 5 but for browsing the top-selling lists, it's only visible in the first category. So my book could be #1 in the entire store, but will only appear as #1 in the Fantasy category if I chose Fantasy as my primary category, not #1 in the Romance category even though Romance sub-cats were my second, third and fourth choices. It forces authors to think long and hard about the primary category.
> 
> Would this solve Amazon's problem? Or make it worse?


It would take a team of engineers thousands of man hours to make it worse.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

aimeeeasterling said:


> At least in regards to fantasy and romance crossovers, it's been enforced for months...but possibly sporadically? My Moon Magic box set includes both PNR and UF, so we tried to put it in both fantasy and romance. But Amazon wouldn't list the former in the ebook store once we put our ebook in the latter. (It still shows up in both under "Books", which combines paperbacks and ebooks.) So we took out the romance category and used a different secondary category instead.


I had no idea about this rule myself. I uploaded a new preorder a week ago and chose the same 2 categories as I always choose: Romance > Fantasy, and Fantasy > General. So it's in both. And a day before this thread was started, I contacted customer support to request Romance > Paranormal since the hero is a vampire...they added that one too, no problem. They're still there, so I guess we'll see how that pans out.



WDR said:


> That being said, there is a strong case to be said about those books that do stand astride both genres. The author is going to have to take a good hard look at the story and draw a line of distinction about what the book is. Did the author write the story to be a romance? Or was it intended to be a science fiction? My measure would be does the plot focus more on the romance or more on the action in the story. That would decide it for me. If the two were so well intertwined, then I would farm it out to some friends as beta readers to get their opinion on it. If both groups (R vs. SF) come back and say, "No, it is the other genre," then I know I have failed and I have to retool the story.


I'm confused by some of these definitions of fantasy, that it must be based around a bunch of magic and action. I mean, MOST are, yes, but what about something like Sharon Shinn's The Safe-Keepers Series? I haven't read them in a few years, but they were all set in a cozy little fantasy-ish town and revolved around small scale interpersonal relationships and village life with some magical ramifications considered but not much action that I can recall. They weren't romantic though, or at least not every book in the series. But I don't know what else you'd call them besides fantasy... And on that note, I don't know why you can't have a legitimate fantasy novel that focuses on a romantic relationship and pleases readers of both genres. I would hate for anyone who read this thread to think they should tool their novel not to straddle these genres, because I can tell you from my own experience that the market for books that fit squarely between fantasy and romance, like mine and Lisa's, is a very healthy market and they love having some of each. Many many of my reviews comment on the romance AND the world-building and themes etc.

I do agree with you though, that the simplest way to handle this is just to give fantasy and science-fiction a romance subcategory.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

JaclynDolamore said:


> I'm confused by some of these definitions of fantasy, that it must be based around a bunch of magic and action.


My books don't have any magic, but they do include psychic talents. Depending on who you talk to, they are either science fiction or fantasy. Right now one of the books shows this for categories:

#38 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Metaphysical & Visionary
#70 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Metaphysical & Visionary

My also boughts are almost all urban fantasy or PNR.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Rinelle Grey said:


> 10 points to Phoenix!
> 
> I went to look, thinking that there are no 'remove categories' checkboxes, but there is is, clearly on the sci-if category, you can choose 'non-romantic' (about 3000 titles) or 'romantic' (a few hundred). Clicking non romantic takes all the romantic books out! Seems like the solution is already there!


Now if only Amazon would put this on all the other pages, too. Right now there's no such option for superhero, so the charts are loaded with werewolf/vampire/shifter/angel PNR.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

Anyone who says that Anne Macaffrey writes romance obviously hasn't ready any of her books. Yes, some of them have romantic subplots, and yes, those subplots mostly have happy endings, but they are clearly subplots, and many of her books lack even a romantic subplot. They were all about how people reacted to the situations around them though, not about tech or space battles.

I think the problem I'm having with this discussion is that there is an implication that many things can be affected by changes in technology, but apparently relationships aren't supposed to be one of them. I can't help feeling I need to apologise for saying my book is sci-fi, but the reality is, it is about how two people's lives and relationship is affected by chronic overpopulation and a greedy government. I really don't think the fact that they have sex a couple of times mitigates the fact that, if it weren't for the sci-if setting, there would be no issues in their relationship. 

As a reader who loves both sci-fi and and romance (and fantasy as well, though I see far less people arguing about that), I wouldn't have a problem with finding a romance in a sci-if category. In fact, I have clear memories of enjoying Isaac Asimov's "The end of an Eternity" as a romance years ago. Was that a subplot? Maybe, but it also drove the story. It wasn't just an add on, the two storylines were intertwined.

While some people will have issues with finding books with romantic storylines in the science fiction section, I'm willing to bet there are a lot who will enjoy them. My fantasy romance gets a similar number of clicks from epic fantasy as it does from fantasy romance. Yes, some people do enjoy both genres. (I haven't tested my sci-fi)

Romantic relationships are an integral part of being human. They are going to be affected by changes in the world around as, just as much as individuals are. As such, they should have a place in science fiction. Having a happy ending does not preclude them being science fiction!

As for the paranormal shifter in space books, I really think they should all be in a category of their own.  I believe that they are the ones that are the issue, not the books that are truly both sci-fi and romance.


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## dgrant (Feb 5, 2014)

You know what would be really nifty? If, when you put in your keywords while publishing, there'd be a little dialogue box that popped up saying "You will be in the following categories. Uncheck the box by any category to unselect it." 

That way, anyone trying to put "barbarian alien native marine shifter soldier MFM time travel scared sheep" would be able to go "Huh, no, I don't want scifi military space marine or history americas canada first nations" or wherever else they ended up accidentally. It wouldn't help screen out the authors who do the putting their books in the wrong subgenres and genres intentionally, but it could cut down a LOT on the unintentional ones!


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## renamed (Nov 27, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> I think that's a false distinction, Nic. You can see many of the tropes of modern genre romance in old romances. Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_ is pretty much the platonic ideal of genre romance, and the roots go back through Richardson's _Pamela_. At that point, we're near the birth of the novel as a form. You're right that many earlier works are romantic rather than romances, but the genre itself in its currently recognizable form is present way back. The genre's become so popular in the intervening years that it's now produced at very high rates, but those early examples gave it its shape. The only way I can see of separating out works like _P&P_ and _Pamela _is to claim they're literary fiction and thus cannot be classified with a genre romance, but that's just a fancy way of saying they can't be genre romance because they're good.


This is completely off topic but oh my gosh, Becca, your Currently Reading! Crazy to see that in someone's sig. Wow. Made my day.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

My books are equal parts fantasy and romance. If you took out either element, the relationship or the magic and world building, you wouldn't have a story. With my books that most closely follow the genre romance structure, I tried marketing them for a while as romance, and really didn't get anywhere. So I finally decided that they aren't primarily focused on the romance enough to really fit that market, and got new covers where necessary and now I'm concentrating on marketing them as fantasy, or what I call romantic high fantasy. Though I'm afraid they're still too romance-y for a lot of the fantasy market. But, you know, those are the stories I have to tell and the way they need to be told.

There's a BISAC category that I've used at Draft2Digital (either that and/or Google Play) Fantasy -> Romantic. Amazon doesn't offer that as a category, and they should.



JaclynDolamore said:


> I would hate for anyone who read this thread to think they should tool their novel not to straddle these genres, because I can tell you from my own experience that the market for books that fit squarely between fantasy and romance, like mine and Lisa's, is a very healthy market and they love having some of each. Many many of my reviews comment on the romance AND the world-building and themes etc.


