Readers gravitate toward a certain kind of reading experience. If you stop and think about it, every time you go to the library or the bookstore you have some idea of what you want to read before you started browsing the book stacks.

One of the first questions an editor asks of a manuscript is, "What genre is it?" Without knowing that, how is the editor or book store owner going to know where to place the book in the book store? And how will the editor be able to convince colleagues that a book he wants to buy is a commercially viable project?

On average, some 50,000 books a year are published in the U.S. Some are hardcover (sometimes called cloth), many more are paperback, both mass market (the small sized books that fit in your pocket), and trade (the larger sized ones that almost look like hardcovers). All of them can be categorized in some fashion.

Category and genre are marketing terms that mean, more or less, the same thing. Their purpose is basically to help you more easily find what it is you're looking for. They are also guidelines that let you know, generally, what you can expect to find in a certain type of book.

Genres developed as a way of marketing and selling mass market paperbacks. As a result, even mainstream novels, when reprinted as mass market paperbacks, need to be slotted into a genre of some sort.

A common mistake inexperienced writers make is to assume that because, say, a crime takes place in their romance, then the book must also be a mystery. That's why, when you ask such writers what their book is about, they often give you a list as long as your arm about the various categories their book fits into, and why as a result it should be a bestseller because it will appeal to so many people.

If the story involves the trials and tribulations of a 19^th century wagon train of women on their way to California from Arkansas, then you are writing a Western, even if one or several of the women fall in love along the way. If the thrust of the story is the love affair between one of the women on the wagon train and, say, the Indian scout who is leading them to the promised land, it's a romance. The genre is determined by the main focus of the story. If it is squarely centered on the romance between two characters, then it's a romance.

Bottom line is that knowing your genre will help you place your manuscript in the marketplace and allow you to introduce it to the best audience in a more focused way, rather than a shotgun, scattershot approach that may or may not be effective.

How many genres are there, and what are they?

There are basically four overall categories: fiction and non-fiction, Adult and Children. Adult books and Children's books often, but not always reflect each other, though not necessarily at exactly the same time.

Within these groupings the sub groupings or genres evolve with each generation of reader, reflecting changes in reading tastes. However, the main categories are listed below. Think of them as primary colors, with the variations of genre different shades of these colors.

Why do I have to bother about this genre stuff?

Readers (and editors) are looking for books that reflect contemporary tastes (even if the story being told is a historical story of some kind) because they want to relate emotionally to the story. Readers also expect a certain category of story to have predictable elements in it.

While genres are being constantly reinvented, it's important that not only are you familiar with the classic of the genre, you should also read the latest published books in a genre to get a sense of what readers expect now.

Genre thinking is more and more a critical aspect of modern publishing. One of the first questions an editor asks of a manuscript is, "What is it?" What they mean, of course, is what genre is it? Once that's determined the manuscript will be judged by the standards of that genre. So, for instance, if you've written an extremely intelligent western, intelligence, while admirable, is not the point. What the editor is interested in is your ability to create convincing characters that speak to the readership. How well, and accurately, do you work in historical detail in an unobtrusive manner? How do you keep the reader involved and turning the page? To be successful you must not just read but study the books in the genre and define for yourself those qualities that helped make the genre so special.

Probably 98% of books written fall into some category, so the answer to the question, "Why must we think like this about books?" is that readers gravitate toward a certain kind of reading experience. It could be broadly fiction or non-fiction, or more precisely a book about the intricacies of a computer program, or maybe a biography of Warren Buffet, the financial advisor and stock market wizard.

Maybe you've had this experience: after reading a lot of westerns, you started reading science fiction. Or you read a load of romances, and then Jackie Collins, some mysteries moving on to Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley, and before you knew it you were reading the Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan and then novels by Alice Hoffman and Toni Morrison. But every time you went to the library or the bookstore you had some idea of what you wanted to buy before you got there.

There are millions of people who love to read Science Fiction, for example, and while they're looking for a certain type of science fiction, say "space opera" a la "Star Wars," or more heady stuff such as Arthur C. Clark's brilliant Childhood's End, crime novels they have no interest at all in reading a romance or a western.

On the other hand, if the last book you enjoyed was a romance, then you'll probably go back to the store looking for that author's next book, or one like it. So it's important for an author to understand what genre is, and how his work fits into this scheme of things, so that he can find his readership and not disappoint the audience’s expectations.

Absolutely not. There are no formulas for writing category, or genre fiction, because formulaic writing doesn't have the zing and pizzazz needed to get published these days. However, genres do have conventions a writer must pay attention to in order to write a successful book. For example: In a crime novel there must always be a crime to solve.

Romance

Romance is a huge field earning nearly $1 billion a year and accounting for 50% at least of all mass market paperback books sold. Romance fiction has a strict form, usually a variation on girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl finds boy again.

The variations on this are many, however. There are gothic romances, traditional Harlequin romances (published by the Canadian publisher Harlequin who once dominated this genre), Native American romances, western romances, historical romances, time travel romances, futuristic romances, fantasy romances, even vampire and paranormal romances. The biggest evolution in romances since the 1960s has been the expansion of a genre that exclusively featured "virginal" heroines such as those of Barbara Cartland, to include the raunchy, sexy (sometimes promiscuous) heroines of Rosemarie Rogers and others that developed in the 1990s.

If you write to the publishers of romance fiction they'll send you guidelines that will tell you how they like their books to be structured, how long they should be, and so forth.

At the heart of every romance is how a relationship between a woman and a man develops into love and the problems that men and women have communicating with each other and negotiating their roles in a relationship.

The reader of romance fiction expects that both the hero and heroine will be alive and well and thoroughly in love with each other by the end of the story. They also shouldn't be separated for long periods of the book, and the story should end at a point in their story where there is the most hope for their relationship.

