The upgrade to our latest version of our Story Archive software is complete.  This is a pretty big change under the hood on how we handle Genres.  First thing first.  Definitions.

• Primary Genre - This is the top level genre and consists mostly the old genres we used along with some new ones.
• Sub-Genre - These are more narrowly scoped genre under a primary genre.  For example Comic Fantasy is a sub-genre of Comedy.

Why the change?  With the advent of epublishing, the number of genres and micro-genres has exploded since you are no longer tied to the physical space limitations of a bookstore.  This means you can get pretty detailed in the space you write in.  In the survey we ran earlier this year, there was a lot of questions that sounded something like "what's with all the werewolves?"  The answer is that the market for ebooks is pretty hot for Paranormal Romance, especially shifters/werewolves. 

It's fine if this stuff is not your thing. Just click on the top level genres you are used to.  The only big change there is that "Drama" is a sub-genre to "General Fiction".  The Genre and Tags page has the full definition of all the genres and sub-genres.

https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/genre-tag/

For right now, you'll see a lot of 0's in the sub-genres, as most authors haven't had a chance to do anything with the updates at the point in time this is posted.  That will change as authors update things and staff make updates based on genres and tags on stories.

Looking at a Genre, you'll see the definition of that Genre and any sub-genres that are under it.

On the sub-genre, you'll see the Primary Genre and the Sub-genre definition will display:

There are two changes to the Story Filters for Genre as well. 

You  Select  "Any genres selected", meaning if you select "Adventure" and "Comedy Modern" you will find stories with EITHER "Adventure" or " Comedy Modern" or both.
Select "ALL genres selected", meaning if you select "Adventure" and "Comedy Modern" you will find stories that have at least "Adventure" AND "Comedy Modern". (they can have additional.

You can add genres to the "Without" category. For example, if you have the above and put "Romance" in the Without filter, it will remove all stories that have any Romance genres tagged to them. 

This is very powerful in letting you drill down to exactly what you want.  At least when authors/staff get all the stories updated fully to use more in-depth genres.

For Authors, When you add new stories, Step 3 is still the same, you just have to select the sub-genres you want.  There is a generic sub-genre in each major primary genre.  (Drama is under General Fiction).  There is a link on the story entry screen to the Genre and Tag page linked above to help you select which genre best fits your story.  We recommend no more than 4 or 5 sub-genres at most for a story.  If you have more than that, go to General Fiction and choose "Experimental" for your sub-genre.

Genres are open for use.  We are open to adding more and adding more definition as needed.