Quote:
Originally Posted by Blossom
There is a lot mislabeling. The Stephanie Plum series has been put into Romance but they are not romances. I've seen other cozies and mysteries stuck in there as well. Why? They know it will sell better categorized as a romance.
Not all Chicklit is about the chicks as you put it. I've read plenty that were about the lead female and had strong romantic elements but not a happy ending for the couple. They are a lot like cozies in that way. I've seen Urban Fantasy categorized as romance alot when there is hardly any romantic elements at all.
A more modern way to tell is covers like shirtless hairless men, pretty dresses that go on and on, sexy couples and sweet couples in uncomfortable poses. These are almost always romances. 
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Actually publishers and authors do not deliberately mislabel them because it improves sales. It can actually hurt sales. The way things are labeled is mostly because we are given x number of choices on each platform -- this is true whether you are a trad publisher or indie. Some platforms have a "main" category and then subcategories (this is partly why you see subcategory rankings on Amazon. An indie author cannot set those, but can request that her book be included in such and such category or taken out of a category. For example, Executive Retention is a mystery. It was categorized by Amazon at one time as a book about "lawyers". There is one character in the book who is a lawyer, but that did not make it a lawyer thriller so I had to request that they take that out).
Many books can be more than one category and be completely legit. Catch an Honest Thief has two characters who fall in love and get their happily ever after. This is also a mystery. I'd say these themes run side-by-side. I'm not trying to sell into the romance readership by labeling it romance--it is a romance. But sometimes for some mystery readers, it warns them away from such a book because they aren't interested in the romance component.
How a reader defines romance is different from how the industry defines it (and that definition changes to be more inclusive or exclusive depending on trends). Each reader may define it differently too.
Really, the labels are to TRY to help readers find what they want. Sure, some would label it with every label in the hopes every reader would see a book, but there are restrictions in place to keep that from happening. The restrictions differ by platform/retailer.
I consider most chic-lit to be romance. Whether I would (as a reader) put the chick-lit label first or second...would depend on the book.
As far as sales, a lot of books get thrown into a larger category of romance because it is one of the categories at the top of the Library of Congress genre "trees." When defining a book for library sales, they sometimes ONLY have the major categories. So, for example, there is no cozy mystery category. There is only "Mystery and thrillers."
Retailers in the last 7 years have moved away from a small tree of definitions to a much larger one with branches and more choices. When possible, I will "label" my Sedona series as cozy mysteries. When possible I will label the Moon Shadow series as Urban Fantasy--HOWEVER, those categories are rarely available (Amazon keeps putting the Moon Shadow series under occult because it happens to have vamps and weres in there. But it's really more paranormal mystery than true occult. I have very little control over that label when the rankings hit high enough to bring them into play.)
Some of those subcategories are done off key words in the story especially on Amazon.
I think it was John Levitt's thriller (recently repubbed from backlist) that had something about tarot cards in the subcategory. That's a long shot given the overall story, but the title is Tens of Swords so that probably caused it.