I keep hoping to get discovered by this market, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Just keep trying, I guess. But like I said, these are the stories I need to tell, and they way they need to be told. If I tried to change them, they wouldn't be the stories I want to tell.


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## renamed (Nov 27, 2015)

Kyra Halland said:


> My books are equal parts fantasy and romance. If you took out either element, the relationship or the magic and world building, you wouldn't have a story. With my books that most closely follow the genre romance structure, I tried marketing them for a while as romance, and really didn't get anywhere. So I finally decided that they aren't primarily focused on the romance enough to really fit that market, and got new covers where necessary and now I'm concentrating on marketing them as fantasy, or what I call romantic high fantasy. Though I'm afraid they're still too romance-y for a lot of the fantasy market. But, you know, those are the stories I have to tell and the way they need to be told.
> 
> There's a BISAC category that I've used at Draft2Digital (either that and/or Google Play) Fantasy -> Romantic. Amazon doesn't offer that as a category, and they should.
> 
> I keep hoping to get discovered by this market, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Just keep trying, I guess. But like I said, these are the stories I need to tell, and they way they need to be told. If I tried to change them, they wouldn't be the stories I want to tell.


I feel your pain. My books are equal parts fantasy and romance and have a hard time fitting in, too. What's worse is they're contemporary fantasy but not urban fantasy. Where are you, contemporary romantic non-urban fantasy market?


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rinelle Grey said:


> I think the problem I'm having with this discussion is that there is an implication that many things can be affected by changes in technology, but apparently relationships aren't supposed to be one of them. I can't help feeling I need to apologise for saying my book is sci-fi, but the reality is, it is about how two people's lives and relationship is affected by chronic overpopulation and a greedy government. I really don't think the fact that they have sex a couple of times mitigates the fact that, if it weren't for the sci-if setting, there would be no issues in their relationship.
> 
> As a reader who loves both sci-fi and and romance (and fantasy as well, though I see far less people arguing about that), I wouldn't have a problem with finding a romance in a sci-if category. In fact, I have clear memories of enjoying Isaac Asimov's "The end of an Eternity" as a romance years ago. Was that a subplot? Maybe, but it also drove the story. It wasn't just an add on, the two storylines were intertwined.
> 
> ...


Yes to this.

One of my favourite short SF stories (Leviathan Wept by Daniel Abraham) features a near future soldier in a small anti-terrorism unit who is hooked in to his teammates via an implant so they can instantly communicate. They experience an anomaly that appears to be the result of the AI running their connection to each other becoming sentient and intervening in human affairs.

The main character's wife is dying of cancer and their relationship features prominently as the story unfolds. It's extremely emotional on many levels, having to do with the main character's relationships with his team and with his wife, his concerns about his mission and what is happening with the AI. He and his wife are deeply in love and she is dying and there is nothing he can do about it. They have sex, although it's inferred and not described. It's not romance, because there is no happy ending but it is definitely a love story. The story is also about the whole issue of AI becoming self aware and intervening in human affairs so it is definitely SF. To me, this story is the epitome of good writing because of the skill of the writer in portraying all aspects of the human condition -- the tech, the science, the relationships and the characters. It deals with technology and its impacts on people, which is the theme I find most interesting in SF.

The author could have written the entire story simply about the AI issue and not have brought in the relationship with his dying wife. It wouldn't have had as much impact if he had.

It had a lasting affect on me precisely because it was more fully fleshed out on all levels, personal, political, emotional, technological.


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

You know, it occurs to me that a lot of this could be solved by Amazon implimenting more exclusion categories. Yes, the have one option to show only non-romantic stories in sci-if, but apparently no one is aware that's there. But if it appeared in every category, prominently at the top, at least for a while, then not only could everyone find the stories they want, but I suspect it would stop a lot of the miscategorisation. If your book isn't historical, for example, you're not going to put it in that category, because it will actually be excluded by people who are looking for just your book!


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Kyra Halland said:


> I keep hoping to get discovered by this market, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Just keep trying, I guess. But like I said, these are the stories I need to tell, and they way they need to be told. If I tried to change them, they wouldn't be the stories I want to tell.


Have you tried AMS ads? If you haven't, trying some with reasonable bids targeting authors like Jeffe Kennedy (I can see your books appealing to the same readers as Sorcerous Moons, for example) might be a safe bet to try and get some more readers...


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Kay Camden said:


> This is completely off topic but oh my gosh, Becca, your Currently Reading! Crazy to see that in someone's sig. Wow. Made my day.


I'm enjoying it very much, Kay!  Hating the fact that my teaching commitments have slowed down my reading so much, as I'd love to just plow through books like yours in a day ...


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Shawna Canon said:


> People keep pointing out that older sci-fi had sex in it, but I think the point that's being missed is that those books were sexy as written for men, while romance as a genre is usually sexy as written for women. Which are actually totally different approaches. The former isn't really even romance; most often it's just some dude getting it on with alien chicks because he's the manly hero. Both are a form of romantic/sexual wish fulfillment, but whose wishes they're trying to fulfill is totally different. By allowing the male-focused type of sex/romance in the sci-fi genre (it's mostly sex thrown in to an otherwise sci-fi story) but trying to weed out the female-focused type (where more time is spent on character/relationship-development so that it becomes more central to the story), it's almost like they're reinforcing this incredibly outdated idea that sci-fi is a men's genre and women need to keep their books over there in the women's books section so men don't accidentally stumble on it when they just want some good manly-man alien-chick-banging in between the blowing-stuff-up parts.


So wait, you don't hear anyone trying to change the romance genre to fit men because this is a genre that people like to read (even some men) and many people like to read real sci fi and fantasy, not ones based on romance. Julie has been knocking it out of the park with the distinction. Not EVERY category should feature blatant romances and that's what we have now.


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## Kal241 (Jan 11, 2017)

sela said:


> Yes to this.
> 
> One of my favourite short SF stories (Leviathan Wept by Daniel Abraham) features a near future soldier in a small anti-terrorism unit who is hooked in to his teammates via an implant so they can instantly communicate. They experience an anomaly that appears to be the result of the AI running their connection to each other becoming sentient and intervening in human affairs.
> 
> ...


I need to read this story!

Fun fact: I have a character named Sela


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## AssanaBanana (Feb 1, 2014)

Rinelle Grey said:


> So what about the category Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Romantic?


I have a couple books in Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Paranormal & Urban (as chosen), but Amazon has apparently shifted them into the Romantic subcat of Fantasy instead (which I did not choose). Fair enough. I'll avoid the category from now on.


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## Frankenrainbow (Jan 8, 2017)

Nic said:


> The genre (category) romance audience and the audience of SFR and spec romance are not necessarily the same, just as there has been a shift of readership with m/m. There as well you get readers not belonging to the typical genre romance audience.
> 
> A lot of readers of SFR and spec romance come from the fanfiction and nerdy crowd, their expectations are at least off at a tangent, if not downright different. They tend to be accepting far more of non-HEA romances and atypical romances.


For what it's worth, I cut my teeth on Harry Potter romance fanfiction. I have never read genre romance and knew little about it until I started coming onto KBoards once I started writing for myself. Now I'm trying to figure out if what I write is romance or not.

Glad I found this thread although it isn't helping me make up my mind.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2017)

JaclynDolamore said:


> I'm confused by some of these definitions of fantasy, that it must be based around a bunch of magic and action.


