Seems True Crime should be genre of its own.  Up until a few weeks ago it was relatively easy to find newly posted TC by using genre: Nonfiction, sub-genre: True Accounts. But alas, no longer.  Now we have to look two different places.  One possibility is genre: Politics & Sociology, sub: True Crime; another possible is genre: Autobiography/Biography, sub: True Crime.  Why is it necessary to make this so difficult? Every book store I've ever shopped in has a separate genre for True Crime. End of story.

I just checked and there is no True Accounts sub-genre under Nonfiction. In addition, although the Politics & Social Sciences genre has a Crime & Criminals sub-genre, it does not have one for True Crime. However, the genre Biographies & Memoirs does list a True Crime sub-genre which in turn lists several more specific sub-genres under the heading.

For better or worse, to keep costs down PBS has chosen to use a third party genre classification system that is free, warts and all, rather than implement its own classification system or purchase one. Although the genre classification system currently used by the site is adequate for many books, the classification system does have its shortcomings and PBS has no control over it.

If the classification for True Crime (or other genres) has changed recently you can ask the Admin Team about it via the Contact Us link at the bottom right of any PBS page, but any changes in the classification system will very likely have been the result of changes made in third party software and not by PBS.

I agree with you Sandi !

Two possibilities:

Go to "advanced search" under the search menu, and under "this exact phrase" type in "true crime".

Find a true crime book and scroll down.  Where is says "Apply your own tag to this book" type in True Crime.  Then refresh the page and click on the blue "True Crime" tag you've added.  You'll find all the other books that members have tagged with that same tag.  (Currently over 1000.)

The folks who provide us with the genre tree tweak it from time to time.  Sometimes I like the tweaks, sometimes I don't.   But as Chris said, the site doesn't have control over the genres and how they are laid out.

Sad - the previous system worked OK - perhaps not perfect but at least there was some sense of logic. For those of us who like to check the daily postings this is pretty much useless.  I wonder what other little 'tweaks' have been applied in other areas?   And what other genres have been stuffed here and there?  Looks like the website, which I had thought was for the purpose of people 'shopping for books,' hasn't been able to communicate with the provider of the tree they use?  Wonder why?

PBS' database comes from an outside source. Each individual book entry comes with it's genres already on the listing. There's no way for PBS to add a new genre, because there's no way for them to go through hundreds of millions of existing database entries and decide which books should be in that new genre. Any new entries coming in would not match the customized genre list either, so no new books would get added to the new genre.

Amazon is using the same book data as PBS is, so the two sites have matching genre lists. Amazon is big, PBS is small. So if they're using the same source for data, PBS' wishes are not going to play a big part in what that data looks like. You might suggest to Amazon that they separate True Crime into its own genre. It's far more likely to happen if they ask for it than if PBS asks for it.