Romance… Suspense… Comedy… Historical … Erotica
What’s the difference between Contemporary Romance, Romantic Suspense, Romantic Comedy, Historical Romance, and Erotic Romance? Hmmm… Let’s think about this for a moment as I know I sure have. It’s confusing when you start putting a label on what genre you write in, I mean can’t we write in them all? I know that I’ve dabbled in them all and even though I don’t consider one of my pieces pure erotica some people do.
This is why it brings me to today’s questions. What’s the difference?
I read all types of genres, even those that aren’t classified as romance. Growing up it was always suspense, murder, etc. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started reading romance novels, and that was still far in between.
I recently read an article, which I can’t find now to share with you. Sorry… The main focus was what classifies Erotica as good and bad. Now, this is another subject for a different post, but it got me thinking.
So let’s break it down, and I’m only doing a few as we have others like paranormal, fantasy, YA, etc.
Contemporary Romance: Research shows that this is romance written in today’s modern world, and can vary with sexual activities.
Romantic Suspense: Of course this one should be easy as we know suspense means danger and like some of the other’s it will vary in sexuality.
Romantic Comedy: Like suspense this should say it all, but it’s romance that attempts to catch the readers heart and gives a nice dash of humor on the side. Sexuality will vary to some degree.
Historical Romance: This they say is romance before the 1900’s and like contemporary romance has some degree of sexuality.
Erotic Romance: This will just be summed up like this… Sylvia Day did a blog post about this back in 2005 and summed it up pretty well for us. Click here to read her post. Erotica has a ton of different sub-categories just like romance. So today we will focus on the romance side of Erotica that has an HEA and will contain some degree of sexuality.
Of course through my research over the last few days, I have found several website that explain each subcategory differently. Each site will be listed below for your enjoyment.
Now, I write in all of the above, read in all of the above, and curious to the fact of this. Do you think it matters what category your next romance is located under? Authors spend a lot of focus on getting the correct BISAC codes.
Why is this so important? And here is the reason I picked today’s topic.
It’s important so that the readers can click on Romantic Suspense and find your book. Then let’s enter the keywords that are listed on the side for what theme you might be looking for. Man…. That was a lot of work to find your novel. But it’s worth it in the long run as you want to classify your book correctly.
Here’s another reason why…
A little over a year ago, an author friend was telling me about a review she received on her Erotic Romance. OH… MY…GOD…. It had sex in it. The synopsis listed mature read and even went as far to let the readers know that it had sex in it. Why was this reader shocked, I have the slightest idea? Everything was spelled out, categorized appropriately, etc. It happens to the best of us, I guess.
I’ve even had someone complain about the language in mine as she only reads Christian Romance.
Hint to the reason why we spell it out, classify our manuscripts in the correct BISAC codes and explain everything. Just another reason to know your codes, words, and how to reach the right audience.
What’s your favorite category in romance? Is it all of the above, suspense, comedy, or?
As I close this fabulous blog post for today, I remind my author friends to double check those codes, and keywords as we never want to mislead a reader. Make sure we list that it contains sexual content, etc. Better safe than sorry, but as we all know it’s bound to happen.
For now, I will continue to dabble in all of the above, well maybe not all but you never know.
Do you have a topic you would like my thoughts on? Leave a comment and I’ll see if I can write something up. Again all of the above is from experience and research online.
For more information on our romance descriptions see the paegs below.
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Love A.M. Willard
