Young Adult Novels Besting Adult Novels?

[KatG]

I still don't get what makes a book a YA book as opposed to a book with a young adult protagonist. As it seems to just be how the publisher decides to market it, I sometimes wonder if I'll write a book and find out later that it's YA.

YA is part of the children's trade retail publishing industry, which is an industry that is both separate and linked with the rest of the trade retail publishing industry and has overlap with educational publishing, a bigger industry that is separate from retail trade but sometimes does cross marketing with retail trade. It is an age group in children's which divides books by reader age because half their market are schools, school libraries and public libraries, and all of these need to have approximate reading levels by age. Not every kid stays in their age group in reading -- some progress faster, some progress slower -- but the average reading level is very important for them to be able to gauge books coming to them from children's publishers. It's not confusing that there are "middle school" novels where the age group is 9-12 years, right? So it's not confusing that they have a 12 and up age group. It's just the top tier in children's publishing, a specific line just as Early Reader books for ages 3-7 years is a line the publisher has.

So if you sell your rights to a children's publisher or imprint, then your work will be assigned an age group and if it's for teens, it will be YA. If you sell the rights to an adult publisher or imprint, then it will not be given an age group and it will not be YA. The YA books are sold for regular retail customers in the YA section of the bookstores in those countries that have children's areas and YA sections. The adult books are not sold in the children's section. (If they are considered classics that fit junior high/high school curriculums, they may be marketed to the schools as teen level works.)

This did not used to be a big issue in retail trade because YA was tiny. Now YA is huge in some countries like the U.S. and makes lots of money. More adults read YA titles than they did before. But the age group system for children's and educational publishing has not changed.

There are three ways where you might write a book with a young protagonist intended for an adult audience and end up in the YA section:

1) You sell your rights to an adult publisher in your home country/territory. You try to sell your rights abroad to other countries, but the publishers most interested in it are that countries' children's publishers for YA. This frequently happens when foreign authors are selling to the U.S., such as Alison Croggon. It's not necessarily a bad strategy as you can greatly increase the size of your audience. But again, it's you the author selling to a YA publisher, so you know that you are marketed as YA in that territory.

2) You sell your rights to an adult, large publisher that has children's imprints. Because of scheduling issues, imput from major booksellers and maybe early reviewers, they want to move you to one of their children's imprints, publish it in YA and cross-market to adult. This is happening a bit more often now that YA is huge, but it's not going to happen a lot in fantasy because a large chunk of adult fantasy has teen protagonists and teens buy adult fantasy books and so it's not really necessary (although you may have a better shot at a film deal in YA.) But if they think they can get good interest from the schools, it may be proposed.

3) You sell your rights to an adult publisher who is cross marketing it between YA and adult, in which case you'll likely be in both sections of the bookstore. This is basically what Baen is doing with Weber. Weber had an idea, wanted a YA title and Baen doesn't have a YA line but they may be testing doing one, so working with their long time bestselling author Weber is ideal; they cross market and if it sells well in YA, they do more titles like that and eventually start a YA line, like Tor did.

So largely the author controls where it goes and largely the titles are separate in their industries but because YA is lucrative, titles that can work as YA may find a better audience there to start and there may be cross-marketing schemes, usually in cooperation with the author. Because the author of the YA title has to do certain things -- you have to hit up certain reviewers, you do signings at kid bookstores, you may have to go to libraries and schools, you are going to be dealing with teen fan mail, etc. There are YA promotional channels that are going to be used if your book is being pushed in that age group.

So sell it to Scholastic and you're YA. Sell it to Tor YA and you're YA. Sell it to Bantam Spectra, and you're adult. The more important thing is to connect with readers whether they are teens or adults and to hit as many potential audiences as possible. (And the teens frankly are more loyal. )

 

[Loerwyn]

I really don't get it, Kat. I'll explain.