Mysteries and Crime Novels

After romance, or perhaps keeping pace alongside it, the other money-making major fiction genre is the mystery or crime novel. It’s so popular that confederations of independent mystery bookstores in the US and around the world, such as the IMBA (Independent Mystery Bookstore Association), have grown up to promote and sell the genre. Such groups specialize in "handselling" mystery authors, and promoting them with signings and readings, and so forth.

The mystery can be traced back to the August Dupin proto-Sherlock Holmes-type stories of Edgar Allen Poe (hence the annual "Edgar" Awards for the best in mystery fiction) written in the 1840s. The first mystery novel is often said to be The Woman in White by Wilke Collins, written in England in the 1860s. Undoubtedly, the most famous of the early mystery novelists was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation B Sherlock Holmes.

If you consider that in many cases the books are still readily available, some of the biggest selling authors of the 20^th century have been mystery writers: Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Earl Stanley Gardner.

Soft mysteries, sometimes called "cozys," usually feature an amateur sleuth and are typically along the lines of an Agatha Christie, John Dickenson Carr, or Murder She Wrote kind of puzzle story.

Mysteries can also be like the novels of Mickey Spillane, who is famous for writing archetypal "tough guy" or "hardboiled" mysteries that feature a cynical private investigator or PI. Others, include Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, Richard Starke (aka Donald Westlake), and John D. McDonald.

Then there are police procedurals, where the usually gritty detail of what cops do to bring a criminal to justice is more prominent than the puzzle. This genre was pretty much invented by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter) in his 87^th Precinct series, and there are now some 50 novels in the series. His books paved the way for TV Shows like "Hill Street Blues" and later "NYPD Blue."

Intriguingly, one of the more interesting elements of the rise of the mystery novel has been the growing prominence of women writers and characters. While women were always present in crime fiction, from Dorothy L Sayers onwards, there can be no ignoring the importance of the organization SISTERS IN CRIME. Formed in the mid-1980s by women writers who felt that they were being ignored by book reviewers in favor of male writers, the group decided not just to complain about the inequality they felt, but went out of their way to empower women writers (and the men who support them and join as Brothers in Crime).

Most mystery novels are conceived (or should be, anyway) as the start of a series, although the books should be able to stand alone.

What most mystery editors agree they're looking for are writers who have a unique "voice," and interesting characters and setting, rather than just an intriguing "puzzle."

Thrillers and Suspense Novels

Thrillers and suspense novels share this element: the protagonist is constantly in danger. In a Suspense novel it can be more localized and emotional, such as Sleeping With the Enemy about an abused wife who fakes her own death to avoid her abusive husband who tracks her down regardless. Or, it can be more overt, harder edged and "bigger," with the fate of the world or a city or a group at stake in what Stephen King calls "get out of that" storytelling. Every time the protagonist solves one problem the solution leads him to another crisis, like going from the frying pan into the fire. The hero manages to rescue the girl from the clutches of the villain, but in doing so causes the car to go over the edge of the cliff. Real "Indiana Jones" kind of stuff.

Thriller readers expect this type of convention, and if you don't provide it you're going to aggravate the hell out of them. Think how disappointed you'd feel.

A number of romance writers, prominent among them most recently Kay Hooper, have begun to move away from straight romance and write romantic suspense and women-in jeopardy fiction B suspense novels that can be thought of as "soft" thrillers by any other name.

A more "hardboiled" kind of thriller is Ken Follett’s EYE OF THE NEEDLE. Time was, in America anyway, the thriller was synonymous with WWII, the spy story, and the Cold War. The leading writers included Jack Higgins, Ken Follett, and John LeCarre. The fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall played havoc with these, and a lot of other writers' careers, and since 1989 the search has been on for a new "global villain."

What has risen in the thrillers' place, at least temporarily it seems, is a 21^st Century re-invention of the Jack London-esque Man against Nature story, particularly in the non-fiction genre such as A Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air.

But the thriller is still searching for a good villain to take the place of Cold War "commies" and WW II "Nazis." The techno-thriller, a la Tom Clancy, makes an appearance every now and then, but it is really a "tomorrow" type of Science Fiction novel in disguise or a variation of the Action Adventure category like the novels of Richard Marchenko. Meanwhile, nearly every lawyer in the world that wants to write fiction is hoping that he or she can write a legal thriller that will knock John Grisham from his pedestal, ignoring the fierceness of the competition.

There are classic thrillers you should be familiar with, such as John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps, Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate, Frederick Forsythe's The Day of The Jackal, and John Gilstrap's Nathan's Run.

The problem with the thriller is that the writer has to really convince us of the danger and the high stakes and keep it going to the end. Not an easy task, but one worth trying if you can manage it.

Horror

While the thriller aims to scare us with villains like a rampaging virus (such as in The Andromeda Strain, or the non-fiction The Hot Zone), or a homicidal genius like Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs), the horror genre is more preoccupied with making us confront our fears either personally or societally. Is Hannibal (the sequel to Silence of the Lambs) still a thriller, or has it become a horror novel?

Who is the biggest selling novelist of the last decade? Stephen King, of course, followed closely by Anne Rice, Clive Barker and Dean Koontz. Horror fiction, once a part of science fiction and fantasy, has grown up to become a major genre in its own right.

Horror fiction has been best described by author Peter Straub as, "The thin ice of life." While it was a strong selling genre for authors to break into a couple of years ago, recently the only horror novels that are being published are from the well established writers.

What is horror's appeal? To take everyday things and magnify them, exposing our fears so that we can examine them safely. Ultimately, Horror is about confronting and dealing with our fear of death and disaster.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

By the early 1990s, Science Fiction and Fantasy books were multi-billion dollar generators of profit for publishing houses. Sci Fi (or SF, for short) and Fantasy, while around for a long time, took off as a genre after the striking success of the movie Star Wars in 1977. In many ways SF has also paved the way for how publishing in general developed in the 1990s.

