What are Microgenres? And Why Do Authors Need To Know?

If you are a fan of this channel, you’ll know we talk a lot about identifying your story genre, being familiar with it so you can either follow or bend genre expectations. Making sure you are giving the reader what they want and able to market your story correctly to get your book to those demanding eyes and ears.

But within this, there is a new term on the rise — Microgenres. 

Previously a popular term mostly in the music and movie community, the book world is now adapting it for their purposes as well. So what is a microgenre?

A microgenre is a category to help the reader not only get the type of story they want in general, but get specific components that they may love within that type of book.

It helps readers—and sellers—to classify titles on a deeper level than a sub-genre. Think tropes, but even more specific.  

Check out how Audible is using it.

The most prevalent presence of this right now is within the romance community, although it is becoming popular across all genres.

So what is the difference between a genre, a sub-genre, a trope, and a microgenre?

For example, a reader might want a romance (genre), but they want it to be a paranormal romance (sub-genre). Deeper than that, they want it to be a paranormal romance with rejected mates (trope). But even more specific than that, they want a paranormal romance with rejected mates, where the hero has to grovel hard to get FMC back (microgenre).

Or readers want a fantasy (genre), but they want it to be an epic fantasy (sub-genre). They want it to be a chosen one epic fantasy (trope), but they want the chosen one to be an adult (microgenre). Over thirty, at least. (So many people are tired of the teen, chosen one fantasy—hence the popularity of this reddit post about a grandma going on an epic adventure. Which, for the record, I would TOTALLY read as well).

Crazy specific, right? But readers are powerful and they know what they want. And microgenres help them get that—for better and for worse for the author or publishers.

 In some respects, microgenres will make it easier to sell your book. Readers that want your specific microgenre are going to hit the buy button faster than ever before because they know exactly what to expect and that your story is exactly what they want.

And they can help show book trends faster than ever. The massive trend of college hockey sports romance books, various microgenres included, proves how quickly authors have been able to use this new classification to pivot and get new books out asap to answer demand.

 But on the flipside of that, there are two big downsides:

 First, this makes for a very niche market, meaning not only are you targeting a smaller group than normal, but also, advertising specific microgenres in your story might put off readers of that genre or subgenre who might have otherwise taken a chance on your book. (For a strong example of this at the trope level, check out the mad hate that people have for accidental pregnancy romance books. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this Smut Report blog post where they discuss their dislike of it and why. Or check out the trending tag on BookTok to truly see just the absolute loathing some people have for this in their romance books. It is… intense.)

And second, including a microgenre, because it is so specific, limits what you can do in your story. This isn’t like the broad strokes of a genre, where you can know the reader expectations and bend them a bit to twist the story, giving a surprise that readers might love. Because microgenres are so pointed—exactly what the reader wants—deviating from that defeats the purpose and will disappoint. So if you want to write a sci fi horror book with aliens that are invading to take over earth, but then it actually turns out that it is a big corporation playing tricks on society… your readers aren’t going to be happy. They wanted, expected, hostile, invading aliens!

So, in short, microgenres are a powerful new tool to be studied and used carefully as you consider using them or start to sell to very specific, niche markets.

What do you think? Will you use microgenres to market your story? What microgenres have you been reading?