Categorizing writing/books

I have a confession to make. I don't care about a book's genre, if I find it interesting, I'll check it out. But this attitude with books does present me with a huge dilemma now that I'm putting my work out there in the ether. It is so important to try and categorize it for sales and accessibility.

So far the only genre I'm more or less comfortable with slapping on my books is epic fantasy because the book series will deal with world-changing events down the line, though through the narrow perspective of the protagonist. The first book, Island Girl, is not that epic in itself, certainly, it starts to climb towards larger-scale events and sets things up but it's perhaps not epic in itself.

I've gotten a few people, one reviewer too, to classify it as "sword and sorcery" but I've also gotten as many people to say it's "high fantasy" which aren't really supposed to jive together to my knowledge. The setting is a vast new world with magic, armies, and politics with the survival of the whole world on the line in the later books but the heroine isn't that virtuous. She is tempestuous, selfish, at times power-hungry but she can also sacrifice her own desires to serve others and tries her best to stay loyal to those she deems to deserve it.

If you ever pick up a copy and read it, I'd love to know how you perceived the book/books? What categories would you slap on them? And what do you think are the most important issues when defining a genre? The setting? The characters? Or just the general feel of it all?

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