I want better romance categories!
First off, let me say, I love Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Allromance and all other online bookstores. What’s not to love? They sell books and I love books, BUT… of those 4 stores mentioned, only ONE has categories made to help romance readers shop properly. AllRomance, hands down, understands that romance readers don’t want all their stuff lumped together in a mishmash that makes it annoying to shop and buy. And trust me, that’s a shame, because romance readers are voracious so you’d think they’d want to make it easy for us to feed our addiction.
Now for my confession, while I occasionally buy from AllRomance, I freely admit to being addicted to Amazon’s one click option. I hate sideloading. I hate having to log in and jump through hoops to get a new book. That said, while I love buying books from Amazon, I hate using their website to shop for it. Why? Because their romance categories are woefully inadequate. Actually, they suck. Readers know what they like, or at least I do. For example, I am a big paranormal romance fan and yet, there is no way to get to a paranormal romance listing directly from the menus on Amazon, B&N etc… If I type it in the search box, I get some results, but not all the books I know belong there. It makes me want to scream. And I’m not even going to talk about the books in the romance category that don’t belong there. That is a whole other pet peeve.
I sometimes have to wonder how these bookstores class books at times too. Despite repeated requests, do you know Bunny & the Bear is classed under Horror and Erotica at B&N? Horror?!! Like seriously lol. And that’s just some of the wtf-ery us authors deal with when it comes to categories.
Having moaned about this on numerous occasions to my hubby, who watches me get frustrated trying to shop to feed my reading addiction, I’ve come up with some must have romance sub categories that Amazon, and others, really should add under the romance category. (Please note I am only going to mention the ones missing that I want to see lol. Feel free to comment and tell me which ones you’d like!)
Erotic romance, not to be mistaken with erotica. I am not going to delve into the difference. We readers already know the difference.
BDSM/Alternative Lifestyle romance, again not the erotica type but the long term commitment versions.
Science Fiction Romance which could (make that should) be subcategorized into Alien Romance, High Tech Romance, Futuristic Romance, Galactic Romance — and yes, they are different!
YA Romance. This one drives me nuts. I am an adult. I want to read romances about adults. All the teeny bopper romances cluttering the romance category drive me insane. I wish they’d put them in their own category or have a way to weed them out.
Paranormal Romance. I can’t believe this one doesn’t have it’s own listing. Sure, they have Gothic and Vampire (which by the way as an author I’ve never seen as an option to list my book in) but when I choose Paranormal Romance to list my books I end up in a general category titled Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost — all I have to say is WTF?
Fantasy Romance not to be mistaken with Paranormal. Again, very different! Fantasy romance has a setting outside of our world with elves, or magic, dragons and swords, you know fairy tale type settings.
Shapeshifter Romance. When I want a werewolf or bear to fall in love, I don’t want to have to wade through tons of vampire novels to find it. Give me a hairy beast! lol
Multi partner romance. This one gets misclassified so often it’s not funny. Yes, some people think it’s kinky and automatically relegate it to erotica, BUT not all MFM or more stories are erotica. Some truly are about the romantic journey to get there, not just sex (even if it’s fun lol). It deserves it’s own spot.
Romantic Comedies. Sometimes I don’t want a book filled with angst or drama, and the blurb isn’t always adequate to decipher if a book is going to be funny. Humorous romance is a class of its own and should be recognized as such.
Okay, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some important ones. So let’s hear them. What categories would you like to see when you hit that romance menu?
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I'm glad to know I'm not alone. I love that one click at Amazon darn it, lol. Now if only they'd make it easier for me to find books. I hate spending an hour looking for what I'm in the mood for instead of a few minutes so I can spend the rest of that time reading :)
As for Amazon, at times it feels like if you don't know the authors name that you are looking for, you won't get anywhere with it. But then it's hard to find new authors to read...I do like the recommendations they give me though. I have found many new authors from that! I think for me it's a love/hate relationship between me and any book buying website. I love browsing around but I have so many books I need to read, I hate it as well. Haha. I keep telling myself I won't get anymore books until I have cut my pile down a bit....and then I see another book I have been wanting or that looks good...*sigh*.
lol, I buy books sometimes too because of recommendations, but then they sit in my TBR pile as a new one catches my eye or I find my mood has shifted and I want something different. What I find funny is they keep recommending my own books to me lol. I also thought of another category too that is totally missing , urban fantasy. I love them but I really like to know I'm reading one because they usually end with a HFN and when I'm in the mood for a HEA that totally messes with me lol. Especially when I've grabbed it from the romance category.
