How does one determine genre?

[travNastee]

I'm not sure if this is the subforum for this, but here goes:
Literary and Mainstream/Contemporary...how does one distinguish one from the other? When I think of literary, I think of literature, things that will be read years from now in classrooms, so on and so forth. Or flowery language and imagery.
Am I off base?

Or is it the target audience that makes that determination?

Which popular authors fall into which categories?

As I'm submitting, I find the need to tell a genre. I don't know which one my book fits into (I've been saying mainstream because I don't think of what I've written as literature).

[pdr]

travNastee, please use the search facility on the messageboard as we've covered all this recently with much discussion ended by Medievalist's comments that librarians no longer recognise a separate literary genre.

Just call your work mainstream and the readers and reviewers will decide if it's a literary gem.

[JenNipps]

I do have to agree with what pdr said about agents, editors, and readers. From what I've heard and read, to call your own work literary as opposed to mainstream is a bit presumptious. But... Again, that's just what I've heard and you know how things go with the grapevine and all that.