Novels: a redundant category? Have your say

Echoing the above comments, I don't think there's a perfect way to do it. Sure, Strap-On Sex arguably belongs under Toys, and Horror and Monster Sex seem an unnecessary dichotomy ... and where's the split between those and Supernatural? Also, why have the vague "Occupations" when most of those stories could either go under Uniform, Medical or Office Sex?

And all sex involving four or more people is supposed to be in Group Sex? That can include orgies (have written that), gangbangs (just wrote that), circle jerks (ditto), bukkake (story planned) and swinging (just wrote that too, although Swinging gets its own genre for some reason), all of which have separate appeal.

Then again, I love that Cuckold and Wife Lovers are separate, because even though the physical acts tend to be about the same, the emotional dynamic can be vastly different. Not to mention the appeal: Cuckold and its related degradation are a pretty hard turnoff to me, while Wife Lovers/hotwife action is a pretty hard on.

In any event, these are the categories we have, and for which hundreds of authors have intentionally written stores. Like Kimmi said, maybe the ambiguity of the categories is a good thing. God knows I wouldn't have much to write about if my own sexuality was cut-and-dried.

After having given this topic hours of careful thought, I propose we create a new genre called 'CNC' which stands for ' Classified, Non Classified' ....oh, wait...

So, just my two cents on categories, having recently completed the omnium challenge!

I'd argue that they could definitely be slimmed down, but then we could think of some more! Wife-lovers, cheating and cuckold could all be united under 'Infidelity'. They are all, basically, the same idea, surely? Same with Novels and Series. Watersports, Uniform & Medical could all be ditched and directed to 'Fetish'. I agree with a previous post that strap-on counts as "Toys". And, Monster sex, horror and supernatural could be one single category too.

Is "Straight sex" really a useful category, when all heterosexual encounters that are not "Gay male", "Lesbian", "Bisexual" or "Trans" count as "Straight sex"?

(Personally, I'd ditch interracial, but that's a personal view; I don't find interracial sex distasteful, but I do find stories that reduce Black men to objects that service white women as bulls icky, and they seem to be the vast majority of stories in that category!)

And after the cull, there would be room for new categories! We could start a forum thread for suggestions, then site admin could take a view.

My suggestion would be "One Night Stand" - "One single night of passion. Meeting sexy strangers on work trips. Friends giving in to long repressed urges. Nights out ending with unexpected consequences. This category features one off, one and done encounters that are never repeated!"

Having never attempted a sequel much less a novel I am a bit mystified by the hullabaloo growing around this subject. A novel, if it is to be kept, should be consolidated into one category…”Novel”. The specific subject of the individual chapter whether it is”Having Sex with Knats” or “A Month with a Homosexual Racoon” is irrelevant…it goes into “Novel”. I know, I know, Lush doesn’t permit stories about sex with animals. Since I usually get my stories rejected then deleted and my fan base is not exactly a true representation of the population of China my opinion is not truly a representation of the consensus or in fact valid. I don’t really have any interest in Lush “novels”. I usually go to the library for novels not Lush.

Quote by MC1982
Wife-lovers, cheating and cuckold could all be united under 'Infidelity'.

Well, yes and no. They are similar, but Wife Lovers and Cuckold are usually with the knowledge of both parties. Cheating, not necessarily. So people who are after one particular flavour might not find what they want if they are all together.

We also have to consider search volume. The word "infidelity" is all well and good, but who Googles for "infidelity stories" compared to "cheating stories" or "cuckold stories". I can almost guarantee the search volumes for the latter two are greater. We can't (and shouldn't) foist our internal naming convention on the outside world because it will hurt SERPS and traffic.

Some argue categorisation is pointless. And I tend to agree. Tagging—with the first tag being the dominant theme—would be more flexible but we currently limit tags to 10 (historically for aesthetics and performance; less so now) and the order of tags is system-defined, not user-defined. If those situations were to change, categories could become less of a thing. Barring the Omnium badge, which is a nice stretch goal for authors who want a challenge. Lack of category does, however, assume that everyone who submits a story knows that the first tag (or the earlier listed tags) are the ones that carry the most weight.

