I don't know if authors of other genres have to contend with this issue, but as a writer of women's fiction, my works get mixed in with romance and (ugh!) chick lit. These things are not the same, people! The problem is, many well-known sites, even the most popular online writer's forum, lump romance and women's fiction together. And if we're talking ads, yes, the romance category is right there and conveniently clickable, but most book promotion sites don't even list women's fiction. I've had to go with "general" or "literary fiction" ~ and my books are not literary. When I've created an ad on one of these sites and need to target comparable authors, an Amazon search for women's fiction produces a long list of romance novels.
See, it's fine for romance writers to choose "women's fiction" when selecting their book's genres. It's NOT fine for women's fiction authors to choose romance. It's well known that readers of romance, as someone online wrote, "get really mad" if a book is labeled romance when it's not. Thus, women's fiction gets a bad name. Purchasers will assume a book is romance because there it is, lumped in among all the romance novels on Amazon.
The gist of romance is, the story is told from both the woman's and the man's perspectives, the storyline centers around their romance, and of course, an HEA (happily ever after) is required. That's NOT what women's fiction is about. Yes, there can be a romantic interest in a women's fiction novel ~ most of mine have one ~ but that's not the story. Women's fiction is a journey, be it of discovery or simply learning to understand oneself and their place in the world. Often family members and friends play a role. In mine, there are invariably new people who could become friends or could turn out to be enemies. And other genre elements may be incorporated into it. A couple of mine have thriller and mystery aspects. None of mine are about, "how do I get this man?"
When I went looking for ARC readers, I made sure I was specific that my book wasn't a romance, but had romance elements. Heaven forbid someone misunderstood what they were signing on for.
I don't read romance. I think I did when I was around eleven. There was even a magazine at that time devoted to romance short stories. But I don't want to know how a story will end (same reason I'm not an outliner). It's too paint-by-numbers. I'm sure a lot of romance books are "great", but they don't really take chances, do they? (And yes, I know it's the hottest selling genre, but I write what I write.)
And don't even get me started on chick lit. First of all, I don't refer to women as "chicks". I'm not Fonzie. And the term itself signals that the book is going to be a light romp ~ not that there's anything wrong with that. I simply don't identify with the gal pal scene or shopping at high-end stores or whatever else it is these characters do to fill their time.
I think I need to invent my own genre, since women's fiction is too complicated for people to understand. I should say, too muddied.
Or maybe I should write a science fiction horror thriller.
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