Hi I am writing a book in which I have few fantasy stories and some self-help advice. The stories are kinda examples of the self-help idea I m trying to explain. What genre should this book be?
Well if the stories are there to illustrate the self-help parts then it sounds like it's a self-help book.
How long are the stories? Do you mean just little episodes, like a few paragraphs? Or are they like 30 pages long? And does each story stick very close to illustrating one of your ideas from the self-help part? Or do they illustrate it more loosely? Depending on which dominates it could also be a fantasy book with little self-help-style inserts between stories. Which is something I've personally never heard of before, and I'd think would be very hard to get published.
That doesn't fit the mold for a standard self help book, but I suppose it depends on how well it works. Robert Persig wrote a very popular book in the 60's or 70's called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not really what I'd consider self help, more like an introduction to philosophy for the general public, or something like that. It was an autobiographical novel peppered throughout with bits of philosophy, but those parts weren't presented separately, they were worked right into the story. He got away with that because it was an autobiography and he was a philosophy scholar, so it was a very important subject in his life. I can see where you might be able to make it work, but the publishing industry isn't as adventurous as it was in those days. Of course you could always self publish it.
yea thanks for your reply. I don't wanna appeal to the publishing industry anyway, one reason is that is a really small piece and another one is that I know how to market it by myself... It is pretty much different compared to what the public knows, I m trying just to bring some awareness and see what will happen.
