When considering an agent for our work there are genres: romance, fantasy, crime, and at times historical are easy to define, but what are general fiction and commercial fiction?

Steve

Hhmm. Tough one; they always seem to mena different things to different people. I would say that general fiction is simply something that doesn't fit into a standard genre. It's not science fiction, romance, children's or crime/thriller. I think of it as the divisions used by bookshops. They only separate the above genres; the rest all go under 'fiction'.

Commercial fiction I connect with 'popular' fiction. Usually a thriller or a battle of the sexes. They often give them those cartoon looking covers (for the girly stuff). The stuff people take on holiday. Sells by the bucketload. Not anything that's likely to be debated on 'Newsnight', but nonetheless there are some good titles that fall into the category.

If the agent uses a general term then I would have thought they expect general submissions. I'm guesssing they want to leave the door open to quite a wide range of work. If in doubt call them up and ask. I think the main difference is between commercial and literary fiction. As long as you know roughly which side of that divide you're on, you should be able to fid the right place for a work of 'general' fiction.
Katie

<Added>

Sorry - checking other people's work all day, I've stopped checking my own! So obviously, mena should be mean!

Katie

That's made things clear, so long as I think of cartoon covers for commercial. It's like trying to remember a formula ;o)

Anything that has the word "commercial" in it's definition is synonymous with vacuous, regurgitated pap. The Cheeky Girls, those 'novels' given away free with Cosmo magazines, and the Spider-man movie, all fall under this umbrella.

Don't try to tell me that the Spider-man movie was actually good. I may become violent.

Spiderman wasn't what I'd call thrilling, so I'm in agreement there.