I've got YA on my shelves from Del Rey (Landover), Harper Voyager (Seven Realms, Abarat, arguably Riftwar), Tor (Great Alta), Pan Macmillan (Un Lun Dun), Gollancz (Wizard Knight) and others. None of those labels are YA in nature, but they have YA imprints - but these aren't labelled as such. I've got Scholastic, Hodder Teens (I think), Atom and I think some others that are clearly YA.

So I really don't get it. Are some of those titles YA only because people have said they're YA, or what?

 

[Ahavahi]

Interesting issue. Kat's discussion is very enlightening. I do wonder, though, about the part of the conversation that was brought up earlier and that was, at least in the background, a part of the OP. Is YA less serious than Adult? Is it less advanced topically? Does a YA label on a book equal a disappointment for an author? Does a book's labeled audience degrade its content...to say it bluntly.

I have enjoyed thoroughly several YA books and I've never quite agreed with the idea that books about children and youth or books for children and youth are inferior. Often times, they aren't even all that different. Adults absolutely can learn from the tales of the young, just as a young person can learn of life through the story of an elder. Also I think sometimes the things children face are just as profound or difficult as the things adults face and not just because they are young.

On the other hand, in my own writing I am playing with how to make my book, which has a teenage protagonist, appeal more to an adult audience. I'm not sure if I would be disappointed were my book published (I would be absolutely thrilled if my book were published no matter what) as a YA book, though I would hope adults would also read it.

 

[Laer Carroll]

Are some of those titles YA only because people have said they're YA, or what?

YA and Teen are labels people use to simplify their thinking. They are used flexibly, like all labels. It depends on the person and the purpose for which they are using them. I, for instance, may disagree with you as to whether a book or movie should be classified YA/Teen. Authors, academics, publishers, and bookstores (online and off) all may disagree. Barnes & Noble in my neighborhood is putting David Weber's A Beautiful Friendship in BOTH their Teen and SFF bookshelves.

As for me, I'm still debating which category to pick when I put my next book online. Here is my cover in the sizes used by B&N and Amazon for each book. I wonder if it would appeal to teenagers.

Are there still fans for futuristic Star Wars kind of sci-fi? Or have they all gone over to the dark side - fantasy?!

____

 

[KatG]

YA and Teen are labels people use to simplify their thinking.

People don't use them. Publishers and booksellers use them. Granted, they use them to sell to people and schools, but simply as informational in the children's section. If you go into the children's section and you are trying to find a book for a kid, what is your first issue? The age of the child, followed by whether that child is reading at, above or below his or her average age level. So the books in the children's section are organized by age. YA is an organizational age category in children's publishing. It is not flexible within the market. Children's publishers are not going to suddenly decide, hey, let's call the YA section snickerdoodles instead.

YA is not a philosophy. It's not a style of writing. It is not a method to simplify one's thinking. It is not a difference in depth, theme, etc. from books in the adult section. There is some content in adult publishing that you probably won't find in YA publications (though that border line changes all the time,) and YA titles will always have teen protagonists while titles sold in the adult section may or may not have them, but that's about it for established differences. That a book is sold in the adult section does not mean that it won't appeal to teens, but if it is not also sold in the YA section and marketed as YA, then it's not YA. YA is the market in which the books are sold, not qualities of the books themselves. The sales figures that Laer trotted out for this thread are not, for YA, all the books with teen protagonists. They are all the books sold in the YA market/sections/publishers' YA lines.

Which is why the figures don't tell you anything about the books themselves. What it tells you is that the YA market is expanding at a faster rate than the general fiction (adult) market. Since the YA market has been in an expansion since 1998 from a very tiny market, and bolstered by t.v. and film adaptations directed at the teen audience since around 2001, this is hardly surprising. YA market venues and channels have been expanding along with the rest of children/teen products and media.