SF and fantasy, like Romance and Mystery, are "author driven" genres, which means, simply, that readers pay attention to who wrote the book they last read and enjoyed, and make efforts to find something else by that author. However, unlike Romance titles that sell mainly in supermarkets and drugstores, SF is largely sold through bookstores. It has also been a benefactor of advertising and "word of mouth" sales on the Internet B a pretty obvious place to market such books when you stop to think about it.

Author driven material overcomes one of corporate publishing's biggest problems, how to mass market a commodity (that is, a book) in an industry that for most of its existence has been defined by its idiosyncratic nature. The idea of selling books by turning authors into personalities, which now dominates publishing, first developed in the SF and Fantasy genre.

SF and Fantasy is a genre of contradictions: When anything is possible, and the phrase "cutting edge" is applied to almost every new writer of SF, there is, nevertheless, a powerful force of conservatism among SF and Fantasy editors. Many of the people involved in publishing SF and Fantasy cling to the notion that aping the success of others is more important, because of potential financial rewards, than encouraging what one executive editor at HarperCollins once called, "the literature of revolution."

There's all kinds of Science Fiction, from the hard science type of story, "space operas," like Star Wars and Star Trek, Cyberpunk written by authors such as William Gibson and K.W. Jeter, to what can be called "head" science fiction or speculative fiction of Robert Heinlein, where the science may be almost non existent.

A point worth remembering, however, is that a growing portion of SF is devoted to tie-in books. These are novels, written by professional, published writers, that are based on SF movies, TV shows, comics, or games. The chances of an unknown unpublished writer getting one of these work-for hire jobs is small, and yet the X-Files fan, or the Star Trek fan still feels it's worth their while to have a go.

Among the most famous Fantasy novels are the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein, the Thomas Covenant series, by Stephen Donaldson, and the witty Belgariad series by David Eddings. Then there are the sci-fi-fantasy novels of C.J.Cherrie, Stephen Chambers, Louise Marley, and Anne McCaffry among many, many others. For the moment, Fantasy, especially "high" or "epic" fantasy seems to be more in vogue and open to newcomers than SF. But things change, so read Locus magazine, or Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine or one of the other SF/Fantasy genre magazines and keep your eyes open for industry news.

Westerns

Until recently, the Western was considered a dead-end genre with little prospects of resurrection. But just as everyone was ready to pack up and move on, lo and behold the genre found new blood in stories about women in the west, an expanded definition of what a "western" should be, and revisionist stories about Hispanics, Native Americans, and African Americans. Shane by Jack Schaeffer, The Virginian by Owen Whister, or Hombre by Elmore Leonard, have given way to Sarah Canary, and Blood Kin about women in the west, or Hanta Yo an epic western about Native Americans.

Covers are reflecting this change. Instead of cowboys with sidearms on rearing horses, the images are 19^th century photographs or paintings by famous artists like Charles Schrevogel or Frederick Remington.

The western is a peculiar brand of story that is partly gritty, partly historical, partly mythological in its stories about the western frontier of America. The western is about the opening of the frontier, the perils and tribulations of creating something from nothing and those who gambled, often with their lives and their fortunes, in order to establish themselves and their dreams. There is a natural conflict at the heart of every western, be it man against man, man against nature, or man against himself. These conflicts are concerned with morality and the challenges of survival, and are at the heart of most westerns. The stories are filled with concepts such as sacrifice, self-denial, unwavering commitment to a goal or an ideal that have a direction and clarity contemporary stories sometimes lack, for whatever reason.

Furthermore, they are, on one level, (or should be) historical novels about people who existed in a specific time and place, and the novels should reflect just enough accurate historical detail to convince a reader he or she is in 18^th or 19th century America.

Westerns are not an easy genre to break into, though, because there are only a handful of editors working in the field, and their lists are already pretty full with established writers.

Historical Novels

To succeed as a historical novelist you need to be able to pick a period of history that seems to speak to our contemporary senses, and weave a fictional plot into real historical events without distorting the historical characters who appear.

The appeal of the historical novel is very often the chance to meet real people as they really were. The historical writer also strives to maintain the customs, culture, and knowledge of the period. In a time of political correctness it is sometimes difficult to maintain the integrity of portraying cruelty, ignorance, and hardship that clash heavily with contemporary values. Perhaps for that reason historical novels are much tougher to write and sell now than previously. Like the biography, the historical novel has relevance because of what the past has to tell us about the present. Arthur Miller's play THE CRUCIBLE, about the Salem witch trials, was written in the early 1950s, but is also an allegory about the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee witchhunt for Communists. Most historical novels are best slanted to other genres, such as historical romance or historical mystery to make them more commercial these days.

The Literary Novel

Literary or mainstream is a genre like any other. Some practitioners of this genre, though, believe that story is not important, and that writing and atmosphere is all. Such writers forget that plot is merely what characters do next. Stories with no plot are stories that feature passive characters; and characters like that are boring to read about. Characters need to do something to be worthy of a story about them.

The literary genre is a tough nut to crack for first time writers. What do we mean by this? Can you really write well, not just in terms of language, but in terms of perception of the world? How do you establish this? Well, by having a well regarded literary mentor who will speak up for you. Have you won prizes or awards for your work? Has it been published in prestigious small presses, or the New Yorker? Have you studied at places such as the Iowa Workshop and come out with accolades? Without some or all of these factors on your side getting your literary novel published will be very tough.

Your competition is The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx, Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose, Jazz, by Toni Morrison, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, White Shark by Zaidie Smith. Is that fair? No. But who said writing and publishing had to be fair?

Some people confuse literate with literary but they're not the same things. All books, whether fiction or non-fiction, should be literate, that is, gracefully well written.

The literary novel thrives on the reputation and consummate skill of the writer, on book reviews and blurbs from other more famous writers, and on word of mouth. If you're a beginner you often don't have much of that going for you. There are plenty of exceptions to this rule, of course, but then the authors are probably not reading this book, and almost certainly are not making a living writing fiction exclusively.

The best advice I can offer is remind you what James Joyce said about writing fiction: all stories should begin, "Once Upon a Time..."

