I'm not so much worried about how to describe my novel, ... OK I'm concerned. I've been perusing GoodReads for new novels, looking for books that interest me. At the moment that means books like the one I'm writing. When I search by sci-fi, 3/4 of the books are more hard sci-fi, not ones that interest me. When I search by fantasy, too many are dragons and magical creatures or whatever, also not what I'm looking for. When I search by YA, too many of the books are tropey romance or kid's books, definitely not what I'm looking for. If I can't find books like mine, where is mine going to fit when I try to market it?
It'll fit wherever the publisher / book store decides. I think people worry too much about this thing we call 'genre'. The marketing people will handle that side of things. I have no idea which particular pigeon hole mine would be thrust into, either, should I be lucky enough to get it published, but I can't say I care much about the fact.
Maybe I'm not making myself clear. If I can't find this kind of story easily in a genre search, how does it reach the readers?
That's something a publisher will deal with. Chances are, there are similar types of story out there. But even when someone comes out with a story that is pretty unique, publishers don't seem to have a problem marketing it. The fantasy genre is so broad it covers a huge range of story types, writing styles, characters, etc. I don't think this is something you have to worry about, unless you're self-publishing, in which case you'll have to identify how you want the book listed.
I ordered a book once from amazon. It's called Naive. Super, written by someone called Erland Loe. This book is just about as undefinable and unique as you could imagine, but it still reached the market and was very well received. Let's say I'd lost this book and couldn't recall the title, I would have no idea how to search for it by genre. But it still sold.
I have to identify how to represent it to the publisher. I'm still not making myself clear though. Perhaps I should have just posted this in the Not Happy thread. I'm griping that some new genre categories for YA are needed. There's enough YA out there that sub-genres would be useful, especially with searches. And GoodReads needs to enable searches using two or more categories. I want to be able to search for YA/sci-fi.
Yeah, YA is weird to me. People treat it as a genre, and refer to it that way, but it is really an age group. There is YA fantasy, YA science fiction, YA romance, YA mystery/thriller and so on. I don't know all the details of your story, but I guess if it is possible to present it as YA there is an advantage to it in that YA sells well and publishers are really happy to take on good YA novels.
You may also find yourself in an inevitable conversation with an editor to make the story flare in a given direction so that it does fit well within one of the easily/often queried searches. No research here, just going on intuition. I can see an editor who's interested in your story asking you to (or working with you to) expand or enhance a given aspect/facet of your story that answers to a more easily marketed dynamic.
I think you will find the right niche genre for your book. Just kind of nudge it in that general direction when it comes to where you see it on the bookshelf. Nothing is as complicated as trying to follow all the Metal Subgenres, and there is a damn truck load. So I would not sweat where your story gets placed until books are broken down into a mess of subgenres that all have a single root they branch off from.
YA SciFi is a thing. YA is a reading level/rating system, not a genre. SciFi is a genre that can exist at any reading level (including Middle Grade, frankly). Hence, your book probably is YA on the reading level scale, and SciFi by genre. No real conflict. In fact a lot of recent dystopian YA falls within that (Divergent, Hunger Games, etc.)
That is so not the book I'm writing. I'm curious why you think there's no real conflict in The Hunger Games? My book is YA because the characters are 17-20 and have dreams of changing the world. The setting is sci-fi because it's in the future on another planet. I'm trying for a realistic dystopia, not one that is fantastical. The problems with the world are similar to the problems we actually have today. It's probably more new adult than young adult but there isn't a lot of explicit sex. The characters are sexually active and there is sexual exploitation though. It's not a rosy world. There is lots and lots of conflict.
I think @Commandante Lemming means there is "no real conflict" between designating it both YA and science fiction
I didn't mean there was a conflict in being YA and sci-fi. I meant that neither genre described it adequately. The problem is solved, double genre categories are more common than I had believed.
