Dumb question

[Anonymous]

Why do authors sometimes put "Title--A Novel" on their books? How did this get started? Sometimes these are very good books, other times they're like the titles that get categorized as "literary fiction" on Libby which is an accurate description about 1% of the time.

For example, if the book title is "Lambs in the Snow" the cover reads "Lambs in the Snow/ A Novel"

[Anonymous]

hmm- it might just be a literary fiction thing but there might also be a non fiction book with that title?? I know I have looked up books in the library catalogue and found books that have the same title.

[Anonymous]

There was a Vox article on this recent-ish phenomenon a few years ago. Unfortunately, Vox is no longer free and I’m not a subscriber, so I can’t post it. If I remember correctly, the gist was that “a novel” is a useful tag for those who uncover a book in a less organized setting than a physical bookshop (where you’d think, “of course it’s a novel— it’s under Fiction!”). This could be in an online marketplace or by using a search algorithm that might not just uncover one kind of book, so might return book fiction and nonfiction.

Separately, it also became a bit of a trend in literary fiction in the last decade or so for reasons I don’t know. Maybe the same reason? Maybe it sounds erudite or “classic” in some way?

[Anonymous]

So you don't think its

A Memoir

A History

Etc

[Anonymous]

I appreciate it when they do this (or mark it as fiction somewhere obvious). I find a lot of the titles and descriptions do not always make it clear whether it is fiction or non-fiction.