The Narrative Non-Fiction Book

Narrative non-fiction is character driven non-fiction that has a structure that echoes fiction. It can be divided into many sub genres and should have a narrative spine that either gives us the "why" of a situation (such as Into Thin Air), or frames a question and then provides the answer encompassing a debate on a topic of national interest (like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring). You can scare people (just read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood) but you should also find a positive spin on even the most negative topic. Readers don't want to plunk down $25 for a book only to be told that life sucks. While that approach can work effectively in a magazine or newspaper because it is balanced by other more upbeat pieces in the same issue, it's a hard sell as a book.

A book of non-fiction must have lots of information, and can't just be a soap box for you to spout your pet grievance. You need to carefully recount in as honest a way as possible, a strongly written narrative infused with lots of emotional content about what it was like to go through the experience. People have to trust you as an informed guide to the topic you're writing about before they'll bother to read what you have to say. That's why most successful non-fiction is written by either journalists or experts of one sort or another.

True Crime and Current Events

The model for True Crime books -- and the book that still defines the genre -- is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Is it non-fiction or fiction? It's a true story after all, though it was the first one to extensively use fictional techniques to tell a true story. The experts who write true crime successfully are, or have been, lawyers, cops, investigators, journalists, forensic specialists and so forth.

True crime and current events books allow us to peer into the mind of the demented, though it is also very influenced by how much of a gripping story can be woven, who the characters are, where the story took place and so on. One of the elements of narrative non-fiction that many writers do not consider carefully enough is that it takes the techniques and skills of a journalist and a novelist to write a compelling story. How the story is told is as important as what happened. There are two basic types of true crime book: the gut story, that is, one that effects us on a primal level such as Anne Rule's Small Sacrifices about a mother murdering her children, and the glamour story, set in the world of the rich and famous, such as William Wright's The von Bulow Affair about the murder trial of Claus Von Bulow, accused of killing his socialite wife, Sunny.

Beyond powerful C and, of course, accurate C characterization with identifiable villains and heroes, the narrative non-fiction book should have some sort of unraveling investigation.

Biography

Biography is a very popular non-fiction category if you can find a suitable subject, but to carry it off the writer must be an expert on the subject. The same kind of investigative, analytical attention to detail used in true crime is foremost in biographies such as L. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, Anne Sexton: a Biography by Diane Middlebrook, and Gerald Clarke's Capote, about the writer Truman Capote.

Biographies take several forms. Some use the work and life of the biographical subject as an indicator of the subject's inner world. Others are more literary in nature, placing more emphasis on devices used by the biography subject to structure and craft their books.

The three types of biography all try to reveal the essence of the subject: Interpretive, where the events of a subject’s life lead us to a better understanding of the inner person and how they fit in with their world; Objective, which gather facts and document how the subject lived; and dramatic, which uses fictional techniques to recreate the subject and his or her times.

Dramatic biographies such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, or Elizabeth I, use known facts about the subject and her time which are interpreted by the biographer's imagination, in an effort to reveal the intimate qualities of the subject. The controversial Ronald Reagan biography Dutch broadly falls into this category.

Edmund Morris's biography of ex-President Regan involved the author creating himself as a fictional character in order to tell the former President's story, and attracted a lot of criticism for its approach.

In general, a biography has to have a theme, and its subject has to fit into the context of the times the subject lived in. More than that, the subject of a biography should also be a symbol of some sort for the spirit of their age. The book should bring out some thematic element of that culture. Broadly, a good biography is one that illuminates and shows the times as much as the person.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said that, "The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject [of a biography] filters his own changing self-image."

The subject's life should have had a profound effect not only on the people who came into contact with him or her, but some shadow of it should also touch the reader of the biography as well.

The dangers of biography are inaccuracy and hero worship. The biographer needs to cultivate an objective eye that fits his subject into the world with compassion. Most biographies treat their subjects as one of three things: an example, a victim, or a source of wisdom.

Biography depends on two things, public and personal papers and sources, and living witnesses. Of course, in the case of the long-dead, you're stuck with only one of the two.

It's also a demanding form of writing, requiring that the author know their subject intimately, live with them for a long time, somehow make peace with their flaws yet obtain necessary permissions from those relevant people who are living, and ensure any quotes are accurately related and sourced.

The biographer must have the skills of a storyteller to construct an insightful, compelling narrative, a diplomat to deal with the many witnesses who can shed light on the subject's life, a detective, in order to dig out facts and research on the subject, to be devoted to their subject and yet objective enough to explore the dark nooks and crannies of the life in question, and the literary and psychological brilliance to create a book that the subject could honestly admit was an accurate portrayal of who they are and what they are. Unless you are a skilled writer, and someone with a strong analytical background, Biography is going to be a tough genre to use to break into publishing.

Memoirs

This is another demanding genre to write well. A big fuss was made of Kathryn Harrison's book about incest, The Kiss, and also Frank McCourt's memoir of a childhood cursed with drink, violence, and poverty in Angela's Ashes because they were so intimate and revealing of these terrible experiences. But they also "upped the ante" for the average writer of memoir because not only were the books well written, they had "salacious" quality that has set the bar higher for writers of commercial memoirs.

Nowadays, commercially successful memoirs are about traumatic events in a writer's life that a writer of exquisite skill can transform into a universal experience we can all share. It is the nearest thing to poetry a writer of prose can do. Read Isabelle Allende's moving book, Paula, about the sickness and coma her daughter suffered.

Memoirs are about a child's sickness, a father's death, a loss of honor or career. We read another's pain because the writer's sensibility allows him or her to extract from their dreadful experience powerful universal emotions that illuminate our lives. Editors who buy memoirs do so because the writer has successfully transferred the experience to the page in a strong emotional way, and in so doing, like the Alchemists of old, has transmuted the experience from base lead into gold.

When a memoir such as My YEAR IN PROVINCE by Peter Mayer succeeds, which is not about personal pain but a growing and learning experience, it often edges into another genre. In this case, the travel section.

