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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
Well, all that history and expectations are true, but as a genre, it has to be defined with a broader scope because there ARE readers who like romance, but don't look for that definition. I'm one and I guess HarryT is too!
And the biggest problem is that not everyone reads the books (they can't read them all) so when they are shelving, they have to take their best guess. There are readers of one of my books who consider that particular book romance. I suppose it is compared to my other books because the romance plays a much larger part. But I don't classify it as romance first because of a lot of the points you make. I only get to choose two categories per book. It will always be an issue because as a reader, I classify romance much more broadly that Harlequin. As a writer, I also classify it more broadly--and that isn't to gain sales or marketing, it's
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It seems to me you may be a little confused on the genre. The ones speaking up in this thread read mainly romance and own a ton of romance books. I invite you hang out with us in our little monthly Romance thread in the deals forum if you wish to get a better idea of romance books. It's isn't hard to identify what a romance is or not. Only non romance readers seems to be confused on the matter. Those of who read mainly romance has a good idea of what it is and what it isn't.
I don't get why shelving is a big deal here. Anyone can mislabel a book's genre. I've seen Westerns in the romance section!
The real issue here is Romance has become a genre that is easily definable and RWA's even has guidelines for a book to be accepted for a RITA they just threw out the books with a strong romantic elements category because they felt it wasn't REAL romance.