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Originally Posted by Blossom
Oh Love Stories and Romance is two different genres too. Example Nicholas Sparks isn't romance. Nora Roberts is Romance with exception of her alter ego books.
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I guess I tend to use the Library of Congress definitions--I get what you're both saying. But Harlequin is a BRAND as are most imprints. They have a narrower definition of romance and brand their imprints with it, and to some degree, they defined romance for their brand and the industry. When you work in a library or bookstore, you only have so many genres to pick from--and there aren't enough!! Romance has to encompass a lot more in that situation.
So while I completely agree that romance should have HEA and I also agree that cozy mysteries need their own genre...those definitions can be hard to come by when selecting genre or trying to define it as a reader.
I wander around forums all the time and we regularly define cozies as "little to no cursing, happy ending, most violence off the page, etc" But that doesn't really make it a genre that I can choose as an author--or as a reader...nor is it one that the library can separate out because it's not really a choice in the overall definitions.
Not even Amazon has cozy mystery as a choice, but they have added a lot of "Kindle" choices and subgenres that have nothing to do with the original allotment. I hope they keep doing so.
DeLeon is publishing that series on her own, *I think*. She has several she writes on her own now so far as I can tell. Her name shows as the publisher. I think she is branching off and publishing other authors too. I don't follow her, know her, or keep up with any of the other series other than that one so I can't say for certain.
And if she writes for Harlequin, it's STILL a fun series. I'm not stuck on where a book is published or who does the publishing.
I'm not even stuck on genre, but I totally appreciate what you are saying about genres being mismarked, marketed incorrectly and so on.