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Romance subgenres

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5 hours 30 minutes ago - 5 hours 29 minutes ago #2201 by dmalosh
Romance subgenres was created by dmalosh
As Karyn White once sang, it's time to get romantic! (But you don't need to turn the lights down.)

In Goodreads, I keep seeing Romance subgenres that I don't use, but increasingly wonder if I should. Here are some subgenres I'm contemplating accompanied by my thoughts...
  • Chick Lit   <-- I tend to add Women's Fiction to Romance in lieu of Chick Lit but I don't know if that's sufficient.

  • Contemporary   <-- We have Romance-Historical as a subgenre, but we leave it understood that the work is Contemporary if it isn't tagged as Romance-Historical. Where this gets messy is decades later, a "Contemporary Romance" from the 1980s is no longer contemporary from the perspective of our younger patrons. They're only contemporary unto the year of their publication. I can imagine it might be helpful to have this for our patrons being served today, but might be a headache for us librarians needing to revisit and remove as time passes.

  • Romantic Comedy   <-- I've been tagging these works with Humorous Fiction to accommodate Romance but it'll only work as intended if/when we're able to use composite Likes, and I don't know if I should keep waiting for KLAS 8.

  • Erotica   <-- No matter how many times people explain Spicy vs Erotica vs Erotic Fiction, it never sticks. We have Spicy (Goodreads uses it too). We also have Erotic Fiction but I think we've been using it to convey paranormal romance; sexualized encounters between human and non-human or super-human characters.

  • Friends To Lovers | Enemies To Lovers   <-- I'm skeptical if these are worthwhile, but I keep seeing them on Goodreads.
Are any of you using these subgenres at your library? Do you advocate for their usage?

Thanks,
-Dan
Last edit: 5 hours 29 minutes ago by dmalosh. Reason: type-o and trying to give space between bullets

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4 hours 30 minutes ago #2203 by maureen
Replied by maureen on topic Romance subgenres
Hi there! Of those, Florida has:
  • Women's Fiction
  • Women's fiction - Chick Lit 
  • Women's Interest (nonfiction)
Related to Erotica:
  • Paranormal romance
  • Erotic Fiction
  • Romance - Spicy fiction
We don't use anything else you mentioned. We have a loooot of subject headings; usually only adding headings by request of a RA department or SRL library... or when NLS adds new broad descriptors. Like this week. 

Thanks,
Maureen

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