Tags in a Novel

[Moonpearl]

Tags becoming a problem: let's just think of this for a moment. In a bookstore there aren't so called 'tags' so it's a synopsis that is used to sell the book. Why are people getting upset so much? Probably because 'it's not what they thought'...well, our books are free mate and ur still not satisfied? So what if a tag is wrong, I've happily fixed one up myself. To me...this is immature. They are upset that they 'wasted' ten (give or take) minutes of their time...instead, why don't they give the book a good go first before stopping and complaining??

Even if books are free in terms of money, books are costly for the reader in terms of time. Readers have a limited amount of free time to spend reading novels, so spending a long time waiting for a novel to spit out what the tags promised you, only to find out that the author was lying, leaves readers frustrated that they could have been reading something they actually liked instead.
On the flip side, not being warned that a story is going to focus heavily on something you hate or contains triggering material you can't get past makes time invested in that novel also a complete waste of your life.
Shops don't have "tags", but they do have subsections such as "Crime" and "Historical romance". If you bought a book on the grounds that it was a Historical romance only to find out that it was actually a gritty historical war novel with next no romance whatsoever, wouldn't you be irritated?

Personally, I'm disappointed by the misuse of the "Girls' Love" genre tag. Yuri is a rare treat, so fans will rush to a story tagged with it and stick around for chapters upon end waiting for the romance to turn up. When it's later removed or it turns out that the yuri love is two side characters (which should be tagged as "Shoujo-ai subplot"), it feels like deception, because many of the readers may have never have read the novel if they didn't believe it was yuri.
(I understand that mistakes happen, but I've never heard of this happening with the Boys' Love tag.)

 

[TLCsDestiny]

Even if books are free in terms of money, books are costly for the reader in terms of time. Readers have a limited amount of free time to spend reading novels, so spending a long time waiting for a novel to spit out what the tags promised you, only to find out that the author was lying, leaves readers frustrated that they could have been reading something they actually liked instead.
On the flip side, not being warned that a story is going to focus heavily on something you hate or contains triggering material you can't get past makes time invested in that novel also a complete waste of your life.
Shops don't have "tags", but they do have subsections such as "Crime" and "Historical romance". If you bought a book on the grounds that it was a Historical romance only to find out that it was actually a gritty historical war novel with next no romance whatsoever, wouldn't you be irritated?

Personally, I'm disappointed by the misuse of the "Girls' Love" genre tag. Yuri is a rare treat, so fans will rush to a story tagged with it and stick around for chapters upon end waiting for the romance to turn up. When it's later removed or it turns out that the yuri love is two side characters (which should be tagged as "Shoujo-ai subplot"), it feels like deception, because many of the readers may have never have read the novel if they didn't believe it was yuri.
(I understand that mistakes happen, but I've never heard of this happening with the Boys' Love tag.)

If authors lie, and/or not give a good enough synopsis, they are obviously doing themselves in. I don't believe I'm one of them tho...Granted I don't completely understand some of the tags and already looked a few of them up but I try to be as loyal as possible to my books. As a reader, if i am lied to and don't like the novel, i just stop reading it. I may not be as bigger reader as u but I do notice that tags are used to attract an audience and sometimes they are being misused.
Those books will just get low ratings and the author will lose any real readers. Maybe...leave a review stating all this and/or the tags u think are good and bad? I doubt it'll stop and I doubt it'll be the last books u find wrongly tabbed...sucks...

 

[Moonpearl]

If authors lie, and/or not give a good enough synopsis, they are obviously doing themselves in. I don't believe I'm one of them tho...Granted I don't completely understand some of the tags and already looked a few of them up but I try to be as loyal as possible to my books. As a reader, if i am lied to and don't like the novel, i just stop reading it. I may not be as bigger reader as u but I do notice that tags are used to attract an audience and sometimes they are being misused.
Those books will just get low ratings and the author will lose any real readers. Maybe...leave a review stating all this and/or the tags u think are good and bad? I doubt it'll stop and I doubt it'll be the last books u find wrongly tabbed...sucks...

That seems to be what everyone's doing right now, but it wouldn't be too bad to have a system to help with these situations, if all the problems with it could be worked out.

The tags are mostly all imported from Novel Updates, Scribble Hub's sister site that acts as a directory for translated Asian novels, so there are an excessive number to help with the fussy needs of readers scrawling a huge database of sometimes almost identical novels. Even on NU, people sometimes complain that there are too many.
I personally feel that only the really important tags should be used for Scribble Hub novels, especially as there's a tag limit. It might be on readers to help writers find the more obscure ones they need.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

Ah, there was one idea I have, though it's slightly tangental.
What if you can like/dislike tags in a story? If the readers feel that a tag isn't prominent enough or that the series fits perfectly into the tag, then they can give the individual tags a + or -, and you can see the value on the story's page?
Things like "Yuri (+3)" or "Evolution (-7)"

 

[OliviaMyriad]

There was a novel that I saw while browsing Girl's Love. Author explicitly stated in the synopsis that thirty-something chapters in, the MC will have a male love interest. Imagine if that wasn't there and readers waste so much time reading something that ultimately "betrayed" their expectations in a bad way.

Tag voting will definitely help on top of the reviews, because not every author is as responsible as the one mentioned.

Edit: @Ninetailed_Furball are you going to make the suggestion to split a novel into volumes and tag appropriately?