Because as has been pointed out, people are confusing the GENRE definitions with the thematic use of the words. As has been noted multiple times already, "romance" as a descriptor is not the same thing as "Romance" the genre. And fantasy as a descriptor is NOT the same thing as Fantasy the genre.

A romance with fantasy elements would be a paranormal romance. It is still a romance, but it simply borrows some elements from fantasy. But the romance is still the central function of the story. In a true fantasy genre work, the fantasy elements are not merely cosmetic to the story. They are a central, defining element. Again, the mere presence of something in a story does not make it a member of the genre. It must be the central, driving focus. Just because something supernatural appears in a story doesn't automatically make it fantasy. It could be a horror, or a magical realism, or a paranormal. Do not confuse random plot elements with the central focus of the work. This is where people get confused.

A historical fiction, an alternative history, and a historical romance could all occur in the same time period, but they are all distinct and unique genres because even though the stories may all be set in the same time period, they will approach the subject matter in distinct ways and will be primarily focused on different things. These distinctions matter to readers when they are trying to find the book they want to read.

In addition, people are also misusing the word "romantic" in general. The Romance movement of the 19th century had nothing to do with the modern romance genre. It was about embracing emotions and individualism, which was a departure from the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, which focused more on rational thought and detachment. Romantic love was one aspect found in the Romance movement, but it was not the central topic and rarely ended in the modern traditional HEA.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Let's face it. Some (not all) writers were placing their sexy-romance books in low competition SciFi categories --- on purpose.  A book about a woman's sexual and romantic encounters with her bear shifter boyfriend isn't a Superhero or Military SciFi book. We all know this type of purposeful miscategorization was rampant. 

It had nothing to do with cross-genre or gray areas - it was a deliberate attempt to get a "Best Seller" tag on the book.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

In my opinion, there's no reason why you can't have a fantasy or SF fully mixed with a romance. As has been already noted, writers have pulled that off before because they did it on purpose, then branded their books to correctly fit in both genres. Those successful crossovers aren't the problem. The problem is the vast number of romance (genre) books which clearly don't meet the fantasy (genre) criteria that show up in the fantasy (genre), which hinder customers' ability to find fantasy (genre) books.

If there's any rule on Amazon, it's "the customer wins." Not you. Not me. Them.

As for keywords, yeah, that's a mess. Amazon really needs a smarter category bot. Any Romance (genre) keywords should never trigger placement in any category outside of Romance (genre).


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## RinG (Mar 12, 2013)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> A romance with fantasy elements would be a paranormal romance.


I'm sorry, but a romance with fantasy elements does not equal a paranormal romance. Paranormal romance has its own, distinct definition, including modern day setting etc. Fantasy romance can, perhaps, encompass paranormal romance (though they're two separate subsections under Amazon's romance categories), but they are not interchangeable.

And I don't think anyone has an issue with getting rid of the blatantly miscategoriesed books. (Though I would like to see the examination of miscategoriesed books extend into ALL genres.) What we're objecting to is the blanket statement that no sci-fi romance books ever can fit into the sci-if category.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

Douglas Milewski said:


> In my opinion, there's no reason why you can't have a fantasy or SF fully mixed with a romance.


Can you give some examples?

As an SF reader, if I buy a book and half of it is a romance, I'm probably going to skip over those parts and consider it a failure as an SF book. If I was a romance reader, and half of the book was about how spaceships work, I'm not sure I'd find it a success as a romance.

I can't think of any books I've read that manage to somehow be romance and something else at the same time, and make both types of reader happy (as opposed to those who already read both genres).


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Kal241 said:


> I need to read this story!
> 
> Fun fact: I have a character named Sela


You should _definitely_ read Daniel Abraham, Leviathan Wept, and more if you like great SF and F! He writes with George RR Martin if that's any indication of his talent. Which it is. 

I aspire to write as well as Abraham. Some day...


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Edward M. Grant said:


> Can you give some examples?


Others have already given examples. I trust their judgement.

However, you are right in raising genre expectations. The expectation of the reader plays directly into why we put certain books into certain genres. This is about reader satisfaction. (This categorization entirely unfair and sexist, because readers aren't required to be fair.) As long as you can satisfy a reasonable percentage of your intended audience, and have a sizable percentage agree that you do belong in a category (even if they don't like your story), then you belong in the category. I may be bored with a SF-romance, but if it meets a critical mass of SF criteria, then it meets the criteria. No reasonable reader expects to like every story in their genre, but they do have a reasonable expectation of a story's appropriateness to the genre.

Right now, I am exploring keywords using other author names. I have the same issue going on. If I'm going to link myself to another writer, I want to write similarly enough to provide a similar experience. That's a win for the reader and a win for me. If I just attach other writers, ones who have very different focuses and pacings from my books, then readers will see books that don't appeal to them, or worse, buy them and leave bad reviews. The goal of this marketing is to get our books in front of readers who want our product while not wasting on money on readers who don't want our product.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

Douglas Milewski said:


> Others have already given examples. I trust their judgement.


Without hunting back through the thread, the only example I remember was something about a romance with a super-evolving AI. An SF reader would say that's clearly not SF, because an SF story would be about the _impossibility_ of a 'happy-ever-after' ending with a being that's a thousand times smarter that you. It would be like a happy-ever-after romance with your gerbil. The gerbil might believe it was true, but it would just be deluding itself.

I'm trying to imagine _The Fountains Of Paradise_, _2001_, _Rendezvous With Rama_ or _The Martian_ if half the book was Romance. I can't see how either SF or Romance readers would be satisfied.



> I may be bored with a SF-romance, but if it meets a critical mass of SF criteria, then it meets the criteria. No reasonable reader expects to like every story in their genre, but they do have a reasonable expectation of a story's appropriateness to the genre.


And this all started because SF and Fantasy readers were fed up with the Amazon SF and Fantasy Best-Seller lists being stuffed with Romance novels just because they have a spaceship or dragon in them, and Amazon finally decided they had to do something about it. Yes, your book may be a special snowflake, but the problem grew so bad that Amazon had no choice but to swing the ban hammer (since they're not going to hire a thousand reviewers to decide whether a particular book _is_ a special snowflake).

(I'd also add that mis-categorizing isn't exclusive to indie authors. The last time I was in a book store Horror section, it was stuffed full of Twilight ripoffs, because vampires)


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## Mr. Sparkle (Oct 8, 2014)

As a reader and a writer, I am conflicted on both counts.

As a reader, I actually prefer dual genre books. It cuts down on the meaningless sex and makes the sex left meaningful and romantic and both of the romantic leads survive, but there is also good worldbuilding. I don't want categories in SF&F filled up with stuff that is obviously romance with window dressing. But I want to be able to find a HEA or HFN storyline with a developed world where the relationship isn't so consuming that it ignores the genre tropes that make a good SF or F, etc.

As a writer, obviously I want my books everywhere they are most likely to be seen. However, it's clear that a lot of fellow romance authors (obviously no one specific, don't take offense) are putting their books into other genres when they aren't actually dual-genre. Abuse of the categories has led to a crackdown, and now truly dual-genre books will suffer for it.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

Edward M. Grant said:


> As an SF reader, if I buy a book and half of it is a romance, I'm probably going to skip over those parts and consider it a failure as an SF book. If I was a romance reader, and half of the book was about how spaceships work, I'm not sure I'd find it a success as a romance.


That would be my kind of a book. I'm not going to read a book if it doesn't have any romance and a happy ending, but I'd find it boring if it was all about romance and nothing else was going on. I want a perfect mix. Also, my audience seems pretty happy with my books being both in romance and fantasy, and after I included my books in the fantasy category too, the only thing that happened was that more men signed up for my newsletter. No one ever complained that there wasn't enough romance or that there was too much of it.


