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It seems that a critical mass of readers of historical fiction have a strong interest in history and thus are annoyed when they notice historical errors.
Apparently fewer readers of other genres have a special interest/knowledge in whatever field the author happens to be mucking up. I know that mystery readers can and have been upset if they don't think that the author 'played fair' with the mystery (at least for certain subgenres) and that science fiction readers can care about the science although they might be more likely to quarrel about the 'hardness' of the science. As noted before romance readers care about such things as cheating and I would expect they'd care about other aspects of the primary relationship.
I personally am the sort of grumpy person that grumbles when I come across any bit of horrible inaccuracy not excused by genre convention (ex. any test done in a police procedural will take less time then in real life, the 'science' behind many of the faster-then-light ships in science fiction ...) and genre conventions for historical fiction have been formed by the fact that a critical mass of readers care about a certain level of accuracy (although people tend to be healthier and doctors much more effective then strict historical accuracy would allow for).
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