How Times Have Changed: The Graphic Novels Amazon Is Promoting

It’s just past Christmas, so time to get people to spend those gift cards! Amazon sent out an email this morning promoting Graphic Novels, and I found their organizational system fascinating. There were six categories listed:

• Media Tie-In Graphic Novels
• Religion & Spirituality Graphic Novels
• Educational & Nonfiction Graphic Novels
• Contemporary Women Graphic Novels
• Romance Graphic Novels
• Literary Graphic Novels

All the superhero, zombie, or science fiction stories lumped into only one “tie-in” category! And that fourth category is a terrific thing to see.

In case you’re curious about what each contains, here’s a sampling of the first few titles in each category.

• Media: The Walking Dead and Star Wars stuff
• Educational & Nonfiction: Hyperbole and a Half, Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir, Fun Home, and other memoirs
• Contemporary Women: Lumberjanes, Rat Queens, Giant Days, and Jem and the Holograms
• Romance: Scott Pilgrim, Giant Days (again), and the BDSM porn of Sunstone
• Literary: Kate Beaton’s books, classics like Maus and Persepolis, and a nice selection of current critical favorites, including Killing and Dying, Here, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and The Sculptor
• Religion & Spirituality: Books I have never heard of. Clearly a separate audience from the usual comic reader.

Now, Amazon is VERY smart about data-mining, so they have probably realized that I don’t buy any Marvel books from them. In other words, I’m not sure how self-selected this is based on my past searches and other behavior. (Particularly since I already own four of the six items pictured.) But dang, it reminded me just how spoiled for choice we are these days. What a great time to be reading comics!