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## Amberlyn Holland (Jan 22, 2010)

I normally avoid conflict and any threads that contain conflict because I'm terrible at it  But as a fantasy romance author, I just feel like I needed share my perspective on the genre I write and address a couple of things that I saw earlier in the thread.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> A romance, at its root, *specifically* focuses on romantic love between two people, with an emotionally satisfying ending (usually, happily ever after, or HEA). In a romance, the relationship itself is the most important and driving motivator of the plot.
> 
> A fantasy, at its root, *specifically* focuses on magic and the supernatural as the primary motivators of the plot, presented within a self-contained world. In a fantasy, the presence of magic and the supernatural is the driving motivator of the plot.





Edward M. Grant said:


> As an SF reader, if I buy a book and half of it is a romance, I'm probably going to skip over those parts and consider it a failure as an SF book. If I was a romance reader, and half of the book was about how spaceships work, I'm not sure I'd find it a success as a romance.


I don't think that the two definitions quoted above have to be mutually exclusive. And while my book is fantasy, not SF, its not like I alternate chapters so Ch 1 is the fantasy part, Ch 2 is the romance. I like to think that, if I've done my job right as a writer, both 'halves' of the story are working hand in had to tell the other 'half' and skipping the romance would mean skipping the fantasy as well.

I created a world with a magical, cultural and political environment that directly creates the choices my hero and heroine face and that environment informs the decisions they make. In turn, those decisions influence the ebb and flow of the relationship of the Romance and their eventual HEA.

And, in return, the state of their relationship at different points, directly, indirectly or potentially impacts the magic and political situation of the fantasy world I built.

The romance and fantasy quest are not alterated by chapter or scene, they are intertwined through out the book.

When this thread started, I was curious about finding a definition for fantasy romance and this is what Goodreads has to say:

_Romantic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy fiction, describing a fantasy story using many of the elements and conventions of the romance genre.

One of the key features of romantic fantasy involves the focus on relationships, social, political, and romantic. Romantic fantasy has been published by both fantasy lines and romance lines.
Some publishers distinguish between "romantic fantasy" where the romance is most important and "fantasy romance" where the fantasy elements are most important. *Others say that "the borderline between fantasy romance and romantic fantasy has essentially ceased to exist, or if it's still there, it's moving back and forth constantly"*. _

The bold is mine because when I write fantasy romance, and when I look for books to read in this category, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Something that blurs the lines.

However, all that said, I have no problem with moving my books fully into Romance and will probably do so, when book 3 releases in March. (I think Amazon has already removed me from one of the SFF sub-cats I was in) I just wish the Romance>Fantasy category had a couple of subcategories so that the PNR that is in there could be sorted out from the more traditional Fantasy.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Edward M. Grant said:


> And this all started because SF and Fantasy readers were fed up with the Amazon SF and Fantasy Best-Seller lists being stuffed with Romance novels just because they have a spaceship or dragon in them, and Amazon finally decided they had to do something about it. Yes, your book may be a special snowflake, but the problem grew so bad that Amazon had no choice but to swing the ban hammer (since they're not going to hire a thousand reviewers to decide whether a particular book _is_ a special snowflake).


Oh, yes, I know. I've been on both sides of this issue inside this thread. As a reader, I despise the blatant romances in the wrong lists. I wish that everything would just sort itself out and make everybody happy, but it won't. No matter what history has been, this is the here and now, and the piper has come demanding payment. The results won't be fair.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> Let's face it. Some (not all) writers were placing their sexy-romance books in low competition SciFi categories --- on purpose. A book about a woman's sexual and romantic encounters with her bear shifter boyfriend isn't a Superhero or Military SciFi book. We all know this type of purposeful miscategorization was rampant.
> 
> It had nothing to do with cross-genre or gray areas - it was a deliberate attempt to get a "Best Seller" tag on the book.


This goes both ways. There are plenty of authors who put their books in Romance because "Romance sells" even when their book doesn't fit the definition of Romance. Then they defend it by saying things like but there's romance in it. My characters even kiss! Look at Nicholas Sparks! *rolls eyes*

I'm getting a bit irked that this thread is veering towards an anti-romance vibe. The problems with mis-categorization affect almost all of the categories.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Edward M. Grant said:


> Without hunting back through the thread, the only example I remember was something about a romance with a super-evolving AI. An SF reader would say that's clearly not SF, because an SF story would be about the _impossibility_ of a 'happy-ever-after' ending with a being that's a thousand times smarter that you. It would be like a happy-ever-after romance with your gerbil. The gerbil might believe it was true, but it would just be deluding itself.
> 
> I'm trying to imagine _The Fountains Of Paradise_, _2001_, _Rendezvous With Rama_ or _The Martian_ if half the book was Romance. I can't see how either SF or Romance readers would be satisfied.


Keep in mind there is no universal SF or R reader. Plenty of SF readers would be completely satisfied with a book that had a strong romantic subplot and plenty of R readers would be completely satisfied with a book that had a strong SF plot but a good focus on the relationship and a HEA for the couple. This idea that the majority of SF readers want "true" SF with very little romantic elements is why female writers in the genre have been dismissed in the past as not "true" SF authors (even though plenty of female authors in SF have no focus on romantic elements. It's just a bias).

There are plenty of cross-genre books out there (many by authors in this thread). Calling them special snowflakes is a bit insulting.

I don't even know why I'm getting so irked by some of the attitudes in this thread. I'm not a writer affected by this change.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

I confess to being a small part of the current cross-categorisation mess. When I published the first of my fantasy books, I was convinced I was writing fantasy romance. The romance element was a strong part of the story, after all, how could it not be so? That was the brief I gave my cover designer, and that was how I chose my initial categories: as epic fantasy but also as romance -> fantasy. 

Took me a while to realise my mistake LOL. I've taken the books out of the romance category now, and I'm in the process of getting new covers that rebrand the books solidly at the epic fantasy end of the spectrum, and I'm happy that the degree of romance in them is perfectly consistent with that.

BUT there are books that fall genuinely into both romance and fantasy categories. I may not write them, but I love to read them. Kyra Halland's books are like that, or Kate Sparkes, or books like Radiance by Grace Draven. I've no doubt there are books that also fall into both romance and SF categories. It would be lovely if readers who enjoy those stories could find them easily. And also if those who don't like romance with their fantasy/sf could find those stories easily too.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Felicia Beasley said:


> I'm getting a bit irked that this thread is veering towards an anti-romance vibe. The problems with mis-categorization affect almost all of the categories.


It's not anti-romance. It's "don't pollute my sacred notion of what science fiction should be." That's different. Go over to Goodreads sometime and read the "purity of science fiction is in jeopardy" threads. When I see Anne McCaffrey called a Romance writer, I know we've veered off the tracks. Until I read this thread, it never occurred to me that LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" was a Romance (I knew it won a Hugo and a Nebula). I've been waiting for someone to bring up Cherryh's Foreigner books. Hey, there's a romance in there!

What I have a difficult time with is classifying alien/shifter erotica as Romance. I can deal with Nora Roberts' fantasies popping up in my SF listings, but "Taken by the Billionaire Alien Bear Shifter Triplets and Their Magic Wands (wink, wink)" on a search page of bare chests is going a little too far.

It goes the other way as well. "Since my military cyborgs in the 36th century do have non-con sex with the women they conquer, I'll slip the word Romance into my keywords to get a little broader visibility."