Haha! Now that is too funny! You would probably need to mark your books as owned in order for them to stop coming up. I know Amazon has an option that is something like that. Oh! Yes, I love Urban Fantasy! I actually like to go into a book "blind" so to speak. When I see a potiental book on Amazon or Allromance I will come here to GR and look at ratings and see what people have them shelved as. Those 2 things pretty much determine if I will get a book or not. Haha. Other than that I don't want to read a review or sometimes even the blurb. I want to completely come up with my own opinion of the book.
Oh another one I thought of is Dystopian! They could definitely use a Dystopian category!
I don't like to read reviews because I find just like movies, my tastes are my own and what floats my boat doesn't float someone else's lol. I've hated a lot of acclaimed hits and now tend to avoid them like them like crazy. Covers catch my eye first, then the blurb. If I'm intrigued, then I buy it :) And yes to Dystopian!
Exactly! I wanted to see what the big deal was with (view spoiler) but after I was done reading all 3 I still don't get it. IMO there are many, MANY other writers who should have more acknowledgement for what they write than that. But again...that is only my opinion..and that is the great things about opinions...everyone's is different.
I definitely would like the YA entries in all genres separated. There are some good ones that crossover, but if teenage characters and written to appeal o teenage audience...say so. Other goodreads threads wanting suggested reading ages or genre classifications have degenerated into screams of censorship, rants on freedom of speech and how us Americans too sensitive to ratings and don't realize when kids read what 's above their age group they just ignore ... But all I mean is just some categorizing to help find the type of book you want to read. Romance, contemporary, YA, chicklit and lots of genres may not have clearcut definitions; but, that's exactly why you need subcategories instead of lumping one catchall like "romance"—the kindle store browsing by genre on physical kindle device is better at subclasses than amazon site.
"Historical romance" a category you left out. Actually, I like that one to go further into subclasses like "medieval" "regency" etc.
I agree all YA should be separated out and classed for a certain age because quite honestly, I don't want my twelve year old reading about sexually active ( and in some case explicit) teenagers getting it on. But, short of pre-reading everything, there's no way of finding out for sure the content. Lol, she's the reason I read the whole Twilight series in the first place -- and quite enjoyed mind you -- but there's other books that made my eyebrows go sky high with the sexual content and by characters not even considered of legal age or barely. I am not a prude by any means but still... I don't think it's wrong to want to preserve her innocence a little while longer. And I can't believe I forgot historical romance -- that one definitely needs its own category with many subgenres -- pirates, norman/saxons coming to mind lol. I did so love a good ravishing back in the day. Chicklit is also its own niche. See! Romance needs more categories!
I would love it if we had more sub-categories(for everything)! I also hate the way PNR romance shows up as Urban Fantasy! I get really anal about sub-categories, lol.
What blows me away is the number of subcategories on really obscure subjects with very few books. You'd think romance with it's almost 100k bookson Amazon alone would be the one to get the most. I'll be anal with you about it lol ;p
The only problem I have with AllRomance is with the secured EPUB from major publishers who do not allow the removal of the DRM. I purchased one that had this program on it making the ebook a mess to fix. I want to buy a book and be able to convert it to be able to read it on my Kindle. I wish the publishers would stop this practice as I do not share my ebooks with anyone.
I had a friend who purchased a print book where the printing was so tiny that she could not read it. I had the same book as an ebook which I had converted to Word, so I forwarded her a copy of my ebook for her to actually read the book. I also notified the author of the issue to hopefully get this corrected for oldies with failing reading glass needing eyes. :)
I am glad that your books do not have this DRM on them so I can convert them if need be to be loaded to my Kindle.
I do wish that Amazon could do a better job of catagorizing but I wonder if the problem comes from the publisher who is giving the wrong catagories for Amazon to input. It seemed it would be difficult to read all the books for Amazon to do this.
I hear you about DRM, R. It's a pain sometimes, especially when you use Apps to read books instead of dedicated devices. As for categories, having self published some of my titles, I can say with some certainty that the oddity in classification isn't coming just from publishers. Our choices are very limited, and even though we choose the right ones, sometimes the online stores change it. For example, despite repeated requests B&N insists on putting Bunny and the Bear in Horror. It's only horrifying if you hate bad puns lol. Other than that, it is a shaepshifting, romantic comedy. I can only wonder what horror readers think if they actually download it. lol
HA! Contemporary romance and suspense too. I actually never use Amazon to find new books, I only use it to buy the specific book I want. If i'm just browsing I usually go to Allromance, because they have the catergory's.
Multi partner usually gets thrown with erotica and that bugs me. But maybe name it something else? Menage romance..?
The categories is one of the main reasons I love shopping at Allromance as well. And I curse Amazon and that super awesome one click button. Gets me every time!
When you sign up for the emails for the free books some of the websites do a pretty decent job at selecting the right category to put books under..