Find your pigeonhole
You can pretty much judge a book by its cover. Everyone knows that. But what if you just can’t work out what the cover should be? This is the problem I had when I self-published a romance novel at the end of last year.
It was the bookseller who really threw me. ‘Your book looks like YA,’ he told me blankly, before leading me around the shop, pointing out a range of bestselling covers – none of which bore any relation to my own.
Shoot the Moon is a contemporary romance with comedic elements. However, with themes of baby loss and commitment avoidance it also crosses over to women’s fiction. So pretty quickly after publishing I decided that, although beautifully designed, I did have the wrong cover, and began a journey to find out more about the sub-categories within the romance genre.
A clear view of categories
The first thing I wanted to clarify were the main). Of the four to five books she reads a week most tend to be romance, so she seemed the perfect place to start. She suggests that the RNA (Romantic Novelists Association) annual awards are a good place to look. Here, the categories are divided into six main ones: contemporary, historical, saga, rom com, romantic thriller and fantasy.