What would have been better, with the benefit of hindsight, is perhaps a category tree. So we could do what you suggest and house Cuckold, Wife Lovers and Cheating under an "Infidelity" parent. That gives us one more search term, separation for people searching for specifics, and a nice hierarchy to show the relationship between the terms. Similarly for other genres.

As for the Novel category itself, my main beef is it isn't a genre and people don't often look for "erotic novels in any genre". Search results will certainly consider keywords inside a story when returning matches but thematic content (e.g. supernatural) is harder to detect by search alone without specific markers.

Sure, AI searches allege to make semantic links from content, but it's computationally expensive (environmental impact too) and I've seen little evidence they're accurate yet. Having a category that the author states "this is what this chapter contains"—a bit like the ratings warning on Netflix shows that lists the themes—is a more weighted indicator that search tools can sink their teeth into and help people discover content they're interested in.

Unless you want to make the category go beyond 10K words, or maybe instead of a story make the "novel" a SERIES.

Quote by MC1982

So, just my two cents on categories, having recently completed the omnium challenge!

I'd argue that they could definitely be slimmed down, but then we could think of some more! Wife-lovers, cheating and cuckold could all be united under 'Infidelity'. They are all, basically, the same idea, surely? Same with Novels and Series. Watersports, Uniform & Medical could all be ditched and directed to 'Fetish'. I agree with a previous post that strap-on counts as "Toys". And, Monster sex, horror and supernatural could be one single category too.

Is "Straight sex" really a useful category, when all heterosexual encounters that are not "Gay male", "Lesbian", "Bisexual" or "Trans" count as "Straight sex"?

(Personally, I'd ditch interracial, but that's a personal view; I don't find interracial sex distasteful, but I do find stories that reduce Black men to objects that service white women as bulls icky, and they seem to be the vast majority of stories in that category!)

And after the cull, there would be room for new categories! We could start a forum thread for suggestions, then site admin could take a view.

My suggestion would be "One Night Stand" - "One single night of passion. Meeting sexy strangers on work trips. Friends giving in to long repressed urges. Nights out ending with unexpected consequences. This category features one off, one and done encounters that are never repeated!"

That's like a catalogue of my flash creations you've listed there. I don't know whether to be spooked or delighted,

I think there are many valid points being raised here and they're not mutually exclusive.

I voted to keep it. If the writer accepts that readership may be lost by categorizing as such, that's surely their choice to make. Every author of a facesitting, strap-on, or steampunk story is likely doing the same thing by putting their story in a very specific category for which there are very few interested readers with only 6 or 7 pages of stories. Who are you really helping by eliminating it? And the same argument applies to all the other marginal categories. If the author is okay with it, why should you object?

A better way to help these authors get their work discovered would be to improve the tagging functionality. The author should have control over the sequence of tags, being able to place the most applicable first. Many times, I've lamented the sequence in which these tags appear on my stories where the first, most prominent tags are not as relevant as others. This is especially relevant if the tags scroll off the right side of the screen, only found if someone clicks on them elsewhere. If the author had control over the sequence, you might actually be giving 'Novel' authors the help they'd need to garner more readership. Maybe even a designation between major and minor tags?

I voted earlier to axe it, but now I'm leaning towards keep. Maybe I'm biased, having just met the Prolific Author threshold on my way to eventual Omnium.

I do have a series in progress (It's A Date!) that has been on pause for a couple of years but will belong under Novels. Effectively, Act I is complete (though I didn't realize that's what it was at the time), and I've since plotted out the remainder of a three-act Novella story arc. When I return to it in the next few months, I intend to put all the chapters under Novels, so that it's a cohesive whole in a single place. As I think the Novels category was intended.

Quote by joe71

I voted earlier to axe it, but now I'm leaning towards keep. Maybe I'm biased, having just met the Prolific Author threshold on my way to eventual Omnium.

I do have a series in progress (It's A Date!) that has been on pause for a couple of years but will belong under Novels. Effectively, Act I is complete (though I didn't realize that's what it was at the time), and I've since plotted out the remainder of a three-act Novella story arc. When I return to it in the next few months, I intend to put all the chapters under Novels, so that it's a cohesive whole in a single place. As I think the Novels category was intended.

Once you have actually written for the Novel category, it seems to make more sense in my book. And if I want people to find my novels based on what they are about, I can add 10 tags per chapter. 😉