I have a few “consipracy theory” non-fiction books. Are these a genre?
I have those. Entertaining to some degree. Like reading about how Hoover killed JFK, or moon landing hoaxes.
I imagine that they are well respected by other authors.
Slash fiction featuring anthropomorphic animal analogues to real-life celebrities.
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I imagine that they are well respected by other authors.
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Not. I mean “not” respected.
Paranormal romance. Has all of the juicier excitement of the cheesiest girl porn romance, but with an element of bestiality.
It doesn’t necessarily have to include romance, though.
Non-horror that has werewolves and vampires and stuff is more or less fantasy. May be subdivided into urban fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, etc.
That article is well known for being a pile of crap numbers that wouldn’t survive five minutes here on the Dope. I especially love the way it compares **revenues **for porn to **profits **for mainstream companies. And where does it get its porn revenues from? The ineffable Jerry Ropelato.
Now let’s get back to the real world. Since not a single word is said about print porn in that article I’d like a cite that “print porn alone makes a billion dollars a year.” Do you realize how huge that number would be?
So we can’t accept a figure of billion dollars a year because it comes from somebody like Jerry Ropelato, who isn’t credible. And Jerry Ropelato isn’t credible because he puts up figures like a billion dollars a year.
What kind of figure would you be willing to believe? I’ll find a source that will give you a figure you’ll believe and then you can believe it.
Uhhh … I actively practice fursecution. Seriously, that dressing-in-a-fox-suit shit is fucked up, yo.
There’s probably hundreds of genres out there. Which ones would be considered mainstream, though? It seems like some genres are mostly limited to digital media, for example fan fiction. While I can’t dismiss fan fiction as a genre, it’s my opinion that it’s not mainstream if it’s not on the shelves, or if there are just a few examples, in even the largest bookstore.
When it comes to mainstream genres that most people can easily purchase in a commonly found brick-and-mortar retail venue, the genres that IMHO seem to get the least amount of respect, or the most amount of disrespect, are:
- Porn
- Fantasy romance
- Urban fantasy
- Anime
- Mainstream romance
- Chick lit and related subgenres
- Conventional fantasy (dragons, wizards, elves, magic, three-handed broadswords, dungeons, crossroad taverns and inns, characters with names like “Argar of Gondor” or “Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor”, medieval-ish European-ish settings, etc)
- Space opera
- Science fiction (other subgenres)
- Airport novels (thrillers, detective fiction, etc)
The OP does seem to be talking about genres of print novels, so fanfiction, comic books, TV/video, etc., would be out of the running.
I’d say the genres that are least respected by non-fans are romance, fantasy, and science fiction, but I’d put romance WAY below the other two. The most negative stereotypes about fans of these genres are somewhat similar (ugly, pathetic losers), but romance fans are stereotyped as stupid in a way that I don’t think happens to science fiction and fantasy fans.
I don’t think Westerns are really in the running, if only because it seems to me that the Western is basically dead as a literary genre. I don’t think I’ve ever even met anyone who said they enjoyed reading Westerns, and I can’t remember noticing a Westerns section in any major bookstore. There is a Westerns section at my local public library, but all the books look pretty old and I also live in a town with a large retired population. My stereotype of a Western novel fan would be “elderly man”.
Actually, no, it doesn’t. Urban legend. My Mom told me.
Which one would not find in a general-interest bookstore. But the “Inspiration” section . . . I’d say that’s not much respected, save by those in whom it arouses real enthusiasm; no middle ground.