So Riftwar is not YA, just because someone thinks the "style" is teenish, Loerwyn, and because a lot of teens read it. Un Lun Dun, however, is YA. It was marketed as YA, sold in the YA market and to schools, Mieville promoted it as YA, etc. If you go to American Amazon, where the book is published by Del Rey, and you look down at the publisher information, you'll see the age group: Reading Level: 10 and up.

The book was also, because Mieville has an extensive adult audience, crossmarketed to that adult SFF market that contains Mieville readers. And this seems to be the interesting thing about the British market -- while they have the YA market and the children's/YA publishers, etc., they don't necessarily post age group info in listing the book. Pan Macmillan has reissued all of Mieville's work with a common cover treatment and so that includes Un Lun Dun. Canada is also rather like this -- titles will be listed in Teen, but there won't be a "Reading Level" entry necessarily, though it will almost always be on the cover. But the YA market is not a mysterious thing.

I think that authors expect to be told what their book is -- YA or adult, as if there is some quality that will determine it. (And there are numerous myths about what YA books are supposed to be.) But that's not how it works. The author decides what market he will chiefly go after. If they sell to a YA publisher, it's going to be YA because it will be in that market. And the author promotes it as YA. But that doesn't mean that the author is forbidden to market to adults either and vice versa. So when you're trying to figure out if a book is "YA," the question is what market is it chiefly being marketed in, which includes who the publisher is, whether the main reviews are School Library Journal or Publishers Weekly, is it being sold to schools, is it in the YA section of bookstores, does it have an age group posted on it, what the author does for promotion, etc.

 

[Loerwyn]

So, the reason I don't exactly get it is pretty much just because publishers in my country do it differently?

 

[Window Bar]

Is it less advanced topically? Does a YA label on a book equal a disappointment for an author? Does a book's labeled audience degrade its content...to say it bluntly.

Even books for very young children (eg: The Hobbit, and all of the various Narnia books) deal with such topics as honor, forgiveness, courage and redemption. The richness of the topics helps make the books work.

At a YA level, Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy actually deals with moral ambiguity--an issue with which even many adults are uncomfortable. It's my own belief that young people are quite able to deal with complex thought, as long as the characters and the story appeal to them.

-- WB

 

[Laer Carroll]

YA and Teen are labels people use to simplify their thinking.

People don't use them. Publishers and booksellers use them.

Teen and young adult are perfectly good GENERAL terms used by a lot of people. I certainly heard and used them decades before Harry Potter. At the Thanksgiving celebration I attended this last weekend the subject came up when the two teenagers were asked what they were reading and watching. Then the rest of us brought up books which were favorites of ours when their age.

Publishers and book stores use the terms in a very SPECIFIC sense, however. And that is where a lot of the confusion comes in.

Even books for very young children ... deal with such topics as honor, forgiveness, courage and redemption. ... young people are quite able to deal with complex thought, as long as the characters and the story appeal to them.

And a lot of Teen/YA books in the last decade have done just that. Which is why I sometimes say that young adult books are often more adult than "adult" books. This is also why I read some teen books. They are dealing with interesting and important issues. And the writing is often quite complex and literarily interesting, without being ponderous the way "literary" works sometimes are.

 

[KatG]

So, the reason I don't exactly get it is pretty much just because publishers in my country do it differently?

They have the same YA market, which was started in the late 1960's. And cross-marketing occurs in the U.S. too, such as with the Weber book.

The confusion is A) people confuse what might appeal to teens with what is sold specifically to them and their schools; B) because a novel may be sold first as an adult and then later also as a YA book or vice versa, as both adult and YA, as adult in one country and YA in another, etc., and because people believe there must be something fundamentally in the books that differentiates YA from adult rather than things like publishers using one market or another, they try to center in on YA as a style which is a hopeless task; and C) people like to be the ones who get to decree how things are sorted and come up with all sorts of interesting systems that usually ignore the publishing business and large amounts of data that doesn't fit the systems.

This is parallel to the confusion of category markets and general fiction, with many people convinced that the category shelves in a bookstore mean something more than expansion marketing channels, while totally ignoring how publishers work. (It actually kind of relates somewhat to my and Fung Koo's dead horse beating in the other thread.)

