As a young kid, I was once very excited to look for "Hunchback of Notre Dame" in the library because I assumed it was about college football. Boy, was I disappointed. Which brings us to the issue of author intentions vs. reader expectations. Do you ever get feedback from readers or reviewers that you felt was completely missing the point of the story? Like the person who doesn't like "The Godfather" because it wasn't humorous enough, or that didn't like "Blazing Saddles" because it wasn't a realistic depiction of how the railroad industry in the old West actually worked.
On the one hand, some will argue that it is in the readers' hands to read something however they want it, and the author has no right to tell them how to read it. On the other, some will argue that it is unfair for readers to judge an author's work on the criteria of something that the author was clearly not setting out to do; that it would be akin to criticizing a baseball pitcher for not hitting enough home runs.
In my own experience, my current series of novels are comedic action thrillers, not full-blown parodies like Austin Powers, but something more along the lines of Jackie Chan or Roger Moore-era James Bond movies. I thought that the blurbs made it perfectly clear what type of stories they are, but I still sometimes get feedback from readers who objected to the lack of seriousness in the stories, as if they were expecting something like John Le Carre.
Can readers judge books however they want, or is it only fair to judge according to what the author's goals were? Also, how much responsibility does the author bear to convey what those goals are?