As romance takes the book world by storm yet again, in our latest Tech Forum session, we invited a panel of experts from different parts of the industry to talk to us about their experience in handling this boom and their recommendations on how this trend can be leveraged to boost sales. Of these experts, BookNet Canada’s very own Stephanie Small shared her insights regarding the impact this growth has had on existing standards and how we can better utilize them to make sure each title gets the attention it deserves.
BISAC & Thema
As we know, standards are the foundation of communication that we use to properly describe book content. Stephanie explains that in order for trading partners in the industry to be on the same page regarding a book, they need to share a vocabulary. In the publishing industry, this directly translates to the BISAC and Thema classification systems. For more information on both, browse our posts on standards and Thema.
BISAC and Thema, while similar in nature, play very different roles in the market. So, in the romance landscape, BISAC is great for quickly surfacing top-level romance categories and big trends; its purpose is to communicate where a book should be shelved or categorized online. Thema, on the other hand, allows you to stack meaning. This helps enhance the descriptions of the subject matter of the book, allowing for deep dives into specific romance tropes, character types, and relationship types.
The gold mine of opportunity lies in properly being able to use both to enrich your subject qualification game. So, how can you get a full and accurate understanding of what is working in the market for romance, both in Canada and globally?
Restraint
Stephanie explains that romance readers tend to know exactly what they want. To capitalize on this, we must find a balanced approach to applying BISAC codes. In Canada, every title needs at least one subject code. It's recommended to use more than that if needed, but it's important to not oversaturate the metadata at the risk of diluting and confusing the meaning. Thus making restraint a key approach when assigning codes.
Accuracy
The next thing to ensure is making sure that the BISAC codes that are being selected are broad enough to fit the entire subject but specific enough that your book doesn’t get lost in a sea of general romance titles. Another thing to remember is to not to pick an ill-fitting code just because it’s trending. That will almost immediately alienate romance readers.
Consistency across formats
It's also important to maintain consistency across the different formats to make sure you don’t disadvantage anyone depending on how they like to read.
<MainSubject / > energy
If you’re providing more than one code, you need to tell data recipients which one is the main, most important one for each scheme. So if you are sending both BISAC and Thema codes, you need to identify one main BISAC code and one main Thema code. This helps data recipients make the best possible choice on where to place your book. For Thema codes, especially, where meaning can stack, you need to ensure that all of the descriptive terms and qualifiers can be interpreted in the right context and applied to the right main code.
Recent trends in romance
Now that we've covered how we want to build a strong foundation for the titles, the next thing to know is the trends that are emerging in standards for romance titles.
Sports Romance
While this sub-genre of romance is not new, and BISAC has had a way to categorize these for quite some time, it was a new addition to Thema 1.6. The surge in popularity for Heated Rivalry had a massive impact on the genre which were discussed both during the Tech Forum session as well as in a recent blog post. The exciting part of all this, is that now, you can combine this new code with existing “S” codes to indicate which sport is central to the story.
Representing disability and neurodiversity
The importance of identity and representation in the romance genre has remained consistent. This genre remains a gateway to help readers find romances that not only reflect their own identities, interests, and experiences, but also allow them to explore other cultures and ways of being.
In their latest updates, both BISAC and Thema have added codes or qualifiers that can be used to surface books featuring people with disabilities or people who are neurodivergent, indicating the importance of romantic storylines in which disability or neurodiversity play a substantial or important part.
Some of updates to BISAC and Thema for this are as follows:
New in BISAC
FIC027680 FICTION / Romance / Disability
FIC027690 FICTION / Romance / Neurodiversity
New in Thema
5PME Relating to people with speech, language or communication impairments or disorders
5PMG Relating to people with motor disorders or conditions
5PMJB Relating to people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
5PMNB Relating to people with dementia / Alzheimer’s
5PMPB Relating to people with mood disorders / affective disorders
5PMT Relating to people with Albinism or Hypopigmentation
Representing cultural community
There have been similar additions to existing categories and qualifiers that can be used to classify romance books pertaining to other cultures. Some of these new additions to Thema 1.6 that might be of interest are specifically Canadian qualifiers. These can be used together with other romance codes to identify books where the themes, topics, storylines, or perspectives related to people in these identifiable cultural communities in Canada.