In the case of YA, it's understandable confusion. But as writers, you will be making choices about what publishers to approach if you're approaching publishers. (And Laer's sales figures were from publishers, not indies.) And part of that choice, if you have a teen protagonist, will be whether you're going to approach adult publishing imprints, children's/YA ones or both and see which market wants you most. And another choice, should you get a deal with a publisher, will be when selling foreign rights to other countries, are you going to their children's/YA publishers, adult publishers or both. So understanding that YA is a market in case publishing folk suggest going into that market may be important. You have a big say in whether it will be in the YA market or not and what you will do promotionally for that YA market if it is.

That the YA market is profitable, that a good percentage of the bestsellers and mid-listers are doing well in YA is clearly evident. But it doesn't really tell you much about the adult fiction market. There are very clear reasons for the growth of the YA market over the last fifteen years, and again, it has little to do with the adult fiction market.

 

[Loerwyn]

Well, thanks for trying to explain, Kat.

I think my brain just melted out of my ears.

 

[KatG]

Well, thanks for trying to explain, Kat.

I think my brain just melted out of my ears.

It's my superpower.

 

[Laer Carroll]

... I think my brain just melted ....

It's not your fault if you are confused. It's the SITUATION's. It's complex and confusing. For instance, until Kat explained it, I didn't realize consciously that publishers in different countries might classify a book Adult and in others Teen.

Luckily we have Kat to help us be unconfused - or LESS confused . Or possibly MORE confused as the complexity of the reality more fully impresses itself upon us!

 

[Loerwyn]

We're all confused, yippee!

 

[KatG]

It's not your fault if you are confused. It's the SITUATION's. It's complex and confusing. For instance, until Kat explained it, I didn't realize consciously that publishers in different countries might classify a book Adult and in others Teen.

Luckily we have Kat to help us be unconfused - or LESS confused . Or possibly MORE confused as the complexity of the reality more fully impresses itself upon us!

Again, they aren't classifying the book as adult or teen. They're selling it in a market that targets as the first wave adults or teens. In the same way, publishers selling fantasy or science fiction novels in general fiction or the category SFF market are not classifying them as a type of fantasy or science fiction by a book being in either market. All the SFF titles can be sold in either market. This is why identifying distinctions based on the markets rather than the books themselves are inaccurate and meaningless. There is no literary versus genre or commercial. There is no such thing as non-fantasy fantasy, etc. The markets do not control theme and approach and so tell you nothing about those.

 

[Laer Carroll]

[Publishers] aren't CLASSIFYING the book as adult or teen. They're SELLING it in a market that targets as the first wave adults or teens.

Perhaps I'm unusually dense this morning, or your usually clear writing is a bit foggy. At first glance the distinction between CLASSIFYING and SELLING seems arcane and non-functional.

I go into a bookstore. I see a line of shelves labeled TEEN. Is that not "classifying"? Is the intent of the store not "selling" those books? Aren't the two acts the same?

My problem is (marginally!) more practical. Soon I'll be uploading THE SUPER OLYMPIAN to Amazon. Do I put in the category (Amazon's term) Teen? Under Teen Amazon has you subcategorize it as Fantasy or Science Fiction.

Or do I put it in SF and Fantasy, subcategory SF, sub-subcategory Alternate History? Or SFF, subcat Fantasy, sub-subcat Alternate History? WHICH IS THE EXACT SAME LIST!

OK, now Barnes & Noble Online has a different way of categorizing books. And publishers and bookstores yet others, though with lots of overlap. My problem at this moment is Amazon.

Maybe the situation at Amazon illustrates that the classifying/selling distinction is a real one.

The Hunger Games series is clearly dystopian perhaps post-apocalyptic SF. Yet Amazon puts it in both the SF and the Fantasy lists.