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

PaulineMRoss said:


> BUT there are books that fall genuinely into both romance and fantasy categories. I may not write them, but I love to read them. Kyra Halland's books are like that, or Kate Sparkes, or books like Radiance by Grace Draven. I've no doubt there are books that also fall into both romance and SF categories. It would be lovely if readers who enjoy those stories could find them easily. And also if those who don't like romance with their fantasy/sf could find those stories easily too.


I have read Master of Crows by Grace Draven. That is what I consider fantasy romance. Its romance but also fantasy. That is what a subgenre of romance is to me. Historical romance is historical and a romance, SFR is a sci fi and romance. All still within the category umbrella of romance. I haven't read Radiance yet, although I own it. Which I just realized when I looked at it cause I forgot I had it already. . I need more hours in the day to read darn it. Anyway, looking at the categories, those books are listed in fantasy romance. Under romance in the subgenre of fantasy. Fantasy romance.

I have to say that finding fantasy romance is even harder than finding SFR. 

As a reader of romance and many subgenres of romance, I want both parts of the story. Romance of course but also the sub part. Otherwise I'd just read contempo stuff. I want the world building, the story. Thats the whole point in reading these genres. So this percentage talk, or half this and half that is confusing to me. As that is how romance books always are to me. Part this and part that, but still overall a romance. Romance to me doesn't mean I get only a fraction of world building and stuff happening. At least not in the books I read and I have read many romance books in my life time. . So of course I can have space battles, space ships, first contact, planets, anything. Why not. Those are the best SFR for me that give me all of that, while still being actual romance. Its not walled off in the book, its all intertwined into one engrossing story. 
I am about to read another what I was told is SFR. We'll see. Totally intrigued by the blurb and cover and the recommendation. I say this because the amazon listings, 3 of them are strictly in science fiction. Not a romance category in sight. So if it turns out it is a SFR, as the readers recommended it, then I would never have known about it since its not listed in romance. At least not in the listings one sees below the cover. Unless there are some hidden ones somewhere. 


brkingsolver said:


> It's not anti-romance. It's "don't pollute my sacred notion of what science fiction should be." That's different. Go over to Goodreads sometime and read the "purity of science fiction is in jeopardy" threads. When I see Anne McCaffrey called a Romance writer, I know we've veered off the tracks. Until I read this thread, it never occurred to me that LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" was a Romance (I knew it won a Hugo and a Nebula). I've been waiting for someone to bring up Cherryh's Foreigner books. Hey, there's a romance in there!


I am glad some are clarifying this McCaffrey thing. When I saw that post earlier, I was trying to find this SFRor fantasy romance author with the name of MCCaffrey. But I could not find anyone that wrote romance so I didn't think the were talking about Anne. I am not familiar with that author as she doesn't write the genres I read. So why would someone say those are romance. There is nothing in the blurb, listings, reviews to suggest that.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> It's not anti-romance. It's "don't pollute my sacred notion of what science fiction should be." That's different. Go over to Goodreads sometime and read the "purity of science fiction is in jeopardy" threads. When I see Anne McCaffrey called a Romance writer, I know we've veered off the tracks. Until I read this thread, it never occurred to me that LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" was a Romance (I knew it won a Hugo and a Nebula). I've been waiting for someone to bring up Cherryh's Foreigner books. Hey, there's a romance in there!
> 
> What I have a difficult time with is classifying alien/shifter erotica as Romance. I can deal with Nora Roberts' fantasies popping up in my SF listings, but "Taken by the Billionaire Alien Bear Shifter Triplets and Their Magic Wands (wink, wink)" on a search page of bare chests is going a little too far.
> 
> It goes the other way as well. "Since my military cyborgs in the 36th century do have non-con sex with the women they conquer, I'll slip the word Romance into my keywords to get a little broader visibility."


You're right. I agree with this, but you put it in better words 

As for reading Goodreads 'purity of science fiction is in jeopardy, I don't need the rise in blood pressure.


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## Fishbowl Helmet (Jan 12, 2014)

Felicia Beasley said:


> This goes both ways. There are plenty of authors who put their books in Romance because "Romance sells" even when their book doesn't fit the definition of Romance. Then they defend it by saying things like but there's romance in it. My characters even kiss! Look at Nicholas Sparks! *rolls eyes*
> 
> I'm getting a bit irked that this thread is veering towards an anti-romance vibe. The problems with mis-categorization affect almost all of the categories.


And what's the substantive difference that actually makes the difference here? That the books intentionally misplaced in the romance categories quickly disappeared because their sales were tiny compared to the actual romance novels properly placed in the category, whereas, the romance novels intentionally misplaced in the SFF categories quickly rocket to high standing and often stick there for a disproportionate amount of time because romance as a genre sells far better than SFF...which was largely the entire point of indies intentionally misplacing their romance books in the SFF categories.

I'm not reading the thread as anti-romance, just anti-romance writers being intentionally "confused" so they can play off their "mistakes" as honest instead of blatant ranking grabs. I have no issue with romance as a genre or romance writers as a whole, but putting a romance novel on a rocket ship doesn't make it SF any more than putting a romance in a castle makes it fantasy.

"It is difficult to get [someone] to understand something, when [their] salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Atunah said:


> At least not in the listings one sees below the cover. Unless there are some hidden ones somewhere. I am glad some are clarifying this McCaffrey thing. When I saw that post earlier, I was trying to find this SFRor fantasy romance author with the name of MCCaffrey. But I could not find anyone that wrote romance so I didn't think the were talking about Anne. I am not familiar with that author as she doesn't write the genres I read. So why would someone say those are romance. There is nothing in the blurb, listings, reviews to suggest that.


I started a reread of her last year, so I'm up on this.

While her better known books aren't romance, some of her books fall on the spectrum. "Restoree" is her clearest SF/romance, having all the structural elements of a romance. Her "Tower and Hive" books were all based on SF/Romance stories originally published in the 60's. With her later expansion of the stories into full novels, those books became more family drama than romance. One of her books was only published as a romance, but I haven't read that one.


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## Fishbowl Helmet (Jan 12, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> It's not anti-romance. It's "don't pollute my sacred notion of what science fiction should be." That's different. Go over to Goodreads sometime and read the "purity of science fiction is in jeopardy" threads. When I see Anne McCaffrey called a Romance writer, I know we've veered off the tracks. Until I read this thread, it never occurred to me that LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" was a Romance (I knew it won a Hugo and a Nebula). I've been waiting for someone to bring up Cherryh's Foreigner books. Hey, there's a romance in there!
> 
> What I have a difficult time with is classifying alien/shifter erotica as Romance. I can deal with Nora Roberts' fantasies popping up in my SF listings, but "Taken by the Billionaire Alien Bear Shifter Triplets and Their Magic Wands (wink, wink)" on a search page of bare chests is going a little too far.
> 
> It goes the other way as well. "Since my military cyborgs in the 36th century do have non-con sex with the women they conquer, I'll slip the word Romance into my keywords to get a little broader visibility."


...and now we're going anti-SFF I see.


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## Mr. Sparkle (Oct 8, 2014)

As a reader, I really, really want hybrid fiction. Not one genre with a romantic subplot or a romance with another genre subplot. Both. Equally.

I want _Outlander_, not _Dreams of a Highlander_ and not _Timeline_. By the way, _Outlander_ is a bestseller, so it's likely that any relevant keywords will propel it to the top of many lists. Time travel is a central focus, though the means is more fantasy than sci-fi. Historical fiction is a central focus. Romance is a central focus. If you take away any of those elements, the story falls apart.

