In our last installment, we covered the top three book genres: High Fantasy, Epic Fantasy and Low Fantasy. Now we will drill down into the Fantasy sub-genre categories.
If you're a reader, knowing all the categories and what makes them different from one another will help you find the very books you love to read. As an author, it will help you find the best genre to position your book in the marketplace.
And if you are looking to 'write to market' as some authors do, knowing the expectations and subtle differences between the various genres can help you zero in on what expectations your readership will have.
💥💥 Urban Fantasy 💥💥
Urban Fantasy is similar to Low Fantasy with one or two exceptions. One exception is the setting. The story takes place in our world and in a modern city setting. It can be at another time in the past or in the future, but it takes place on Earth in a city.
Urban Fantasy blends the mundane with the magical, setting fantastical elements within a modern urban environment. It often explores the hidden world of supernatural beings coexisting with humans.
The other difference between low fantasy and urban fantasy is that the environment and characters are grittier, edgier and tougher. Low Fantasy takes place in secluded environments like castles, or rural or suburban environments so the world can be almost fairytale like. Urban fantasy takes place in the bustle and grit of a city.
What distinguishes Urban Fantasy from Low Fantasy is there is a grittier environment and there can be violence. The characters are more human, grittier and they can be morally ambiguous.
Three books that are examples of Urban Fantasy are:
- The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: This series is a modern classic of Urban Fantasy, featuring a private investigator with magical abilities in a contemporary setting.
- Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton: A popular series blending romance, horror, and fantasy in a modern urban setting.
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman: While not strictly Urban Fantasy, it explores the coexistence of old and new gods in modern America, blurring the lines between myth and reality.
💥💥 Dark Fantasy 💥💥
Dark Fantasy is a subgenre of the Low fantasy genre. Dark Fantasy blends elements of fantasy with horror, with more of an emphasis on the horror aspects. Think Cinderella vs. Dracula. This genre explores themes of darkness, supernatural elements such as magic, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and other fantastical creatures who enter our world.
There is also a focus on the psychological, how this is affecting one or more characters in the story. Due to the emphasis on horror, there is an underlying sense of fear, unease and dread running through the story. These stories tend to focus on the darker aspects of the human psyche; think accidental manslaughter vs. Jack the Ripper.
Characters often face internal struggles, psychological struggles, madness, or obsession. Magic, demons, ghosts, or otherworldly creatures are common in this genre.
Ambiguous morality: The lines between good and evil can often be blurred, although not always. Sometimes good wins out, but in dark fantasy, you can't count on it.
These stories also takes place in our world, but unlike urban fantasy, they usually take place in secluded environments like castles, forests, rural or isolated settings.
Three examples of Dark Fantasy:
- Dracula by Bram Stoker: A quintessential work of Gothic horror, Dracula blends elements of horror and romance, creating a dark and atmospheric tale.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: While often classified as a psychological horror novel, it incorporates supernatural elements and explores the darker aspects of human nature, aligning with Dark Fantasy themes.
- The Shining by Stephen King: Though primarily a horror novel, The Shining delves into psychological horror and explores the supernatural, making it a strong example of Dark Fantasy.
💥💥 Grim Dark Fantasy 💥💥
Grim Dark Fantasy is a rather new genre and it is a sub-genre of Dark Fantasy. What distinguishes a grim dark fantasy from a garden-variety dark fantasy is that the world it takes place in is bleak, often violent and brutal. There can be gore alongside the horror in this genre too.
This genre always focuses on morally-ambiguous characters, anti-heroes and it can be an environment where evil triumphs. There's no promise of a happy ending. Grim Dark fantasy also has a cynical voice running through the narrative, a hopelessness, even despair.
Three books that fall into this category are:
- The Black Company by Glen Cook: Often cited as a foundational work in the Grimdark genre, this series features anti-heroes, morally ambiguous characters, and a gritty, cynical world.
- A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin: Though not exclusively Grimdark, Martin's series showcases many Grimdark elements with its morally complex characters, brutal violence, and bleak worldview.
- The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie: A modern classic of Grimdark, this series is renowned for its anti-heroes, dark humor, and unflinching portrayal of war and its consequences.
Before Amazon.com became a behemoth online bookseller, there may have been 20 genres in all of Bookdom. It was all based ono the space available, book cases available and how large he bookstore or library was. All fantasy books were in one section of the store. From there, you needed to come through the author names alphabetically or ask a store clerk if they remembered seeing the book. KDP Publishing and the Website whiz kids at Amazon put an end to that over the last decade or two.Now there are multiple genres of Fantasy and each one can be differentiated by a slight difference. Let's take a look at them starting with the three largest categories: High Fantasy, Epic Fantasy and Low Fantasy.
