Questions on Genre

[kaciefaith]

I had two quick questions and am curious to hear what you all think..

1. I was recently told by a member of the industry that I shouldn't query my Historical Fantasy novel as New Adult, because the genre hasn't quite "taken off" yet. Is this true? I was under the impression that New Adult Fantasy (like A Court of Mist and Fury) was fairly well known.

2. In my query, is there a way to say that one of the greatest strengths of my book is the prose and writing style, but without sounding pretentious or arrogant? I was considering saying it's "Literary Historical Fantasy," but I've never seen someone do that before. Thoughts?

Thanks! ♥

[louise00]

As I understand it, the issue is more to do with marketing NA Fantasy. While the ACOTAR series is by-the-rule pretty clearly NA (and hugely popular), it was marketed first as YA (to appeal to the authors existing readers) and is now getting a bit of an Adult category rebrand. So while your novel might actually be NA, you might better to pitch it as one of the others, because that's likely what an agent/ publisher will end up doing.

Another one that came out and was pretty loudly (but unofficially) marketed as NA Fantasy was Serpent and Dove, although it officially came out as a YA through HarperTeen.