The Twilight series is clearly fantasy. Yet Amazon puts it in both the SF and the Fantasy lists!

So Amazon is selling it however it can. Hell, maybe they also put Twilight in the Mystery and History and Golfing lists! I know they put it in the Love and Romance list. Though not (through some amazing ineptness?) in Paranormal Romance - which I thought would be a more natural choice than Love and Romance.

Oh, it was so simple when I just had to give birth to a book. Now I have the raise the damned thing all the way through college!

 

[KatG]

Perhaps I'm unusually dense this morning, or your usually clear writing is a bit foggy. At first glance the distinction between CLASSIFYING and SELLING seems arcane and non-functional.

I go into a bookstore. I see a line of shelves labeled TEEN. Is that not "classifying"? Is the intent of the store not "selling" those books? Aren't the two acts the same?

My problem is (marginally!) more practical. Soon I'll be uploading THE SUPER OLYMPIAN to Amazon. Do I put in the category (Amazon's term) Teen? Under Teen Amazon has you subcategorize it as Fantasy or Science Fiction.

Or do I put it in SF and Fantasy, subcategory SF, sub-subcategory Alternate History? Or SFF, subcat Fantasy, sub-subcat Alternate History? WHICH IS THE EXACT SAME LIST!

OK, now Barnes & Noble Online has a different way of categorizing books. And publishers and bookstores yet others, though with lots of overlap. My problem at this moment is Amazon.

Maybe the situation at Amazon illustrates that the classifying/selling distinction is a real one.

The Hunger Games series is clearly dystopian perhaps post-apocalyptic SF. Yet Amazon puts it in both the SF and the Fantasy lists.

The Twilight series is clearly fantasy. Yet Amazon puts it in both the SF and the Fantasy lists!

So Amazon is selling it however it can. Hell, maybe they also put Twilight in the Mystery and History and Golfing lists! I know they put it in the Love and Romance list. Though not (through some amazing ineptness?) in Paranormal Romance - which I thought would be a more natural choice than Love and Romance.

Oh, it was so simple when I just had to give birth to a book. Now I have the raise the damned thing all the way through college!

Now you're getting it!

The reason I jumped on the word classifying is that classifying can indeed mean organizing stuff into groups by tabs which would be what they are doing in markets, but people tend to use the word classifying in regards to fiction as identifying the nature of what it is, related to ideas of the essence and themes of all science fiction stories, for instance. And as you see with Amazon, they don't actually do this in the publishing industry.

Amazon makes no distinction between science fiction and fantasy. To them, it's one category and either term will do. The sub-categories that they have available for these things are for the benefit of people who want to label them more narrowly, but as far as Amazon is concerned, it's one big pot. For Amazon, fiction is in the following categories and even those are not set: Children's Books; Teens; Gay & Lesbian (includes non-fiction; ) Literature & Fiction (no distinction; ) Mystery, Thriller & Suspense (no distinction; ) Romance; Science Fiction & Fantasy (no distinction and includes most horror.) Those are the Book Categories to the left.

As we've mentioned before, how much marketing are you aiming at the teen audience? Are they the main audience you wish to reach with this series? Is all the series meant to have main characters who are teens or who look like teens (immortals, gods, vampires, etc.) and be mostly for teen readers, or only some of the books? If it's all, then it would make sense to put them all in Young Adult. If it's some, then you have the option of splitting some of the books into teen and some into adult, or having all of them in adult and going mainly for adult readers while doing some marketing efforts to teens. If Amazon will let you, you could conceivably label them both teen and adult.

From what you've told me about the series, the people with powers who live through history are able to do so because they have alien DNA. That to me is science fiction. But if you want to list it as Fantasy, Amazon is not going to care. They don't care if you put it in Fiction either or Mystery, Suspense & Thriller or Romance. With the indie publishing, they just want bodies essentially.

