"As a reader, I don't care if the books I enjoy are 'categorizable'...so why do publishers care about categories so damn much?"
My short answer: it's the supply chain, stupid. (JK, you're not stupid.) (But I think this is important to understand, and very few people do.)
“I’m not sure how to position this one.”
“I love the writing, but the concept straddles memoir and prescriptive nonfiction in a way I’m not quite sure how to publish.”
“I’m not sold on the comps here.”
These are among the most common rejections I receive on submissions, although I hasten to add that almost all of them go on to receive enthusiastic yeses from other acquiring editors. (My professional ego is reading this over my shoulder and insisted I add this. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, DOREEN?)
This is because I gravitate toward books one might describe as liberating, risky, and groundbreaking.
(Doreen is fully wanking off behind me at this point. YES, ANNA! TELL THE PEOPLE WHAT VISIONARIES WE ARE!)
Books of this sort challenge a core consideration for acquiring editors: how on Earth do I categorize this? For example, I love books full of juicy personal storytelling that are nonetheless focused not on autobiography so much as effecting personal revelations within the reader. Think Jenny Odell or Glennon Doyle: do you know how to categorize books like theirs?
Neither do I, to be honest. Their category is dichroic: memoir in some lights, cultural criticism or lifestyle or self-help in others. And this dichroism presents a challenge for acquiring editors.
Why? Why is it a challenge?
Why do those publishing-company philistines care about categories so damn much? I don’t care about categories as a reader. I just want to read good books—don’t most people?
If I had a dollar for every author who asked me this question—well, really more “this complaint wearing interrogative costume”—I would be typing this from the whole-ass decommissioned lighthouse of my dreams I’d recently bought with the money I’d collected over the years. Because lots of authors are writing not-easily-categorizable work. And lots of them have been rejected by agents and publishers because of this. And rejection hurts.
I empathize. On the surface, it does seem stupid that publishers care so much about categories. After all, how can books ever do what they’re supposed to—expand the limits of possibility and the known world, transforming readers’ lives in the process—if publishers insist those books also fit into established, largely static market structures?
There are a number of reasons why publishers care about this so much. None include the phrase “because they’re a bunch of dunderheaded simpletons.”
In fact, they are all good reasons, and I will tell you what they are….riiiight on the other side of this paywall.