I had an email from someone who wants to write Young Adult fiction but isn’t near a book store where they can browse to get an idea of the style of books in this genre.
One solution: use the “Look Inside” feature of Amazon to read lots of samples of the kinds of book you want to write.
The plot summaries are also helpful--when you've read a bunch of them you'll start to get a feel for the formulas that go with each genre. That doesn't mean you have to follow them slavishly but at least you should know what they are.
If you look at which books are in the "best sellers" lists in their categories you'll also get a fast feel for what's doing well in that genre.
My general advice, however, is to write the kind of novel you read. Setting out to write a thriller or a romance novel, for instance, because that's a hot category doesn't usually yield good results unless you are interested in that genre to start with.