How-To Books

How-To books are one of the best non-fiction genres to write to break into publishing. It's probably the largest non-fiction genre, and also one of the most successful. How-To books embrace Knitting and Hobbies, to Health, Finance, Sports and Parenting, so while your book may well fall under the broad category of How-To, try to be as specific as you can about who your book's audience is, and what's new about your book on the subject that the other books have yet to mention or tackle.

Reference Books

I'm not just talking about dictionaries and encyclopedias here, but lighter books such as Eighty-Four Ways to Knot a Neck Tie, or Dave Feldman's Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?

Mostly, these kinds of books are sold to libraries and schools, as well as bookstores.

Cookbooks

Most cookbooks are written by people who own restaurants, have become famous as Chefs, have their own TV show, or are in the public eye already in some fashion as food writers or some such. The publishing company can then cash in on the name recognition of the author. Any chance at all in this field will start with some success at the regional or local level, and the book will echo this success in some way.

Travel Books

These break down into narratives of adventures getting from point A to point B, travel guides, and destination guides. The books provide information on hotels, restaurants, places to go, interesting sights to see and so forth.

A travelogue will often have lyrical descriptions of far away places and is aimed at an audience known as the "armchair traveler."

Travel guides are non-destination books that tell you how to travel in a particular way, such as traveling by donkey across Tibet, or by train across China in Paul Theroux's RIDING THE IRON ROOSTER.

A destination guide is like the EVERYTHING WASHINGTON book or Fodor's Paris.

Pop Culture

Pop culture books have become very popular as we start the new millennium and try to understand who we are, what cultural forces are shaping our identity, and what messages the mass media of our time is sending us. To write this successfully you need to have some expertise, often reflected by a passion for a subject that has made you something of an expert. The trick becomes parlaying that passion (let us not call it an obsession, please) into a book that others will read and enjoy, and derive some entertainment and new knowledge from. Examples might range from an unofficial biography of the actor/producer Michael Douglas, to Classic TV commentary such as TOTAL TELEVISION, or more culture based quiz books like DISCO NIXON, or RAMBO REAGAN.

Humor

Cartoon books like Dilbert or Gary Larson's Far Side, and books with humorous observations on life like Dave Barry on Computers, or Paul Riser's BABYHOOD are lumped together as humor. You're on your own here. Do others think you're funny? Can you make an overworked editor smile enough to see the commercial potential in your scribblings? It's probably easier doing stand-up comedy in a comedy club, though not by much.

Humor is possibly the most subjective category of any in publishing, so good hunting for your humor soul mate in editorial. If you’re really funny and can put it down on paper you’ll do very well. The best place to start is in newspapers and magazines. If you can get your stuff regularly in front of an audience, particularly a sophisticated one like, say, the New Yorker you’ll do very well as a humorist.

Children's Books and Young Adult

Children>s books broadly fall into picture books for the very young, "chap books" for middle grade audiences B roughly ages 7 to 14, and Young Adult or YA for teenagers.

A lot of beginning writers think children's books are easy to write B but they're wrong, it's actually one of the most skillful and demanding of genres. Such inexperienced writers often assume that tales for children should be "good for them," and write simplistic morality tales. Kids are a rough audience, and they're not easily fooled. They want stories that speak to them, not at them, and they loath blatant moralizing.

In general, kids love books that afford an escape into fantasy. What was the biggest selling children's book on both sides of the Atlantic at the turn of century? The Harry Potter books.

YA books also deal seriously and candidly with issues that face teens today. These issues are very important, from incest and teen violence, to alienation and loss of innocence and need to be handled with great sensitivity and insight.

There are other genres not mentioned here, and the best way to learn about them is to study the bookshelves of book stores and libraries. You can also consult books like the Writer’s Market (WD Books), or the Literary Marketplace (aka The LMP).

Most writers are successful in a genre because they already know it and have been reading in it for years. Is there are magazine devoted to your topic? More than one? How many readers does it have? What genre is hip hop, for example? Music, or pop culture? Only by carefully studying the market can you answer these questions. (The answer to the above question is probably both depending on the slant of the book.)

Genre popularity goes in phases. While once very popular, for example, True Crime, Horror or traditional westerns are now harder to break into because fewer copies are sold in each genre. A genre can be "hot," and then it is overbought, and becomes hard to sell into for a while. The genre becomes "dormant" until a book comes along that reinvigorate the category beyond the work of the established few authors who have luckily continued to write and sell in that area, keeping it "ticking over."

If you understand what a reader's expectations are you can make your book that much stronger and that much more likely to be sold to a publisher.

Of course, the reader's anticipation of something in the book can be spoiled by a poorly chosen title or artwork on the cover (which you usually can't control), but if you call your western Sexy Cyber Grrls you're not likely to attract readers who are looking for the type of experience you're providing.

So, you want to be careful with titles, and you want to be careful with the language that you use, making sure it's similar to other books in the category you've chosen to write in.

Study the category. Familiarize yourself with various genres, then read a lot of books in the genre that appeals to you. In fact, if you're not reading the genre, you probably shouldn't be writing in it. Your first successfully published book, will, almost inevitably, be centered around some category that you really love. You don't "write what you know," as the old saw has it; you draw upon what you know, but you write what you read.

Genres really help publishers and bookstore owners know where to place your book in the bookstore.

When your novel comes out you're not really competing with all the other books in the store. You're only competing with all the other books in your genre. So, without diverging too much from what's expected, you ought to be thinking about how you're going to make your book different from others like it. And that difference comes from knowing your genre well enough that you can spot a "hole," or good idea.

Know your audience. Authors who know their target, core audience do much better than those who pay no attention to who is likely to buy their books.

Books are written with specific audiences in mind. Self help books, for example, have a strong female readership, while adventure travel books, such as a man against nature (e.g. Into Thin Air, or The Perfect Storm) are bought and read by men. Only books that become big sellers transcend those general limitations.

