Today BookBub also sent me an email titled "Improve your BookBub Deal Recommendations", suggesting that I visit a website and refine what kinds of fantasy books I actually want to receive suggestions about.
Or at least that is what I thought it was.
Here is the list of categories:
Bestsellers
- Bestsellers
- Crime Fiction
- Psychological Thrillers
- Cozy Mysteries
- Historical Mysteries
- Thrillers
- Supernatural Suspense
- Action and Adventure
- Contemporary Romance
- Historical Romance
- Romantic Suspense
- New Adult Romance
- Paranormal Romance
- Erotic Romance
- Dark Romance & Erotica
- Time Travel Romance
- American Historical Romance
- Historical Fiction
- Women's Fiction
- Literary Fiction
- Chick Lit
- Christian Fiction
- LGBT
- African American Interest
- Science Fiction
- Fantasy
- Horror
- Teen and Young Adult
- Children's
- Middle Grade
- Advice and How-To
- Biographies and Memoirs
- History
- General Nonfiction
- Cooking
- Science
- Christian Nonfiction
- Politics and Current Events
- Religion and Spirituality
- Parenting
- True Crime
- Business
- Humor
Now do you see the problem that I am seeing?
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror are all lumped into ONE CATEGORY, and they don't mention the separate genres within sci fi, the separate genres of fantasy, and the separate genres of horror.
Lets take Fantasy for example... Fantasy is actually a very broad topic and includes the following sub-categories:
- High Fantasy (lots of magic or monsters)
- Low Fantasy (very little magic and few or zero monsters)
- Children's Fantasy (eg. Alice in Wonderland, etc)
- Teen Fantasy
- Historical Fantasy
- Fantasy Romance / Romantic Fantasy
- Space Fantasy (Star Wars, John Carter of Mars, etc)
- Sword and Sorcery (Conan the Barbarian, etc)
- Funny Fantasy
- Farciful Fantasy
- Dark Fantasy (blending things like werewolves / vampires / etc with other fantasy elements, not to be confused more classical horror or ghost stories)
- Fairy Tales
- Fables
- Mythology
- Magic Realism / Modern Fantasy (the movie "Big" starring Tom Hanks is an example of Magic Realism)
- Urban Fantasy (the Highlander film series and "Bright" starring Will Smith, etc)
- Heroic Fantasy
- Medieval Fantasy
- Detective Fantasy
And so on.
My point is that even with Fantasy, there are lots of sub-genres.
So when BookBub sent me that email I was like "Oh cool, finally I get the chance to refine what style of fantasy I am looking for!"
Nope. Got my hopes up.
Instead every time they send me a suggestion that is Fantasy Romance I have to read the description, and then delete the email. Arg! (Seriously, way too much Fantasy Romance books out there on Amazon.)
Now what I like about BookBub is that once in awhile I get a free ebook from an author I had never heard of before and I really enjoy their book. Someone I would not have normally had a chance to read anything they had written. So it introduces me to new authors.
For example I recently read:
How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis - Book 1, by V. Moody.
Very entertaining book and I would not have normally read that style of book. Some day I hope to read other books in the series.
Some of the books I get via BookBub / Amazon Kindle, I read the first 5 pages and I get bored of it. The writing is poor, nothing is happening, or the plot is just not interesting to me. As a parent I don't have much time these days so if I am making time to read something, it better have some Conan the Barbarian style action in there, a good plot or at least be funny.
I think there is a market for a funny version of Conan... just saying. For people like me who just want to be amused/entertained and don't have much time. Robert E. Howard is a great fantasy author, but he was sometimes long winded and formulaic. (Howard did get paid by the word and probably discovered that if he followed a specific formula that his stories sold better.)
Anyway, if BookBub really wants people to narrow down and refine what they are looking for... add more fantasy, sci fi and horror categories to choose from!
How are we supposed to refine our interests if BookBub doesn't refine and narrow down sub-genres that we can pick?
Sheesh!
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