A question of labels

[John Dean]

As you may know, I work with my daughter Laura to help aspiring writers who are developing crime novels in the hope that a publisher will pick them up.

One of the things we do is help the writers to target the most appropriate publisher for their work.

It’s not a simple question of researching who publishes ‘crime fiction’. There are various categories into which crime fiction falls and it is crucial that the writer knows precisely what they are writing in order to target the best publisher or agent.

We may not, as human beings, like being labelled but writers need to embrace labels because publishers use  categories to accurately target their marketing.

Categories include (every publisher will have a slightly different definition and there are also plenty of sub-genres to further complicate things):

Police procedural (my genre with the DCI Jack Harris and DCI John Blizzard series and the two DCI Danny Radford novels written as John Stanley, all published by The Book Folks) – these focus on the work of the police and often include detail about crime detection, interview and forensic techniques. The main character is usually a detective

Cosy crime – usually set in a middle-class environment and quite often revolving around a murder that’s solved by a private detective or amateur sleuth, complete with a dopey side-kick off which the main character can play (think Hastings to Poirot). There tends to be little graphic description of the crime, only what the story requires

Hard-boiled – the opposite of cosy, they’re graphic, gruesome and violent, often featuring psychopaths and serial killers

Private detective – these focus on the work of a private detective, rather than the police; the classic case is Sherlock Holmes, of course

Courtroom - these revolve around the court proceedings related to the crime. Inevitably, the reader knows the main suspects because they are in the dock and the details of the crime are revealed as the court case proceeds, often with flashbacks

Caper – these are often told from the criminal’s point of view with the main focus of the story being their attempts to avoid capture, usually with elements of humour.

• Still not quite sure what you have written as you get your manuscript ready for the next stage in its journey, be it submission to a publisher or agent or the self-publishing route? If so, you may wish to take advantage of the service which I offer with my daughter Laura, a skilled book editor. We provide manuscript assessments and editing and should you be interested in finding out more, then feel free to drop me a line and we can discuss your needs. You can reach me on [e-mail]