You can mix genres, coming up with what is called a "cross genre." However, publishers do not encourage authors to do this. The argument many novice writers put forward for cross genre novels is that by combining two genres they'll double their audience. Optimistic thought, but alas, not true.

Experimentation is well worth it, but know that's what you're doing -- experimenting. For every time travel romance, there is an unsellable Sci FI Western. The audience for cross genre books tends to be a small, usually inquisitive overlap group who have wide ranging tastes. Unfortunately, the majority of the book buying public seems to have voted with their hard earned dollars (or in some cases not voted by not buying) for classifiable and predictable categories. The best advice is to push the envelope of an accepted genre, but don't try to bestride two; it can prove career slowing, if not wrecking.

So, what to do? The answer is to go for a really strong story that in the end may be true to another genre entirely. Is it horror, is it romance? Perhaps, instead, it's a dark fantasy? See what I mean?

Help the publisher help the bookstore owner help you into earning cash by putting your book in the right spot in the bookstore. Think about your audience, categories and genres seriously when you revise. The right marketing strategy might just get you published.

Yes, it does. When you develop an audience for say, your romances, some of that audience can be taken with you to a nearby genre, say, a cozy mystery. However, it’s unlikely they’ll go for a literary novel, or a horror novel, or something that is gritty and realistic.

If you want to write in different styles it’s a good idea to develop different personas who have their own audiences and identities. The audience for Donald Westlake’s witty novels is a far cry from the hard bitten Richard Stark novels he writes. Similarly, Ed McBain’s 87^th Precinct cop novels are very different to Evan Hunter’s more literate commercial novels such as Strangers When We meet, and The Black Board Jungle, etc.

But of course. The following aren't all the genres and categories, but they probably cover most of the important ones. For a more complete list check out the Literary Market Place (LMP) or The Writer's Market Guide.

Non-Fiction

Adventure, Academic, Biography, Business/Finance, Computers, Cooking/Food, Current Events, Dance, Education, Entertainment, Ethnic, Film/TV, Gay/Lesbian, Gift Books, Health/Medicine, History, How To, Humor, Illustrated Books/Coffee Table, Judaeica, Literary Criticism, Memoir, Military/War, Motivational, Music, Nature/Environment, Narrative Non Fiction, New Age, Parenting, Pets and Animals, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Pop Culture, Reference/Scholarly, Religion/Spirituality, Romance/Relationships, Science/Technology, Self-Help/Personal Improvement, Sports, Textbooks, Theatre, Travel, True Crime, Women's Issues

Fiction

Adventure, Commercial, Crime, Erotic, Ethnic, Fantasy/SciFi, Gay/Lesbian, Historical, Horror, Humor, Literary, Military, Mystery/Suspense, Romance, Thriller, Western, Women's Fiction, Comic Books, Plays, Poetry, Screenplays,

Children

Adventure, Fantasy-SF, Mystery-Crime, Literary, Picture Books, Early Readers, Pop Up/Chap Books, Middlegrade, YA

Writers are an idiosyncratic bunch C we're probably all a little nuts when push comes to shove. Who else would shut themselves away in a little room when everyone else is having a great time in the summer sun?

Plus, we’re all a little obsessive. Once that vision comes into focus, you try to capture it, to grasp the idea behind the vision and wrestle with whatever demon is blocking your creativity, or trying to seduce you into going somewhere else, distracting you from your vision.

No, is a word you will hear a lot when you first start out as a writer. But it isn't a no about you, it's a no about that particular piece of writing. So learn from it. Keep trying and experimenting until you start hearing yes. Work at your craft long enough and you will hear that wonderful little word one day.

A lot of time when you're starting out it's useful to have someone say, "Do it this way," if only so that you can reject that way in favor of a better one that you've figured out for yourself. That's absolutely okay. Whatever works for you is what you should be doing. Just make sure you’re doing it, not just talking about it, or thinking about. If you want to be contender, you’ve got to get into the ring and take some punches.

One of the analogies of writing I use is cabinet-making. When all is said and done, cabinet-making is just carpentry. It’s about how mundane pieces of wood are shaped and connected together to become something more than the sum of their parts; an appreciation of the esthetics of wood (in the same way that writers love words and language). Carpentry, like writing, is about harmonizing the creative instinct with the mundane task of measuring, shaping, and fixing together pieces of wood.

Rewriting is about editing your words, shaping your language and your ideas the way you would use a chisel, a plane, or a sandpaper to smooth and sculpt those pieces of wood into a seamless, graceful whole. Writing is about shaping and polishing the images and scenes of that "movie" in your head until the words on the page convey exactly what you see when you close your eyes and watch and listen as your characters interact.

One of the hardest jobs when it comes to editing yourself is cutting. The best thing to remember is that if you are too stuck on your own writing, and not on what you are writing about you will be concentrating on form rather than substance. If you’re working on fiction or narrative non-fiction it’s good to remind yourself that the higher calling is not to be a writer but to become a storyteller regardless of whether you’re writing a piece of fiction or non-fiction. Concentrate on what is important to your narrative, what moves it along, and you’ll resolve a lot of writing related problems such as what to cut out and what to keep, etc.

The only rule is: finish what you start.

Writing is about grace and clarity of vision. It's about making sure the image in your head is on the page exactly as you imagine it. It's about rewriting.

Some people overwrite on the first draft, getting down masses of words and images, and then they begin to pare away the garbage from the gold until the image shines through. Others put down a mere skeleton of their idea, then return to it having gotten down on the page a suggestion of what they want, and start to put muscle and then flesh on that skeleton until the images in the scene stand firm and clear. Whatever works for you is what you should do.

It's very unlikely that you'll write a perfect first draft. Those initial words on the page are just a place to start from. Now the work begins. Two drafts, three drafts, four, five, it doesn't matter. Take as long as it takes. Just remember it all has to be done by the time the manuscript is ready to be shipped off to an agent or an editor.

