How Do I Pick a Genre Category for my Novella?

Denise Tanaka

Denise RobargeTanaka
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Jun 2, 2006
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I'm setting up my novella on Draft 2 Digital and I must pick a genre category. I'm going with Contemporary Fantasy but I'm not sure if that's specific enough?

There's a ghost character but it is definitely not horror. It's modeled after the likes of Dickens Christmas Carol, the Canterville Ghost, Topper, Blithe Spirit, Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and even that old BBC show from the 70s My Partner the Ghost starring the guy who was Poldark. The ghost provides guidance, insight, and answers to an old family mystery but is not scary at all.

I hesitate to call it urban fantasy because that raises expectations of werewolves, vampires, or fey living among us in the modern day.

It has a sweet sentimental moment at the end, but it is definitely not a romance (PNR) because the story is not focused around the characters romantic relationships. In fact, a friend of mine had recommended a small press romance publisher who promptly rejected it - with a very kind message, that it was a lovely well-written story but that there was not enough romantic elements in it. Which I knew already but my friend had insisted on submitting it there.

It isn't really a mystery, though. Although there is a lingering question that gets answered, it's not a "who-murdered-me" kind of thing.

So I'm left with calling it Contemporary Fantasy, and I'm going to jam pack the description field with every keyword I can possibly think of.

Any suggestions?
 
Not having looked at Draft to Digital before, I went to look - am I correct that they set up the digital book and take 10% for that and for distributing to various channels - and then those channels will take a cut of sales?

If you set up directly on Amazon, then you get more than one categories to chose from. (Just researching that myself.)
 
Not having looked at Draft to Digital before, I went to look - am I correct that they set up the digital book and take 10% for that and for distributing to various channels - and then those channels will take a cut of sales?

If you set up directly on Amazon, then you get more than one categories to chose from. (Just researching that myself.)

Yes they take a 10% cut for the setup. I'm not sure if the other distribution channels then take an additional cut. I guess we'll see. I'm dipping my toe in the water with a novella before I charge forth with a full size novel. What's appealing to me about D2D is that I can do the upload once, instead of formatting to each channel's guidelines, and I can track them all on the D2D interface instead of logging into each one to track sales separately. The other thing that is appealing about D2D is their back matter tool. I can update my author profile in one place, and it automatically re-generates into a book each time it is sold. Likewise I can update the links and coming-next promos in one place, and the D2D site can manage a mailing list for me. At least that's what they promise!
 

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