Kirsten asked Mary Robinette Kowal:

I am having trouble defining the genre of a novel I am writing as I have received some conflicting advice about it. How do you decide which genre your work us for the all important elevator pitch? Can you recommend any resources to help?

Mary Robinette Kowal It's okay to use more than one genre tag. The purpose of these is to give the reader some idea of the kind of experience that they're going to have. So if your book has romance, mystery, and thriller elements, set in a fantasy world it's tempting to say that. But... this is rather like saying that my recipe has sugar and vanilla therefore it's a desert, when it's actually a spaghetti sauce. (Seriously, it does great things to the acidity of the tomatoes, but I digress.)

Think about the different reader experiences and then consider if your book would satisfy them. Sometimes it's easy -- Military SF? Nope... readers of that would not be happy with my "Jane Austen with Magic" novel. Sometimes it's harder -- "Romance?" Yep. But they won't like the sequel, so let's steer the whole series over to historical fantasy.

Does that make sense?

At the end of the day, don't worry about it overmuch, because it's really going to be the job of your agent and the sales department at your publisher.

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