New weekly feature: Amy Eye!

I am so excited to welcome the brilliant editor, Amy Eye from The Eyes for Editing, to Dandilyon Fluff as a regular blogger.  Every Wednesday Amy will be here to impart her wisdom and insight for us… and she’s fun to boot!  Wooot for Amy! 😀

WOW! Little old me with my first real blog post!

Welcome to the new Wednesdays! (I may be a little giddy, so please ignore me if I ramble too much!) Let me introduce myself for those of you who don’t know me. I’m Amy Eye, annoying editor lady to most of my clients, aspiring author and not-so-annoying editor lady to myself…

I’ll be here Wednesdays to touch base on all things literary. We may talk about editing, book covers, the importance of choosing the right type of publishing, what I think could be new trends, and anything else in between.

To start off, I think we will touch base on something I posted on my Facebook page today.  Something that I see as an issue with many authors I work with. GENRES!!

Now, this may seem like a no-brainer to many of you, but there are all sorts of things that make an author’s palms sweat when it comes to this daunting little term. Your genre can define how your readers initially look at your book.

Thriller, action, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, chick-lit… the list goes on and on! Where do I put my book? Will people judge it differently? Will people review it harshly if it’s in the wrong category? Do I want to be labeled as THAT kind of author?

Okay, guys. Slow down and breathe for a minute. It is important to categorize your book properly, and there are a bunch of genres out there, and new ones that seem to pop up overnight. So how do you know where your book goes?

For starters, take a gander at the ages of your main characters. Are they teens? Are they younger than teens? If so, you have one little easy piece taken care of. You are in either the YA category or the New adult category. YA’s biggest defining characteristic is that the main characters are teens or preteens. Sounds pretty easy, right? Now, if your main characters are all older, you know you can leave the YA/New Adult categories behind. WHEW! One less worry. But now what?

What is your main goal for entertainment when you wrote the book? Was it to thrill the readers with the enormous amount of action? Did you want to swoon them with the irresistible romance? Did you want to confuse them with the mystery and the plot twists? Once you answer that question, you have another piece of the puzzle in place.

Next week, we will talk a little more about the genre debate. Before we can pinpoint where your book goes, we really need to understand what the large umbrella genres really are. Then we can learn about the sub-genres and all of their points.

I’m excited to be here, and be sure to leave your comments about any genre-related topics and let’s see where it takes us!

Amy Eye is a regular contributor to Dandilyon Fluff and a professional editor, book designer and formatter for several publishing houses and for her own editing business,The Eyes for Editing.  Visit her regular column here, Sticks & Stones.