New in Thema
5PB-CA-A Relating to First Nations (peoples)
5PB-CA-B Relating to Inuit
5PB-CA-C Relating to Métis (Michif)
5PB-CA-F Relating to Acadian people
5PB-CA-G Relating to Black Canadians / African Canadian and Caribbean-Canadian people
5PB-CA-H Relating to Latin American Canadian people
5PB-CA-J Relating to Arab or Middle Eastern Canadian people
5PB-CA-K Relating to East Asian Canadian people
5PB-CA-L Relating to South Asian Canadian people
5PB-CA-M Relating to Southeast Asian Canadian people
5PB-CA-T Relating to European Canadian people
Capturing a vibe
The other trend that has surfaced is the focus on atmosphere or “vibe.” Sometimes, readers are looking for a specific kind of experience when picking a book, and the atmosphere can have a significant impact on that. This can be books set at a certain time of year or in a certain setting, and that shorthand can imply some of the the tropes, characters, relationships, and storylines readers might find.
To help categorize this, BISAC introduced four new romance categories for seasonal books that aren’t about a specific holiday. These codes prevent the dilution of the holiday category by eliminating that temptation to mislabel books that don’t quite fit. In Thema, the most recent update added codes that are intended to capture atmosphere. Some of these new updates for both include:
New in BISAC
FIC027700 FICTION / Romance / Seasonal / Winter
FIC027710 FICTION / Romance / Seasonal / Spring
FIC027720 FICTION / Romance / Seasonal / Summer
FIC027730 FICTION / Romance / Seasonal / Autumn
New in Thema
FRB Romantic comedies
FRDJ Romance: cosy / cozy
FRE Romance: workplace
FRG Romance: college / university
FXC Narrative theme: books and the world of books
JBSE Small town communities / small town life
Tropes
The final trend is centred around the growing familiarity of romance tropes, and the desire to use them to find and categorize books. While BISAC codes do exist to cover some of these on account of their pervasiveness in the genre, there have been new ones added to Thema 1.6. These codes are responding to a demand to describe the central relationship and archetypes in the book using language that readers already understand and use. This may end up being an area of growth in Thema 1.7, making it important to observe. Some of these new additions are:
New in Thema
FRK Romance: love triangles
FRL Romance: unlikely or unexpected lovers
FRLC Romance: friends to lovers
FRLE Romance: enemies to lovers
FRLF Romance: fake or pretend relationships
FRLH Romance: unintentional or forced proximity
FRS Romance: multiple partners / lovers
Overall, the genre of romance continues to grow, adapt, and evolve to the readers' ever-changing interests. And standards play a role in making sure these titles end up in the right hands. The more the genre branches out, the more important it becomes to properly categorize them at every step of the publishing process.
As part of this session, we had the chance to see the effects beyond standards. The speakers from various parts of the book industry shared with us how they were affected and the strategies they have all used to better cater to their readers. If you’d like to watch the whole webinar, or read the presentation slides to learn about the impact of romance trends on booksellers, publishers and sales reps, you can find those here: The ripple effect of romance: How to leverage trending subjects
If you want more about recent trends in romance, read our blog post Heated Rivalry: A game changer for romance books to learn about the most recent romance sensation, Heated Rivalry and the its impacts on book sales. If you’d like to learn more about how to translate the BISAC codes you’re already using to Thema codes that you should be using, read: Everything you need to know about the BISAC to Thema translator. If you’re not sure where to start with standards, browse our posts in standards and Thema to learn more about best practices and track all the updated guidelines.
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As romance takes the book world by storm yet again, we share insights regarding the impact this growth has had on existing standards.