So the question is what do you want. There are segments of fantasy fans who will not read science fiction. There are segments of science fiction who will not read anything fantasy or certain types of science fiction. But they may not know which you are -- as you noted the Alt History list is the same list -- and many probably won't care. In any type of selling list Amazon does, there will be on actual distinction between fantasy and science fiction titles or fantasy and science fiction teen titles. There probably often isn't any distinction between teen titles and adult titles.

The easiest thing for you to do is to stick the series into the Alt History category. This doesn't stop you from marketing to teens and you may be able to get it into other lists on Amazon set for teens. But if you really want to concentrate on the young adult market, which is certainly a fertile market, then putting it in Teen is logical and putting a Reading Level of 12 and up on it, if you're allowed and Amazon won't make you pay for it, would be a good idea.

You have to consider how you want to talk about the books outside of Amazon or any other vendor's categories. Are you going to talk about it as a teen series, or as two inter-related series, one teen and one adult? Are you going to talk about it being connected to aliens and going into the future and call it SF or are you going to talk about them as magical beings with powers and immortality and say that you worked some SF settings in?

You can say that the books are a fantasy and SF blend, people do, but you'll get asked which it is more and what it is really intended to be. Kameron Hurley, for instance, wrote a post-apoc, futuristic fantasy novel, God's War, but a lot of people want to see the novel as science fiction and it has some military SF fans. She's okay with that, although she was writing a fantasy story and talks about the book as a fantasy story with science fiction elements. So you have to decide -- how are you going to talk about the book, label the book, answer questions about it, etc. You're not locked into one market, but if you try to be too generic about it so that you're unclear, then you may miss readers who are going to be the most interested in it.

 

[Laer Carroll]

It is becoming clearer that writing a book and publishing it, in ebook or "pbook" format, is not all an author must do if s/he wants people to read it. Only one in a million books is going to explode on readers' consciousness and become an instant best-seller.

Every book must be marketed, perhaps in a large way, perhaps in a small way. To do absolutely ZERO marketing likely ensures it will plop into bookstores and quickly fade away. But how successful the selling effort is will be decided mostly by the book content itself. All marketing can do is lead readers to the water, erh, BOOKSTORE. No clever or well-funded plan can force readers to "drink."

...how much marketing are you aiming at the teen audience? Are they the main audience you wish to reach with this series? Is all the series meant to have main characters who are teens or who look like teens ... and be mostly for teen readers, or only some of the books? If it's all, then it would make sense to put them all in Young Adult.

...if you really want to concentrate on the young adult market, which is certainly a fertile market, then putting it in Teen is logical and putting a Reading Level of 12 and up on it....

I'm not just selling individual books. I'm selling a whole franchise of books: the Shapechanger Tales series.

THE SUPER OLYMPIAN is the only book which starts with a teen protagonist and follows her through a year of high school. But halfway through she graduates from high school.

That summer she goes to the Olympics, competes there, and trashes a group trying to repeat what Muslim terrorists did in our universe in the 1970's. The rest of the book follows her first two or three years as a superhero, her day job being a fashion model.

(Not as unlikely as it might seem at first glance. Shapechangers can be shockingly, stunningly beautiful. And they don't need makeup or Photoshop to cover up blemishes!)

I don't think most teen readers think about life beyond high school. Nor care about it. It's too foggy a future to care about.

So I think it best to fold OLYMPIAN in with my other efforts to sell the Shapechanger Tales (alternate history) sci-fi series.

Thanks much, Kat and others, for helping me make this decision.

 

[Luya Sevrein]

I'm having much the same issue with a series I am writing, where I have a variety of point of view characters, of which 7/10 are teenagers. I'm thinking Young Adult, with a look into the perspectives of the few adult characters, to show how they are both not so different and hugely different. I always look at Harry Potter when thinking about my own, not for the success or anything, just for the way the Adult characters became some of the most inportant and well-loved, because the adults around are actually highly inportant. I never went down for the whole 'Kids save the world because kids are reading the book,' angle, I don't find it overly realistic all the time.

