I LOVE writing! Who'd have guessed 27 years ago when I started writing fiction that it would turn into a full-time career potentially set to last me a lifetime. Not me, that's for dang sure.
But it has. And just so that I can abuse the metaphor thoroughly let me say that all the action has been a thrilling adventure. (Is it dead yet? Not quite? Well, I tried.)
Genres are peculiar
Fiction genres (and non-fiction ones too for that matter) were designed and institutionalized for one major purpose, to help readers find similar kinds of books in the stores. "You want Westerns? They're right over there with their feet together in a bunch." (Mark Twain joke, anyone?)
I remember the hubbub in 1983 when my favorite science fiction store (that I drove 20 miles to every week to hand over a fair slice of my paycheck), split apart science fiction. Suddenly there were two new racks. Small and narrow, but new.
One was horror. It broke out first with Stephen King and The Omen, but horror used to be shelved in SF.
The big change was fantasy. The rack was two face-out books wide and maybe eight shelves tall. And it was Terry Brooks fault. When it was just JRR Tolkien it wasn't that big a deal. But with the sudden and overwhelming popularity of The Sword and Elfstones of Shannara, it was suddenly too confusing. Over the next months, the store's owner would occasionally pick out another title and shift it across the narrow genre divide. I now had to look in two places for my weekly SF/F fix. I think I was the one who suggested he shift over Narnia, because this was before YA or religious sections. Then we'd debate where the C.S. Lewis Planet Trilogy belonged. I argued for the purism of space adventure being in SF. I think it bounced back and forth a few times before its final move to fantasy—though it made the crossing well after The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
The new genre divide served its purpose. I would see people come in and sweep through one section or the other, but not both. Remember, genres are to help people find books similar to what they already enjoy. Wide-ranging readers often have to scout far and wide through a bookstore (we'll get to action-adventure in a bit).
These merchandising genre divides, and the knowledge of them, also helped publishers select books. Any book that didn't fit neatly into a genre only had one of two places: Literature and Fiction when it crossed genres so successfully that there was nowhere else to put it...or the reject pile.
Genres Explode
Then e-books happened. For all intents and purposes, the two great gatekeepers of genre went away:
- The limit of theoretical physics...er...physical layout. There is only so far you can subdivide a store before genre becomes a meaningless tool even more confusing to the readers than the shelvers.
- The unwillingness of publishers to purchase titles that didn't slot neatly into a genre.
Suddenly romance was no longer enough. It was so massive that it had already leveraged its way to 7 subgenres while still in the stores (though only the biggest collections broke those out). Online, they rapidly grew to 21, and now Amazon lists over 40 subgenres of romance. In the last decade my military romances have evolved (with no changes in what I was writing) like this: contemporary romance > romantic suspense > military romantic suspense > military romance > romance action-adventure. And given time, if military romance retains at its current popularity, it will split into "military romance" and "military romantic action-adventure" for those with military heroes vs. those that actually go to battle.
Electronic sales, of both eBooks and Print, have allowed the great proliferation of genres. It's supposed to make discovery easier for readers...provided they only read in one narrow genre rather than reading widely (but that's a bugaboo for another time).
Back in some prehistoric dawn when I wasn't paying attention, there was a single genre called: Mystery. Under that heading was everything from cozy mystery to blood-and-guts thrillers. Yes, Miss Marple and Hannibal Lecter would have been cozied up together on that bookstore shelf. Something had to occur and that genre too began subdividing, though not as drastically as romance.
Mystery and Thriller went their separate ways. Alas for me, Women Sleuths remained firmly in Mystery rather than adventuring into the testosterone-laden world of the thrillers where my heroines in both my Dead Chef and Miranda Chase series firmly hold the reins (of runaway horses...we are talking thrillers after all).
Except something else was going on that I didn't even see despite writing in the genre. Thrillers too had a split. A divide that dated way back into the early days of popular fiction.
Action-Adventure Genre
I don't know when this broke off from thrillers, or more likely when thrillers broke off from it, but action-adventure had its roots back in the Old West dime novels, the Sea Adventures, the mega-bestseller of 1880s She, and a hundred other sources. But break apart they did.
So how do we subdivide these and ferret out what's what. For that I recommend this fine post by Liz Schrift. She notes, absolutely correctly in my opinion, that the essential difference is pacing. And I'll add another in a moment. She notes that:
- Suspense is all about the pacing. The slow build of tension.
- Thrillers are faster-paced and will keep you at the edge of your seat with cliffhangers and unknowns.
- Action-adventure is a flat-out race.
 | |
|
The second element is in the very name of "Action-Adventure" itself. These stories go places. Exotic locales, changing environments. Fast switches from one place to another, one point-of-view to another. It is, quite literally, a fast-action adventure.
Here's a fun experiment. Click on the three searches below:
Rear Window > Silence of the Lambs > Jumanji
The Sixth Sense > Psycho > Jurassic Park, Fast & Furious, anything by Marvel...
There's some overlap (think of it as they've hit #1 in multiple categories), but you get the idea.
