“What Kind of Book Is It?”

One of the hardest — yet most important — questions an author often has to answer about his work is the one asked by this entry’s title.

Now, it’s not hard at all to answer, for many authors and even more books. When you walk into Borders or Barnes & Noble, when you browse Amazon, it’s all organized by “type”: romance along this aisle, SF over there, “literature” along the walls, and so on. The problem is that it’s these classifications which determine “what kind of book” a given title is — not the other way around.

Consider, say, Terry Pratchett’s books. In the bookstore, you’ll find him categorized as science fiction and/or fantasy. So — as an avid SF/F reader — you go to one of his titles (you’ve heard so much about him, after all) and check out the back cover, perhaps start reading at any given page.

Whoa, you say.

And you are right. This is nothing like typical science fiction or fantasy. The pages are littered with jokes, puns, general failure-to-take-seriously. The characters (certainly the male ones, at any rate) are almost all buffoons, at some level.

Put yourself in Terry Pratchett’s shoes, years and years ago. You’ve got one or a handful of manuscripts from your “Discworld” series to shop around to agents/editors.

And the first question they want to know is: “What kind of book is it? What genre?”

It’s a dilemma. If you say “fantasy,” you know darned well they’ll automatically think of certain things — magic is probably mixed up in there, maybe some dragons, perhaps some muscular heroines bursting graphically from the leopard skins in which they are strategically draped. If you say “science fiction,” aside from the fact that the action takes place on a planet whose relationship to the rest of the universe is sometimes commented on, the reader won’t find any of the usual tropes: robots, spaceships, the evils and triumphs of physicists and doctors. If you say “humor,” the agents/editors will shake their heads and point you down the hall to their underpaid and probably underfed colleague — whose first question (after the “What kind…?”) will be a variation of “Where has your stuff been published before?” or “How long have you been doing stand-up comedy?”

(And when the “humor acquisitions editor,” if there is such a person, actually reads your book, he’s going to say, “Whoa. This is funny, sure, but…” And then he will shrug and point you back up the hall.)

I’ve got this Merry-Go-Round book concerning which I’m on the brink of submitting queries to agents. If I’m being completely honest, I will say, “Umm… it’s not really any one genre.”

“Okay, then. What’s its main genre?”

“Well, let’s see. It’s sort of a thriller. It’s sort of a near-future or parallel-world kind of story. There’s some funny stuff. And it’s also political. Does that help?”

*crickets*