Not all your writing has to be done at the computer. Try and recall what it was like the first time you sat behind the wheel of a car and started to drive on the streets. Remember all the things you seemed to have to do at once? Look ahead, look behind, check the sides, watch your speed, watch the road, watch the other cars, watch the rear mirror ... it was endless, or so it seemed. Now you drive and do these things and don't think twice about them. They are things you do instinctively. Writing habits are the same.

Go for a walk, do the laundry, clean the house, do anything mundane and mull over your writing ideas. Try and train yourself not to sit down at the wordprocessor until you have something to write. Force yourself to write something, even if it’s only the opening hook of a piece.

One of the problems that authors of both fiction and non-fiction face is that they think that being original means flouting the expectations of what readers want in a certain type of book. If you write a romance novel with the title SLASHER NUN FROM HELL or a non-fiction how to called THE AGONY OF ZEN MEDITATION, you’re going to have a problem.

Authors do this kind of thing more often than many realize. They mix third person with first person, violate point of view, or unity of time and place, and so forth. What these writers are doing is confusing what the story is, with how you tell it.

The story is not what happens, but who it happens to. In other words, focus on the characters and heightening the emotionality of the narrative, not on two dimensional plot elements which should be thought of as what the characters do next.

The best style comes from reading and absorbing the work of strong writers. Who is a strong writer? There are plenty of books, writing courses and book reviews that will give you suggestions about who would qualify.

Writers are like actors. Different actors can play the same character, for example, and yet bring to the role an individual interpretation that is distinctive. What's more, while that actor's voice and style singles him out in a role, both may well vary from character to character and role to role as needs fit.

A writer’s voice on the page, her style, may well vary a little from story to story. Not only is that good, it is probably worth striving for in a subtle way. Try to fit the voice to the story if you can.

Make sure you use active words, and that you say things in a positive way. Ask yourself, Is this sentence as powerful as it can be? Does every word carry its own weight? Am I saying what I mean simply and clearly? Can what I wrote be misunderstood? Does it have a literal meaning that is mocking the sense of what I'm trying to convey?

Know what's appropriate to the genre you're writing.

I’ve always had a problem with people who talk about writers block. It is usually a problem of viewpoint, or lack of imagination brought on by boredom with the characters you’re writing about or because you’re writing about the wrong characters and should be telling your narrative through other eyes, or over other shoulders.

Nearly all structural writing problems are in essence problems of character. This is true whether you’re writing fiction or narrative non-fiction.

The answer then, is to write from other perspectives and then when that seems to free you up, trace it back to the beginning so that you have a continuity to your narrative perspective.

If you’re really blocked, then just start writing in a journal, stream of consciousness kind of stuff. It is almost certainly not going to be publishable, but it may help you get to where you want to be.

Writer’s block can be thought of a form of inhibition. If you really see that as the problem, then just let go. Take a deep breath and try and write the very worst that you can. Pack in every excess and problem that you know you have, and that you’ve seen others do. Confront your inner critic with the very worst that he or she is accusing you of, then silence the voice and just go back to the task at hand. So what if it doesn’t work. It’s not life and death here, it’s just writing.

Go for a walk, or do something menial and mindless so that you can let your mind roam around the problem away from the computer.

Lastly, sit back, listen to some soothing music with a glass of wine and chill out.

Regardless of whether you’re working on fiction or non-fiction, look at the beginning of your book.

Ask yourself, Have I begun with my main character in a situation? Not with a lot of background, or set up, or description, but plunging us straight into the story. Remember, we read to see how the main character gets out of the situation they find themselves in, solve the problem or the dilemma they are faced with. That's what catches us and makes us care, forces us to turn the page.

If it’s a non-fiction piece that doesn’t have a narrative, the equivalent question is, Have I stated my problem, and the thesis I’m going to develop in this book?

In either case, grab the reader from the outset. Compel us to go on this journey with you by making us care about the people in your story and the situations they get themselves into and out of; or find a way to humanize the ideas you’re writing about and trace how they effect us and what this means.

Once you've sorted out the beginning, check the ending. Look at the last chapter and ask yourself, Does this resolve something that was begun way back at the beginning of the book?

In terms of non-fiction, have I made my case? Have I presented both pro and con equally, allowing the superiority of my ideas to stand up to the fire of opposition.

If you're still in trouble go back and look at those first pages. Nearly all narratives have the seeds of their ending planted within the first chapter or so.

In your opening pages you should have created a problem, shown something about to upset the status quo, and that's exactly what you're trying to solve by the end of the book.

If it resolves something that was begun in a chapter or two before the end, then you're probably writing in an episodic way.

Make sure the ending of the book relates to the beginning of the book.

When you look at the scenes you've created in your narrative make sure something happens. You don't want a bunch of talking heads and no action.

Make your characters do, not say, as much as possible. Is there a reason for the scene? Where does the conflict, the obstacle, the problem that has to be overcome come from.

The exposition of a narrative is the information we need to follow what’s going on. What exposition fails to do is engage us emotionally and make us care.

Too many writers ignore the old adage, show (i.e., dramatize, don’t tell, i.e., be too expository.) Ask yourself repeatedly, Do I need this information? Is there a way of showing this information dramatically, instead, so I can get my reader involved? If not, can I cut it out?

If you do need exposition, that is, story information, then ask yourself, Do I need it right here? Can I move it somewhere where it won't interrupt the flow of the narrative? Don't give a reader information before it’s needed. Instead, give the information to the reader just before she needs it for a better understanding of the coming scene.

Then ask, can I shorten this? Is there a way I can work it into the scene rather than have an authorial voice "explain" what's about to happen, or why it's happening?

Look at your description and ask yourself, Is my description active, does it move the story along? It should always be seen through a character's eyes, not the author's.

This is an interesting because it plumbs several levels. First of all, why edit? The simple answer is that the material doesn’t work. What I mean by that is that it is unclear, or clumsily written.

