On the art-comics side of things, there's even a backlash now: readers and critics dismissing genre-based comics out of hand on the grounds that they are genre-based.

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While watching his daughter play on her phone with her friends, he realized casual gaming is creating a growing audience for the turn-based strategy genre.

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It advocates a "hybrid a la carte" model, in which those most expensive channels are sold individually on top of genre-based tiers.

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E-books have also helped to ease the transition by offering newcomers to the genre a way to read in virtual anonymity, said Twanna A. Hines, a New York-based writer, sex educator and reproductive rights advocate.

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