Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29843
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29843
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

From a marketing point of view, books are classified according to the type of pleasure they give. Stories can give different kinds of pleasures. Some readers are more open to a variety of pleasures, and some want a steady diet of a particular kind of pleasure. Genre sections of bookstores exist mostly for the latter kind of reader.

To illustrate this, consider whether a book about a sheriff in a the oklahoma territory in 1870 trying to catch a murderer would be shelved as a western, an historical, a mystery, or on the general fiction shelf. The answer is that it could be shelved on any one of them, depending on its theme, tone, and the kind of pleasure it gives.

- It is it a celebration of the cult of rugged individualism and stoic manliness, it will probably be shelved as a western. 

- If it is focussed on the powers of detection or the psychology of crime, it will probably be shelved as a mystery.

- If it is focussed on the reconstruction of the historical period, it will probably be shelved as an historical. 

- If it is none of these things, but perhaps a lyrical hymn to the landscape or an intimate character study, it might be shelved in general fiction.

I doubt, for instance, that you will find Cormac McCarthy's _All the Pretty Horses_ or Mary Doria Russell's _Doc_ (about Doc holiday), or Willa Cather's _Death Comes for the Archbishop_ shelved as westerns, nor CS Lewis's _Out of the Silent Planet_ or Doris Lessings _Canopus in Argos_ or Russell's _The Sparrow_ shelved as SciFy.

Not all books about sex, therefore will be shelved as erotica, only those that give the kind of pleasure that readers of erotica are seeking, which is, I presume, titillation.

Original score: 6