Working on other people’s material can be illuminating for a writer interested in bettering their style and technique.

The main question the editor needs to ask herself is: What is the heart of the piece? What is the author trying to say? Assuming that you and the author are in sync with these elements, then the editor’s job is clear: it is to clarify and simply, increasing the grace of the writing and the crystallizing the meaning without deleting the author’s voice. Indeed, good editing is invisible because it not only preserves the author’s voice, but finds ways to heighten it.

The editor’s job is not to say, "I think this would sound better this way," but to say, "You intended to say this, and yet your language and meaning do not convey it well (whatever "it" happens to be). It might work better this way, by emphasizing this, or that way, by altering or deleting that (again, whatever this and that happen to be)."

Editing is an art and takes a long time to master – but it is the heart of good writing whether you are editing you own work or someone else’s.

Ask yourself, "Have I switched viewpoint too often? Have I used more viewpoints than I need?"

Keep your transitions short. All you need is one or two sentences to get you from A to B. "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..." "Later that day..." Keep it simple.

If there's no conflict the reader's attention starts to drift from the page and the passage is not working.

Keep in mind, wood is malleable and so are words. You can destroy them, erase them, rework your images and scenes until they look exactly the way you want them to look and sound and feel. The key, of course, is to have a clear idea of where you going and what you want from your creation.

Non-fiction writing is very dependent on strong structure, and successful commercial fiction in particular also needs it. So what is it? Consider this: What's the difference between the building you live in and a big pile of wood, brick, and shingles?

The answer is that your home was meticulously planned and put together so that every part of the building supported every other part. Someone thought about how to put together your building ahead of building it. Where to put a foundation, the best place to put support walls so that they take the right amount of weight and stress, the best way to build a frame that would hold everything together etc., etc.

That's structure, and it applies to your book just as much as it applies to the building you live in.

The building blocks B beams, bricks and mortar etc., B for your book are scenes, exposition, bridging passages, sequences, chapters, sections, and so on.

A narrative, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction has two distinct kinds of structure: What it is, and How it's put together.

What your narrative is begins with your synopsis. It includes the spark that lit the fire that sets your story in motion. It tells us the prize (or goal) your protagonist is ultimately striving for, and the minor prizes he or she may win along the way; the conflict or opposition the protagonist must face and overcome, and the strategy he uses to do this; and lastly, the stakes, in other words what it costs the hero to achieve his goal.

How it's all put together involves the invention of the kind of drama you create for your scenes, the action that you put in them, the kind of language you choose to use, the tone of the piece, and so on.

Without these elements working together and in deliberate harmony, your narrative will not have structure.

Once you "see" structure it’s like a light that goes on and won’t go off again. When you come to revise your first draft, being aware of structure will give you the tools you need to see the overall shape of how the narrative is building and how it should be shaped, shored up, and polished.

Go through your draft and ask yourself, "Do these scenes relate to each other, or does this particular scene actually relate to a sequence I've put earlier or later in the book?"

You'll discover that you may well have written some scenes that are either out of place and should be moved around, or can be discarded.

Creative non-fiction is a much abused form. The basic difference between fiction and narrative non-fiction, which is really what is meant by creative non-fiction, is that fiction is an invention and non-fiction is not.

If one writes that Alexander the Great leaped from his boat as it crossed the Bospherous and threw down his spear, claiming Asia by right of conquest, this is a historical established fact. However, if we embellish this fact by writing that "Alexander, his red cloak swirling around him in the breeze and his burnished breastplate glistening in the afternoon sun, leapt lithely from the lead boat and waded towards the shoreline...", then we are embellishing with things that are not recorded fact.

Using written eyewitness accounts of what life was like at a particular point in historyu can allow us the flexibility of saying "we don’t know that it happened this way," but let us suppose, from records of others at the time, that as he leapt from the boat, Alexander’s red cloak swirled around him in the breeze.

The trick is to balance the skills of the novelist to bring something alive, with the need for the historian or non-fiction chronicler to state just the facts and not choose them just to make a point with no regard for the accuracy of the end result. We read non-fiction to learn about the truth in terms of what, how and when. We read fiction to learn about the truth in terms of why and to discover, if we can, the real spirit of an event.

There may come a time in your narrative when you have something that's important for the reader to know but not important enough to devote a whole scene to. A half-scene is basically a transition with a little bit of dialogue, and the scene is made to come alive through the dramatization.

Writing is not a religion. There are no real rules. We all learned what we do by doing it, over and over again until we got it right. What does that mean? It means we kept writing and submitting and listening to what those who were published bothered to say about our work until we started to get published.

Until you're published you're not the best of your own work.

If you find a way that works for you, (and I mean that gets you published, and published regularly) ignore everything else.

Writing non-fiction well is just as skillful as writing fiction it jut involves different skills and disciplines. A good example is the poet Andrew Motion's biography of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, a little-known (today) gentleman criminal from the early nineteenth century.

A lot about what he did is no longer available, and Wainewright has been made into a legendary symbol of evil by other writers. However Motion creates a portrait of Wainewright based on fragments of information that do remain. He tells the story from Wainewright's point of view (in the form of a confession), and adds the known (sometimes contradictory) facts as notes at the end of each chapter. Wainewright: The poisoner becomes a fascinating and imaginative work that retains its non-fiction integrity.

Any idiot can paste up basic information and assume that this is writing: a real nonfiction writer has to make readers care, if only for a minute, about the subject matter. The real trick is to take something reasonably dry, ranging from quantum physics to ornithology, and making it sparkle.

Poor grammar irritates huge numbers of readers, regardless of whether the subject is fiction or non-fiction. A writer whose grammar and spelling are poor is a writer whose will be ignored more than he is read. The thinking is, "He can't be saying anything worth reading if he can't even write decent English!"

I’m sure what you have to say is worthwhile. You clearly need to work on how you say it. Writing isn’t just about meaning. It’s also about style and the enjoyment of a reader to bask in language well used.