As I approach the publication date of my upcoming novella, Silhouette, I have come to realize the struggle of labeling my story. Genres and categories are critical tools in this age of Amazon and ebooks, and choosing the most accurate classifications may not be as important as selecting what is popular.

Independent authors tend to also be independent marketers, and the nature of solitary work is that when mistakes are made there is no one else around the point them out. A good self-published author will hire an editor to look over their manuscript, paying to have another set of eyes search for mistakes, but would this same author hire someone to help them sell their book? I don’t. So we try to give our books eye-catching titles and create intriguing descriptions for their back covers, but then we slap it on Amazon or elsewhere and hope that it get’s put into a good category.

Teams of professionals at publishing houses often struggle with how to label and market a book. Kate Axelrod explained in a blog post about how her book, The Law of Loving Others, tumbled through adult, new adult, and young adult categories as it was passed through the hands of agents and publishers, and ultimately the book’s sales floundered as a partial result of its marketing approach.

Earlier this summer, my editor emailed me saying Razorbill had decided to change the cover for the paperback edition, hoping to attract a more adult audience this time around. The paperback edition is definitely more striking: it’s brightly colored and features a young woman whose hair is a bit disheveled, her lips open just slightly, her gaze provocative. But still, a publicist told me, asking adults or adult media outlets to pay attention to the book is going to be an uphill battle. “Most literary types aren’t going to buy your book,” he said, “and it’s not actually for teenagers.”

If a squad of marketing pros cannot figure it out, how is an independent author supposed to do it? In David Gaughran’s self-help book for self-publishers, Let’s Get Visible, he says:

If you understand how the category system works, you can give your book instant visibility on Amazon. Self-publishers are at a slight disadvantage here. They get to choose only two categories when uploading, whereas traditional publishers, depending on their arrangements with Amazon, can choose up to five.

Gaughran goes on to explain how an independent author can best take advantage of Amazon’s categories, such as finding ways into hidden phantom categories and using unpopular categories to reach Amazon’s best seller lists. In a similar vein, Kindlepreneur’s Dave Chesson explains why these secret categories are important and how an independent author can unlock them in this step-by-step guide. Simply falling into traditional categories is often a death sentence for a modern book. New books easily become buried in large categories, never given to chance to be seen by a potential reader.

Countless podcasts and blogs teach authors how to throw every keyword under the sun into their book descriptions to try and trick the computers into slipping their title into as many categories as possible.

I do not know what the best strategy is, or if there is one. The original intent of this article was to discuss my confusion over whether my upcoming titles fit into the YA audience or not, and now I have discovered that there is this burgeoning genre called “new adult” which is making its way around, so I’m still left with no idea what to do. Kallen Kentner argues that “a genre should describe the book, not its readers” in an article she wrote about getting rid of the YA genre altogether, and I agree with her.

The struggle is real, and discussed widely. What are your opinions on genres? Every book seems to be a crossover these days, but are sellers like Amazon and iTunes handling categories properly, or are they only making it more difficult for authors and readers alike?