Leslie Dow

Oh boy. What genre is your manuscript? What genre is mine?

I see this question asked all the time and I ask it a lot, too. I've been researching this and have some information, ideas and some wacky.

Wikipedia, that good place to start, has a list.
But is has some really weird ones like Paranoid and Faction. Huh?

AgentQuery has a list of Genre Descriptions

And the RWA defines the Romance SubGenres.

I always like Orson Scott Card's definition of SciFi vs Fantasy...

Look at the cover, if it has trees, it's Fantasy. Rivets, it's SciFi.

I've been developing a decision tree, OK a humorous decision tree, around this. If you take the OSC cover definition and add naked people or smexy aliens it's the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal subgenre of Romance. Actually, if you just extend that and envision what your cover might look like, that may be a way to help with the whole genere definition problem.

Sexy bare chested man with a blaster? SciFi Romance!
Purple alien eating Manhattan? SciFi!
Cutesy socks on four feet playing footsie on the carpet? YA Romance!
Hot chick in a backless shirt cut to her butt against a dark background wearing something leather? Urban Fantasy!

Try it, its fun!
So for my WIP....I have a hot blonde chick with tats and a short modern haircut in 1850s saloon dress against a flaming background. Hmm guess it's still Time Travel , eh? lol.