Oh, except wait! BISAC (the folks who oversee American genre definitions) just added Superhero as it's own genre, distinct from its subcategory under "Comics & Graphic Novels". (If you really want to make your head hurt, explore the full BISAC listings HERE...they are "enhanced" every year.)
Writing as adventure
So, what do I write?
- Miranda Chase: Political/military-technothrillers with Woman Sleuths in the Action-Adventure genre. (By the way, Miranda #1, Drone, hit the Amazon #1 Bestseller List in both Thrillers and Action-Adventure.)
- Dead Chef: Lighthearted foodie-thrillers with Woman Sleuths in the Action-Adventure genre.
Genre is a marketing tool. That's its sole purpose for being. But it is getting so fractured that how to market a single title becomes a massive challenge. What "shifted" categories are my old books under? And what categories do readers search on? Have they even heard of Action-adventure, or are they still shopping under thrillers? It is turning into a testing and guessing game. A month as a thriller and a month as an action-adventure...which month sells better? And who has the time to test all that?
More importantly, how are readers addressing this? I observe changing reading habits. Instead of browsing a genre, they are finding a favorite author and then plunging in to read that author massively. The safe haven is shifting from "Genre" to "Author."
Yay! Good news for me the author.
The only challenge? "How the heck to they find me in the first place?"
Maybe here!
 |
| Explore Miranda Chase Now |
 |
| Explore Dead Chef Now |
USA
Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. "Matt" Buchman has 60+ action-adventure
thriller and military romance novels, 100 short stories, and lotsa audiobooks. PW
says: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.”
Booklist declared: “3X Top 10 of the Year.”
A
project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s designed and built houses, flown
and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50’ sailboat, and bicycled solo around
the world…and he quilts. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.
7 comments:
Interesting post, Matt. Since It's been decades since I've read anything that comes close to thriller or action/adventure (think Tom Clancy - Dan Brown is too intense for me), I am interested in your take on the changes in genre labeling. I do agree that finding an author and reading deep is more common now than it once was. At least I'm finding that true for my own reading habit.
You have my head spinning, Matt - I never understood genre distinctions way back when they were simple :-) I have mostly been an author follower - and then I search for books by people who liked the author I like, so I can expand my reading. But it does get confusing when my favorite authors move to a new genre - do I try it or not? I do always try something new at least once. You never know what you will fall in love with next, that you didn't know existed to begin with :-) Thanks for enlightening post.
Matt, thank you for the information about the categories Suspense, Thriller, and Action Adventure. My Isabella Mumphrey series that I've been marketing as Action Adventure hasn't gone anywhere despite the first book winning an award and those who do find the books enjoy them. I'm recovering and marketing them as Romantic Suspense even though they have the same her and heroine in every book.
Having worked in a Waldenbooks in the 1980s, I can attest to the divisions that were exploding on shelves in that time period. We bookstore clerks were also flummoxed by YA. Clearly these books didn't belong in the children's section, but for a long time, they wound up in general adult fiction shelves. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy split definitely happened then.
Genre is so darn tricky for authors these days. I write WWII romances; however, they are not homefront love stories, they are set overseas in the thick of the action and roughly 33% of my books are combat action in the perspective of the hero. I tried the "Military Romance" category on Amazon, and it's been an utter flop at least insofar as ads targeting military romance fans. I don't have a sexy contemporary Navy Seal or commando type on my covers, but I do have sexy 1940s flyboys in combat on the page, if only they would give my books a try. Male readers might also enjoy my books -- I was invited to speak to the book club of an acquaintance earlier this year and was surprised and a little nervous to find once I arrived that it was a co-ed book club. But the men all said that they loved the book, though they were skeptical going in. I don't know how to target male readers or women who enjoy military "action-adventure" novels - it's tough marketing within a subgenre that doesn't fully 100% exist but is a blend of several existing genres.
Deb and Judith, Yes, genre is one giant squirrel, or perhaps a game of Whack-a-Mole. Every time you think you have it beat into shape, another one pops up! SIGH
Paty, Yep! Sometimes you just have to try things and see what happens.
Eleri, part of the challenge can be attacked with keywords. Historical romance with a military or soldier keyword? I'll admit that being a guy with 50 romances to his name, those co-ed rooms are still a little disconcerting. At my first ever RWA National conference there were 7 guys and 1,800 women. Two years later there were nine men and 2,000 women. Very strange experience. Anyway, look at the Also-boughts, others writing in your niche (or even close to it). Chase around a bit to find their categories and keywords, see what they're doing. (And target your ads at those "Also" names.)
Interesting definition that the "essential difference is pacing" between suspense, thriller, and action-adventure. Not sure I agree but I an see Liz Schrift's logic.
I've always felt those books I write with suspense do fit the suspense genre. Not sure if I'll get to thrillers as I build the Shadow Finder series.
The good news is for most vendors you can choose more than one category. And at Amazon, though you can only choose three categories initially when you load the book. You can request up to seven more through support or Author Central. And, like you said, selecting good keywords also gets you some of the same search options as being in a category.
I'm so happy for you that you have made it as a full-time writer. You've worked hard to get there and I just smile every time I think of you and how well you've done.
It is interesting how genres evolved. And now I'l go look at your Dead Chef books--how did I miss those? ;-)
Post a Comment