What is popular culture, commercial fiction and mainstream?

by Sonya Kar
17th October 2013

Hi, my book fits into the fiction genre-but can be subclassed as mainstream, commercial, popular culture or Lit Fic. I don't really understand the difference between the four categories, apart from definitions on wikipidea and Goodreads. I don't want to restrict my market-any suggestions on classifying work before submission?

Replies

I went to NaNoMo and got my answer-in a very intelligent, well thought through forum.

So do go and join if you are unsure about your genre

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Sonya
Kar
270 points
Ready to publish
Film, Music, Theatre, TV and Radio
Poetry
Short stories
Fiction
Business, Management and Education
Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Adventure
Autobiography, Biography and Memoir
Middle Grade (Children's)
Picture Books (Children's)
Comic
Media and Journalism
Speculative Fiction
Popular science, Social science, Medical Science
Practical and Self-Help
Historical
Philosophy and Religion
Romance
Sonya Kar
25/10/2013

Peter, thanks-I did go and look at the categories. I think its best to leave the classification very broad in the beginning.

Profile picture for user santwana_24228
Sonya
Kar
270 points
Ready to publish
Film, Music, Theatre, TV and Radio
Poetry
Short stories
Fiction
Business, Management and Education
Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Adventure
Autobiography, Biography and Memoir
Middle Grade (Children's)
Picture Books (Children's)
Comic
Media and Journalism
Speculative Fiction
Popular science, Social science, Medical Science
Practical and Self-Help
Historical
Philosophy and Religion
Romance
Sonya Kar
18/10/2013

If you are using Kindle or Smashwords, try pulling up the works already listed in each sub-category (expect thousands) to gain insight into how yours would best fit in; if nothing else, hopefully you could decide what to avoid if only on the grounds that there is an existing plethora.

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Peter
Brighouse
285 points
Practical publishing
Short stories
Fiction
Business, Management and Education
Middle Grade (Children's)
Picture Books (Children's)
Historical
Speculative Fiction
Adventure
Peter Brighouse
18/10/2013