I want _The Vampire Diaries_, NOT _Twilight_. TVD is a great example of this: romance and horror, equally mixed. The 90s books were originally classified as YA horror. Idek what the TV series is under Amazon, but on my TV it's Horror/Romance.

I want Donna Thorland's _The Turncoat_, not Christi Caldwell's _To Enchant a Wicked Duke_ and not Geoff Baggett's _Brothers and Warriors_.The hybrid blends historical fiction (subgenre action/adventure spy thriller) with romance, making it romantic historical fiction. Caldwell's book is historical romance. Baggett's book is historical fiction (subgenre action/adventure).

Basically, I want Jeane Sara Poole or Richelle Mead with all the dark fantasy or dark historical action stuff but a happy ending.

Depending on how desperate I am for entertainment, I would read any of the above. But if I want my _fix_, my favorite thing, I want a hybrid.

It's hard to tell a hybrid, although among traditionally published authors the covers tend to be typical of the non-romance genre. With indies, you often have to read well into the first chapter.

On the whole, though, I rarely find anything that checks both boxes equally, although thanks to this thread, I may have found a few authors here to try out! (*fist pump*) Usually, though, I have to settle for fan fiction of non-romance genre books to retell them from a more female-inclusive perspective.

It is not as straight up as some would like to suggest. The problem is that there are far fewer truly dual-genre hybrid books out there and many more books with subgenres that end up misclassified one way or the other.

But don't tell me that hybrids don't exist. They just aren't easily found in either Amazon's architecture or print book genre classification.

(Someone was asking about Bella Forrest earlier. IMHO, her vampire serials are either YA Horror Romance or YA Romantic Horror, like TVD. But because of the crash of the Horror market after Stephen King moved into Sci-Fi territory and people outgrew R. L. Stine, authors rarely classify books with any non-horror subgenres in Horror any more, so she likely wouldn't have found the correct audience had she been put in Horror. But her books have way more horror and paranormal backstory than most of the shifter stuff that dominates Romance > Paranormal.)



crebel said:


> The genre is canned milk, the subgenre coconut > gluten free, not the other way around.


My grocery store does not agree. LOL. If it doesn't need refrigeration and it's a 'milk,' it goes in the gluten-free aisle. Has been there for years. Yet the almond milk is split between the Silk stuff, which goes with dairy milk, and the boxed stuff, which goes with coconut.

I never had a problem finding either, because I expected nut milks to be in both places. Heh heh, nut milks.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Fishbowl Helmet said:


> And what's the substantive difference that actually makes the difference here? That the books intentionally misplaced in the romance categories quickly disappeared because their sales were tiny compared to the actual romance novels properly placed in the category, whereas, the romance novels intentionally misplaced in the SFF categories quickly rocket to high standing and often stick there for a disproportionate amount of time because romance as a genre sells far better than SFF...which was largely the entire point of indies intentionally misplacing their romance books in the SFF categories.
> 
> I'm not reading the thread as anti-romance, just anti-romance writers being intentionally "confused" so they can play off their "mistakes" as honest instead of blatant ranking grabs. I have no issue with romance as a genre or romance writers as a whole, but putting a romance novel on a rocket ship doesn't make it SF any more than putting a romance in a castle makes it fantasy.
> 
> "It is difficult to get [someone] to understand something, when [their] salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair


From complaints I've heard from romance readers, many don't trust buying off the romance bestseller list because many of the books on it don't fit the actual definition of romance. You can't judge a book by its cover. I could put a half-naked dude on my cover and put it in a romance category, but it doesn't make my book romance. Glancing over the bestseller list for fantasy romance, I know that at least a few of them are much more fantasy than romance. It's a problem either way.

I'm a little confused about your remark about romance authors intentionally being confused. Do you mean in this thread? Because I've read books by authors who've posted in this thread who are affected by this change and they aren't acting "confused". Their books could go either way and appeal to readers of both genres depending on the tastes of each reader.

And I'm not a romance author at all. I write fantasy. My salary in no way depends on my understanding. I have no skin in the game. If anything, this change would have a positive effect for me. Less competition in my sub-genre.

*Want to clarify, when I say anti-romance, I don't mean anti-romance genre or authors. I mean anti-romance in SFF as in too much kissing and this is no longer SFF.*


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Fishbowl Helmet said:


> ...and now we're going anti-SFF I see.


Are we on the same planet? I write SFF. I have a library of SFF that fills a large room. Where do you see that I'm anti-SFF?


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Fishbowl Helmet said:


> ...and now we're going anti-SFF I see.


How was that anti-SFF? BRKingsolver doesn't write romance but writes SFF. Are they anti-themself?


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## Amberlyn Holland (Jan 22, 2010)

Felicia Beasley said:


> From complaints I've heard from romance readers, many don't trust buying off the romance bestseller list because many of the books on it don't fit the actual definition of romance.


It's gotten to the point where a lot of Romance authors are including a promise in the book description that says something like "This book is a standalone/ no cliff hanger and has an HEA/HFN"

Carina Press, which is a digital imprint of HARLEQUIN publicly posted a Romance Promise (http://carinapress.com/blog/carina-press-romance-promise/) so Romance readers could more easily find what they are expecting from something labeled Romance.


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## Lilpenguin1972 (Aug 9, 2012)

Fishbowl Helmet said:


> And what's the substantive difference that actually makes the difference here? That the books intentionally misplaced in the romance categories quickly disappeared because their sales were tiny compared to the actual romance novels properly placed in the category, whereas, the romance novels intentionally misplaced in the SFF categories quickly rocket to high standing and often stick there for a disproportionate amount of time because romance as a genre sells far better than SFF...which was largely the entire point of indies intentionally misplacing their romance books in the SFF categories.
> 
> I'm not reading the thread as anti-romance, just anti-romance writers being intentionally "confused" so they can play off their "mistakes" as honest instead of blatant ranking grabs. I have no issue with romance as a genre or romance writers as a whole, but putting a romance novel on a rocket ship doesn't make it SF any more than putting a romance in a castle makes it fantasy.
> 
> "It is difficult to get [someone] to understand something, when [their] salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair


I'm curious. Do you read romance? Because, yes, it is filled with books that aren't romance, many in the top 100. So, it's a problem. And, yes it goes both ways. The worst offenders are writers of erotica. Romance readers have been putting up with this for years. Welcome to the club. If anything, it means that SF starting to sell.

I certainly don't think most posters are slamming romance, but there have been a couple of posts that have suggested that romance readers would not be interested in certain genres because, ya know, it's too complex and no kissy bits, and if there is, it's with the gays!


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## Lilpenguin1972 (Aug 9, 2012)

Fishbowl Helmet said:


> ...and now we're going anti-SFF I see.


It was pretty clear that the poster was pointing out


Fishbowl Helmet said:


> ...and now we're going anti-SFF I see.[/q
> 
> I think the point was to illustrate how silly it is to sum up a genre based upon overly used tropes.


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## mythsnake (Oct 22, 2014)

The were-bear alien warrior shifters erotica wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if Amazon didn't punish authors for listing them by their actual genre, and until Amazon decides to stop penalizing erotica authors, this will continue to be an issue in the romance categories, even after disallowing the cross-genre listing with SFF. 

And yeah, I don't see how pointing out the very real presence of a vocal subsection of SF fandom complaining about purity issues in SF is being anti-SFF. The SFF community has been battling over this for a number of years now, rather publicly and nastily, and it's done some damage to Hugo Awards along the way (but also introduced the awesomeness of Chuck Tingle to the world at large).