This genre is made up of stories that open up a whole new world, with its own geography, culture and even people -- there could be creatures of any and all kinds. These stories are alive with lots of magic, mythology, legends and folklore. High fantasy usually deals with large-scale problems and conflicts. There are life and death stakes and the main characters are heroes, heroines and most are destined for greatness. Their journey is about fulfilling their destiny and/or saving their world from disaster. High fantasy can be more personal than Epic fantasy. High fantasy can be about personal drama, relationships while Epic Fantasy is usually bigger and more about saving the Kingdoms or a whole group of people.
Epic fantasy is very similar to High Fantasy in that it introduces the reader to a whole world conjured up by the author, with a unique geography, weather, history and creatures. Epic fantasy also has lots of magic and other worldly powers, all of which have rules and boundaries that are followed. Epic fantasy can have folklore, but there is more of an emphasis on myths and legends that are weaved in and out of the story.
When I first heard of this genre and found out that many vampire books fit into this category, I wasn't happy. It sounds awful -- 'low fantasy'. What kind of a name is that? However, the low fantasy refers to the level of magic and world-building that takes place in a low fantasy book.
Each writer or author will have slightly different goals. My blog post will speak directly to website bloggers and/or to fiction authors. However, if you publish low-content books or children’s books — or even coloring books, all of these techniques will be relevant to you because they are about basic marketing. Just change up whatever technique is mentioned and make it more fitting to whatever type of marketing you need to do.
START COLLECTING EMAILS: Collecting emails to send to people about your book or books. I would recommend MailerLite as they are the least expensive but professional platform for a beginner. Everyone starts with a free account. They allow you to collect a couple of hundred emails before they want to get paid. And then they charge you per hundred or so. So your expenses keep steady with your marketing results.
GOODREADS: Establish a presence on GoodReads.com where the most avid and voracious readers hang out. Sign up for an account with them and you will get a chance to upload your book cover. It can be a little confusing at
I personally am too shy (and too old) to go this route, but if you happen to be a bit younger or extroverted, this can create a HUGE BUZZ. Local people become fans, they tell people they know you, they buy paperbacks and hardcovers — and many want you to sign them! So don’t underestimate the life of the buzz you can create by talking about your book in front of a few people at the local library.
LOW-BID AMAZON AD STRATEGY: And the last step for absolute beginners is to learn strategies for low-bid strategies (going for the low-hanging fruit) using Amazon Ads. This is where you bit .12 cents a click. You won’t rocket to the top of the best seller list, but this is a great strategy to begin to crawl your way out of oblivion. I’ll have a dedicated blog post about how to set up a low-bit strategy.
I personally don’t like social media — the whole thing. However, I also don’t really like marketing either! But in today’s world, if you want to self publish, you need to market your books or blog and there are lots of ways to market even if you are shy or introverted, like I am.
First: It’s only a plan of action if you do something about it all. So be sure to open your social media accounts in the next days if you haven’t established them already.
I use a four-part plot structure, so I break my character arc into four sections. This allows me to keep up with the character development and also don’t resolve the inner conflict too early.
If you are stumped for a main story, or if you are stumped for what happens now, or even if you have written yourself into a bit of a corner, this instructional will help, along with your own creativity and thinking, to bring about new possibilities. 
Once you have a perpetrator and the cast of necessary characters, then it’s time to answer the following questions:
Before you exert too much energy fleshing out any character or story details, be sure to check to make sure you can design a three-prong storyline out of this budding storyline. One prong will be a red herring storyline, someone who may look guilty, but is exonerated in the middle or end of the story. The second prong is a second suspect or a wrong suspect who will look guilty for a large segment of the storyline. And the final prong will be for the real culprit. In order to have a story that works, you will need a believable crime that can meld these three prongs into one suspenseful story.
As you use this worksheet and these techniques, a crime skeleton will emerge. Some attempts at this will go flat in the early stages for any number of reasons. But some storylines will begin to almost shape themselves.
Pulp Fiction become popular during the depression of the 1920s and 1930s. Publishers at the time used a very cheap “pulp” paper in order to produce these short stories and magazines that cost about a quarter. Yes, twenty-five cents!
This book is for beginners who are publishing their first or second novel and they are still a little skittish about what else goes into a book. I’ll lay it out so you can easily follow the list and be confident that you’re not forgetting anything. These page suggestions are taken from the publishing industry. These are the pages that appear in a book published by a publishing house.
When I self-published my first novel, I finished it and uploaded it and waited. That’s when I learned how important marketing the book is. I also learned through the next several books how important it is to take advantage of each tiny phase of a book launch for marketing. That’s what this blog post is about.