So I was recently perusing the product page for Replication (Kid Sensation #6), trying to fix an issue that is still unresolved, when I noticed that the audio version was ranking in a category I’d never seen before: Superhero Fantasy.
Of course I clicked on the link for it, but it took me to some page for various other products – toys, electronics, and so on. Thinking I’d made a mistake or clicked the wrong link, I tried again. Same result. Basically – assuming this new category actually existed – Amazon wasn’t making it easy to find. It went on like that for a couple of days, with me never being able to locate this new category, until Amazon seemingly got all the bugs out and voilà: I finally found myself there. What followed next were a few minutes of bliss as certain facts became abundantly clear.
First of all, the new category actually existed and wasn’t simply some kind of glitch. Amazon has been known to temporarily try things out on occasion, or accidentally leak something before it was supposed to be publicized. This, however, looked to be a real and intentional new category. Woo-hoo!
The second thing I noticed was that the category actually seemed to contain, for the most part, superhero books. Granted, they were all audiobooks, but they were, on the whole, superhero tomes. In short, we finally have an appropriate superhero category! I was like:
Now, to understand my reaction, you have to realize Amazon seems to only nominally have other superhero categories. Basically, they’re labeled as “Superhero” but are full of paranormal, urban fantasy and the like. (Take the Superhero Science Fiction category, for example.) In short, it’s often hard to find a superhero novel in the bunch. (That’s not to say they’re bad books – quite the opposite, in fact.) That said, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s often some crossover between categories, and sometimes it’s hard to draw distinctions.
For instance,
if a guy can lift a truck, is any book he’s in a superhero novel or should it be paranormal/urban fantasy? Does it matter if his power is derived from magic? Dr. Strange is a sorcerer, but is generally considered a superhero. All in all, it’s difficult to establish hard and fast rules for something like this. To be honest, it seems to fall more into the realm of I-can’t-define-it-but-I-know-it-when-I-see-it.
So why are all these non-superhero books in those categories? One reason is that some authors – not all, but definitely some – are looking for a category where they feel their book can rank. For instance, my novel Terminus features a genetically-engineered super-soldier as well as a psychic (not to mention a blind sharpshooter). More importantly, it previously ranked in the Top 10 of several highly competitive scifi categories, but had I put it in a superhero category it probably would have garnered the coveted “#1 Best Seller” ranking.
It is with those thoughts in mind that many books get slotted into categories whe
re, in truth, they probably don’t fit. What’s worse, it probably robs numerous authors who write in the superhero genre of the opportunity to be noticed. It really puts me in mind of the movie Bad Words, where a 40-year-old middle-school dropout enters a national spelling bee through a loophole that says the competition is open to anyone who hasn’t completed 8th grade. Needless to say, he steals the spotlight from the kids who are supposed to be the focus of the spelling bee.
Anyway, the establishment of the Superhero Fantasy category makes it seem as though Amazon is getting its act together and may start cleaning these categories up to some extent. Or maybe the genre has simply gotten big enough now – from the standpoint of audiobooks – to merit some level of distinction. Regardless, I hope the focus remains on books that generally fit the category – not just for superheroes but across the board.