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2017)

Rinelle Grey said:


> I'm sorry, but a romance with fantasy elements does not equal a paranormal romance. Paranormal romance has its own, distinct definition, including modern day setting etc.


I should have clarified that I was referring specifically to the example that was given when I responded. In the case of what you are describing, "fantasy" is a qualifier word for the actual genre. i.e. "fantasy romance" as in historical romance or Christian romance or Reagency Romance or billionaire romance. In all of those cases, the book is still firmly a romance, with the first word serving as a_ qualifier_ for the type of romance it is. A fantasy romance is not automatically a fantasy any more than a historical romance is automatically a historical fiction, or, if we want to be silly, any more than a billionaire romance belongs in the money and finance category. 

Again, making the distinction between the qualifier and the actual genre may sound like splitting hairs, but it is really important. We are writers. Words matter. These differences matter.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

There are books whose authors honestly feel they are blending romance with fantasy or sci-fi in equal measure. Julie, you can insist on bright generic boundaries 'til the cows come home without changing these authors' minds one bit. And I'm sympathetic to them, since I've read some (not many) books that seem to me to be perfect blends of romance and a spec-fic genre. Someone mentioned Grace Draven up thread. In some of her works, neither the fantasy nor the romance seems like the lesser component; both are integral to the characterization, to the fundamental conflicts, and to the resolution. Extracting either would make the plot unworkable. It's not fair to deny books like Draven's a place at the fantasy table, IMO.

But it's also true that romance is a hugely dominant genre. Its readership dwarfs SFF's. So if books that really are romance are categorized as SFF in large numbers, SFF books will be swamped out of visibility. That's not fair either.

I think the answer is not to turn on one another as authors but rather to turn to Amazon and ask them to solve this problem with honey: create a far wider range of subcategories for romance authors to use, so as to draw them back to romance. (And do the same for erotica.) There are already what looks like a good number, but I think they could easily be expanded tremendously. This is what's there now:

















Looks good, right? They're obviously making an effort to help romance readers find what they want. But they could do so much more. How about letting shoppers select a much wider range of heat levels? How about way more settings? How about way more tropes? Mindy Klasky's list has 60 or 70, not 10. Why aren't SEALs an option under heroes? Or bear shifters? There's so much more they could do. If there were a subcat for dragon-shifter alien billionaire heroes, that's just where readers would look. They wouldn't look in sci-fi just because the hero is a dragon-shifter due to being an alien rather than because of magic.

I think Amazon should shoot for having no more than a thousand books in each terminal subcat. If a terminal subcat grows beyond that point, they should find a way to divide it. If historical > American > 19th century gets too big, divide it into
historical > American > 19th century > urban and
historical > American > 19th century > rural.
If historical > American > 19th century > rural gets too big, divide it into 
historical > American > 19th century > rural > Great Plains, 
historical > American > 19th century > rural > Rockies, and 
historical > American > 19th century > rural > Gold Rush, 
... or whatever works best. Authors would be able to target readers and get those coveted bestseller banners and readers could more easily find the books they want. Going back to limited each book to no more than two categories would encourage authors to select the subcats that best define their book, rather than casting the widest possible net.


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## Annette_g (Nov 27, 2012)

Well, after reading this thread, I finally have got my book in the right category, I think. For years it was in social and political sciences and I have no idea what keywords caused this. So I changed my main genre to romance, I had it at fantasy before, but I never knew there was a subcat of romance which was fantasy. This is where it is now 

8823 inÂ Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Fantasy 
#9438 inÂ Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Gay Fiction 
#10272 inÂ Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender eBooks > Romance > Gay Romance 

So hopefully people who are looking for a gay fantasy romance can see it now


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Mr. Sparkle said:


> Depending on how desperate I am for entertainment, I would read any of the above. But if I want my _fix_, my favorite thing, I want a hybrid.
> 
> It's hard to tell a hybrid, although among traditionally published authors the covers tend to be typical of the non-romance genre. With indies, you often have to read well into the first chapter.


This is totally me as a reader too.


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## suliabryon (May 18, 2009)

Mr. Sparkle said:


> As a reader, I really, really want hybrid fiction. Not one genre with a romantic subplot or a romance with another genre subplot. Both. Equally.
> 
> I want _Outlander_, not _Dreams of a Highlander_ and not _Timeline_. By the way, _Outlander_ is a bestseller, so it's likely that any relevant keywords will propel it to the top of many lists. Time travel is a central focus, though the means is more fantasy than sci-fi. Historical fiction is a central focus. Romance is a central focus. If you take away any of those elements, the story falls apart.
> 
> ...


I'm a hybrid author. My series is space opera AND romance. It is seriously a 50/50 split, to the point where getting the right covers to market it is ridiculously painful. I went the SFR route, because it's a category that exists, except most of them feature naked man torso and have a LOT less SF in the mix than mine. I wanted my covers to reflect that difference, so I put my heroine on them instead, but they're still too romantic and ethereal looking to attract the space opera crowd. That being said, a few space opera authors who sell really well have rec'd my books to their readers, which has netted me a surprising number of male readers who leave reviews like "this is the best SF book I've read in a long time" or "fabulous SF". I'm a huge SF fangirl at heart, so these reviews, short as they are, tend to be very emotionally meaningful to me. I had all of these worries that the romance element and - gasp! - sex scene would be off putting to real space opera fans, but I actually have not found that to be the case for me - so far. I'm working right now on an omnibus cover totally geared at SF/space opera fans, to see how that floats. My standalone covers have worked well for the romance crowd, but I've considered redoing them as well.

Frankly, my perfect "genre" doesn't exist. This whole "no romance in my SF!" "Can't have too much SF in romance!" BS argument is why I'm an indie author, because it is the exact attitude of traditional publishing. They don't know how to market it, either, and the advance I would have been offered (according to my agent) was very small, and IMO, not worth going traditional. I've been published since March of last year with two books, and I've already almost doubled it, so I think I made the right choice.

I just really need to invent my own genre. Like what UF did when it took paranormal fantasy and romance and hybridized them. (I say this fully understanding that there are plenty of UF books without romance, but they are less in number than those with, and came later. Also, yes, the romance in UF is often a slower burn, but it is also often central to the plot and each book usually ends with the promise of an eventual HEA. I would argue that part of the sub-genre of UF w/romance is that the HEA happens by the end of the series. That being the main difference between that genre and actual Romance.)

My point is, my books have enough SF to satisfy (apparently) traditional SF fans, but enough Romance to qualify me for RWA and make romance readers happy. But the road of the hybrid genre author is fraught with indecision and peril in marketing. It definitely isn't for the faint of heart.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

Amberlyn Holland said:


> while my book is fantasy, not SF, its not like I alternate chapters so Ch 1 is the fantasy part, Ch 2 is the romance. I like to think that, if I've done my job right as a writer, both 'halves' of the story are working hand in had to tell the other 'half' and skipping the romance would mean skipping the fantasy as well.
> 
> I created a world with a magical, cultural and political environment that directly creates the choices my hero and heroine face and that environment informs the decisions they make. In turn, those decisions influence the ebb and flow of the relationship of the Romance and their eventual HEA.
> 
> ...