The book spans from my protagonist being 16-18, and graduating in the second-to-last or last book. It also deals with a relaionship with an older person, said person being 22-24. I'd like to tackle this in a proper way, the expected regret, concern, thrill, etc.

For you, I'd go for alt. History too. It's so wide-ranging. You can also stick them into Sci-Fi or just, general, Thriller, surely? The thing about Genres is that they crossover and overlap A LOT. I must admit ignorance to many, many factors when it comes to publishing and marketing. For example, does the store/website chose what genre they sell your book under, do you, or does your publisher? Because I've seen several books catagorized in a range of different genres in different locations.

 

[KatG]

I'm having much the same issue with a series I am writing, where I have a variety of point of view characters, of which 7/10 are teenagers. I'm thinking Young Adult, with a look into the perspectives of the few adult characters, to show how they are both not so different and hugely different. I always look at Harry Potter when thinking about my own, not for the success or anything, just for the way the Adult characters became some of the most inportant and well-loved, because the adults around are actually highly inportant. I never went down for the whole 'Kids save the world because kids are reading the book,' angle, I don't find it overly realistic all the time.

The book spans from my protagonist being 16-18, and graduating in the second-to-last or last book. It also deals with a relaionship with an older person, said person being 22-24. I'd like to tackle this in a proper way, the expected regret, concern, thrill, etc.

For you, I'd go for alt. History too. It's so wide-ranging. You can also stick them into Sci-Fi or just, general, Thriller, surely? The thing about Genres is that they crossover and overlap A LOT. I must admit ignorance to many, many factors when it comes to publishing and marketing. For example, does the store/website chose what genre they sell your book under, do you, or does your publisher? Because I've seen several books catagorized in a range of different genres in different locations.

Mostly, it's the publisher, which markets to the bookstores, but there have been incidents where bookstores have placed books in a different section or multiple sections, usually because they think it will sell best that way, but sometimes out of mistakes or old habits. One of these is a lousy one -- African-American authors often find their books shunted off to the African-American section instead of in general fiction, SFFH or YA. The establishment of an African-American specialty market was to help promote and display fiction and non-fiction from African-American authors, but it has over the last two decades become unnecessary and something of a ghetto. It's especially not necessary and not what we want in SFFH at this point.

But most of these shelvings are not as charged an issue. And most of the shelving is done according to which publisher is supplying the book. So the YA section is primarily supplied by YA publishing lines. The SFFH category sections are primarily supplied by SFFH publishers. So if you are marketing a work to publishers, which publishers you select to go to who might then license it is usually the biggest determinent of where your book will be sold in a store.

For people who are e-self-pubbing it, like Laer, this is not an issue as e-vendors like Amazon do not have book shelves and can put as many labels as you want on a book. So the issue there is what keyword tags do you want to have on your book so that the most likely interested readers can find it easily. That's all that categories like YA and SFF are -- markets created to help interested readers find a wide range of books more easily.

 

[EricaW]

A well written children's or young adult book can definitely appeal to older readers as well. When I was young, books aimed specifically at older children and teens were generally shelved with the children's books (making it embarrassing for a self-conscious teen/young adult to browse them), and so lots of books with younger protagonists were included with the adult genre fiction (think of some of Anne McCafrey's and Mercedes Lackey's books with teen and young adult protagonists). On my most recent trip to B&N, I noticed and entire subsection of the fantasy and SF area devoted to YA SF and F. Some of the books looked interesting to me as a middle aged adult.

But I wouldn't give up on adult fiction just yet. First of all, some children and young adults do read books written for adults. I know I started raiding my parents' book case and the adult section in the local library sometime around age 11 (and yes, some of those books had 'adult' themes ... it was educational. But then, so did books intended for teens back then too. Remember Judy Blume).

And those kids and young adults who are reading YA stuff now will grow up and (hopefully) continue to read and enjoy a wider variety of offerings.