Yeah, I know. It is a losing game to push back against one professional or editorial review, especially when there are several others that are glowing, or at least glowing-adjacent. But let’s look at the bigger issue behind my hurt feelings. I can always cry another time.

An editorial review means that the book will get reviewed without foregone conclusions, unlike, in all probability, the Amazon review you extort from your mother. An author knows going into an editorial review that it could come up sevens or snake eyes or somewhere in between. You roll the dice and take your chances. (See the recent post Reviewing Reviews, or The Strange Little Business of Feeding the Marketing of Novels for more on this topic.)

A fourth editorial review of Over Brooklyn Hills came from IndieReader, and that review was ambivalent about the book. The problem was that Over Brooklyn Hills got reviewed as an Action/Adventure title because “Literary Climate Fiction” was not a category option when submitting the book for a review. I guess I should have chosen the “literary fiction” category, but maybe I was too nervous imagining the legions of writing program MFAs overwhelming that category. Unfortunately for the reviewer, who seemed eager to review an Action/Adventure novel, Over Brooklyn Hills is not an action/adventure genre title, even if it has some snappy plotlines. The book also has a lot of characters who are deeply drawn, which the reviewer found distracting as she looked for the action and the adventure. Well, live and learn, right?

Categorically, “Literary Fiction” is Left in the Cold

Sometimes a book gets put into an inappropriate category—an error that can be, in the case above, attributed to the author. Sometimes a book ends up in front of the wrong reviewer because the categories available during the review submission process don’t include the right categories and the book is thought to be one type of book by the reviewer, while intended to be a different type of book by the author.

The lesson to learn here is to be careful to select the right category for the book submitted for review. Unfortunately, there’s no such category for “literary climate fiction,” and that applies not only to book review platforms, but to basic BISAC:

BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications) is the US publishing industry standard used to categorize books by topic and genre. These alphanumeric codes determine where books are physically shelved in stores and how they are indexed in online retailer databases like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The BISAC system is maintained by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and encompasses over 50 major categories and nearly 6,000 individual subject codes.

Honest, I looked. Between “FIC004000 FICTION/Classics” and “FIC043000 FICTION/Coming of Age,” there’s no “FICTION/Climate.”

480 Sub-categories Under “Fiction” and “Literary” Stands Alone

I’d also point out the BISAC has about 480 sub-categories under “Fiction” and many of these have sub-categories that have their own sub-categories and sometime sub-sub categories; one example: “FIC027440 FICTION/Romance/Paranormal(See a/Witches”). “Fiction/Science Fiction” has eighteen sub-categories; “Fiction/Thrillers” has sixteen; “Fiction/Mystery & Detective has twenty, with seven sub (sub) categories under “Fiction/Mysteries & Detective/Cozy.” You can have a mystery & detective novel that is “Cozy” generally or focused on animals; books, bookstores & libraries; crafts; culinary; holidays & vacation; and paranormal.

There is one “literary” subcategory under “Fiction.” One stinking top-level category for “Fiction/Literary.” No subcategories, no sub-sub categories.

Someone once mentioned to me that life was unfair. Now I know what they were talking about.

The post There Can Be a Tax on Taxonomical Confusion first appeared on David Guenette.