This is exactly what I do with my books. The magical/fantasy storyline affects the relationship, and the relationship influences the outcome of the magical/fantasy storyline. If you took out either the romance or the fantasy, there wouldn't be a story. That's also what I look for in books I want to read. (Grabbed the sample of By Vengeance Guided  )


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> Have you tried AMS ads? If you haven't, trying some with reasonable bids targeting authors like Jeffe Kennedy (I can see your books appealing to the same readers as Sorcerous Moons, for example) might be a safe bet to try and get some more readers...


I went and looked. It's kind of confusing, and I'm worried that it's expensive, but it's now on my list of things to figure out and try.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

suliabryon said:


> I just really need to invent my own genre. Like what UF did when it took paranormal fantasy and romance and hybridized them. (I say this fully understanding that there are plenty of UF books without romance, but they are less in number than those with, and came later. Also, yes, the romance in UF is often a slower burn, but it is also often central to the plot and each book usually ends with the promise of an eventual HEA. I would argue that part of the sub-genre of UF w/romance is that the HEA happens by the end of the series. That being the main difference between that genre and actual Romance.)


While I agree with much of what you say, you've got this part mixed up. PNR and UF parted ways a long time ago, and UF never required romance. I guarantee UF did not come later, it came first. Later, such authors as LKH and Jim Butcher introduced more sex, then more romance into their books. The big boom in PNR started with Moning and Twilight, JR Ward and Nalini Singh. Those are romances, not urban fantasy.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Kyra Halland said:


> I went and looked. It's kind of confusing, and I'm worried that it's expensive, but it's now on my list of things to figure out and try.


Feel free to PM me if you want me to walk you through it...I have a good idea of what might work for you because I expect we have a similar audience.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

suliabryon said:


> My point is, my books have enough SF to satisfy (apparently) traditional SF fans, but enough Romance to qualify me for RWA and make romance readers happy. But the road of the hybrid genre author is fraught with indecision and peril in marketing. It definitely isn't for the faint of heart.


What books are these? The good thing about this thread is I've been adding a lot to my TBR...! (now I just need more time to read...)


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

JaclynDolamore said:


> What books are these? The good thing about this thread is I've been adding a lot to my TBR...! (now I just need more time to read...)


Me too!


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## suliabryon (May 18, 2009)

brkingsolver said:


> While I agree with much of what you say, you've got this part mixed up. PNR and UF parted ways a long time ago, and UF never required romance. I guarantee UF did not come later, it came first. Later, such authors as LKH and Jim Butcher introduced more sex, then more romance into their books. The big boom in PNR started with Moning and Twilight, JR Ward and Nalini Singh. Those are romances, not urban fantasy.


Let me rephrase. I was using UF as an example of what CAN be a very 50/50 genre split, and I would argue that the majority of the heavy hitters are UF w/romance - LKH, who broke out the genre in 1992 with her Anita Blake series, Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher (although he is a little less with the romance) and our own indie bestsellers like Annie Bellet and Jasmine Walt. Maybe it's just my reading habits, but I'm having a hard time thinking of as many non-romance UF bestsellers. I do know that UF existed long before LKH, but her success really made it a household name and started its path to being a hugely successful genre. PNR was already in existence in the 90's as well, with authors like Christine Feehan and Sherrylin Kenyon. Ward and the others came a few years later.


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## suliabryon (May 18, 2009)

JaclynDolamore said:


> What books are these? The good thing about this thread is I've been adding a lot to my TBR...! (now I just need more time to read...)


I'll send you a PM.  FeliciaBeasley - you actually already know me, you just don't realize it.  I'll PM you as well!


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

suliabryon said:


> I'll send you a PM.  FeliciaBeasley - you actually already know me, you just don't realize it.  I'll PM you as well!


That is both awesome and a little unsettling


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content removed. I don't consent to the new TOS of 2018.


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## Fishbowl Helmet (Jan 12, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> Are we on the same planet?


It is a distinct possibility, though certainly not certain.



> I have a library of SFF that fills a large room...


That's a good start. Well done you.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Don't know if this of interest of anyone... but I just sent an e-mail to Amazon and suggested they add the following romance sub-categories:

Romantic Heroes/Vampires
Romantic Heroes/Shifters
Romantic Heroes/Aliens

Romantic Themes/Futuristic
Romantic Themes/Space Travel
Romantic Themes/Galactic Empires
Romantic Themes/Post Apocalyptic
Romantic Themes/Dystopian

Not sure if others with to suggest as well... but it couldn't hurt to mention it. I did receive a note from Amazon thanking me for the suggestions and noting the request had been forwarded.


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## mythsnake (Oct 22, 2014)

Couldn't hurt to send in the suggestion. I suggested to SFWA that they bring up the issue the next time the president talks with org's Amazon rep; don't know if she will, but maybe if SFWA and RWA get on board with pushing the suggestion, Amazon would be a little more willing to implement it, especially if authors have been sending in the same requests independently (and if readers do so as well, even better).


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## ET (Oct 23, 2014)

Herefortheride said:


> It seems I've had some of the same problems searching Amazon as some of you folks have.
> 
> When looking for a classic fantasy or science fiction story I find the categories completely surrounded by bare torsos, shapeshifting, lover, billionaire, love stories.
> 
> It's really frustrating that romance genre stories have been allowed to flood almost every category to the point that it becomes very hard for people to find the non-romance books (in the non-romance) categories.


There is a similar situation with horror: Search for "vampire novels" on Amazon, and you get page after page of Twilight-esque vampire romances. You'll also get lots of "paranormal romance", which is very different from what Stephen King or Richard Matheson are about. There is even "werewolf romance" and "zombie romance" nowadays.

Given that the romance category is so broad, it seems more logical to create subcategories within romance (paranormal romance, SF romance, etc.) versus allowing romance to take over every other category of genre fiction.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

Edward Trimnell said:


> There is a similar situation with horror: Search for "vampire novels" on Amazon, and you get page after page of Twilight-esque vampire romances.


It's even harder for those of us who like vampires but are looking for something other than hard horror or typical vampire romance. My (unpublished) vampire book has elements of horror and romance in it, but isn't really either in terms of genre. I classify it as contemporary fantasy (not even urban fantasy, really, since it is set in a fairly small city and doesn't have a lot of typical urban fantasy elements--though that's probably where I'll end up putting it since Amazon seems to think urban fantasy and contemporary fantasy are the same thing).

I do hope SWFA and RWA talk to Amazon about this. I also really enjoy reading what y'all are calling hybrid stories (50/50 romance and SF/F), so forcing authors to choose one or the other is not the best solution, IMO.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> I think the answer is not to turn on one another as authors but rather to turn to Amazon and ask them to solve this problem with honey: create a far wider range of subcategories for romance authors to use, so as to draw them back to romance. (And do the same for erotica.) There are already what looks like a good number, but I think they could easily be expanded tremendously. This is what's there now:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I love that readers have these options to filter books. What I don't love is that authors do not have the power to place our books directly in those subcategories without some guessing game trying to make the correct key words with the proper genres, which doesn't always work. And then there are plenty of categories that we can't get books into, no matter what we do. If authors could just directly click on the subcats like the screenshots above, that would be a huge step in making things better.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

The guessing game is highly annoying. After a couple days of trying to get the categories right for my fantasy romance novel, I finally had to email Amazon. They were great at fixing the problem but the time spent figuring this out could've added more words to the WIP.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

ebbrown said:


> I love that readers have these options to filter books. What I don't love is that authors do not have the power to place our books directly in those subcategories without some guessing game trying to make the correct key words with the proper genres, which doesn't always work.


Yes. This is part of the problem: they should get rid of the whole 'magic keywords' thing and just let us pick a few categories, even if they restrict them to a few generic and related categories.


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