#like most dystopians ya books are things that have happened to a poc community that a white person is after of happening to them

[vicontheinternet]

I’ve come to notice that we can’t have a show/movie that doesn’t center whiteness in some way mainstream or not because white ppl can’t picture themselves in characters that aren’t white while that’s all we had to do

[ginnyzero]

Publishing vs. Marketing Category

Okay, so book and writing community on twitter tends to have these flare ups of convos about books being shelved wrong and authors pointing out reasons such as their gender, or race, or even the content of their books being say, fantasy for them being placed on the wrong shelves in libraries and bookstores. Now, there is a human bias element to this. There are librarians and book buyers for stores who do see a female fantasy author and assume they must be YA no matter the content. Plus, everyone and their mother tagging things incorrectly on twitter or shelving badly on Goodreads.

Let’s dive into the INDUSTRY side of this though. The industry has two different and at times clashing categorizations of books, there are the publishing categories and there are the marketing categories. And while some, specifically some age targets and genres the marketing and the publishing categories will align, there are others that the age target and marketing target may be under the same “name” technically and then their aims completely clash.

Yes, I’m mostly talking about YA. (Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance can fall in here too.)

So, the publishing category of Young Adult, is pretty much what you’d expect. Young Adult should have protagonists of the age groups of 12 to 18, and most likely dealing with “coming of age” themes and “finding their place in the world” and quite possibly “being the chosen one.” I personally find theme categorization for age groups to be really limiting. But I read Brian Jacques from third grade on... so. .. yay fighting mice. (And I was into Star Wars at grade 7, like Timothy Zahn Star Wars. I am not the typical reader.) It’s just something to be aware of if you are querying agents because agents deal with publishing categories and not marketing categories. (And agents have biases too. Like, come on, Unicorns should not be limited to MG. How dull. Agents though will look for anything to clear stuff out of their slush pile, I guess.)

Young Adult publishing category books range between 40K words on the low end and 80K words on the high end. I’d aim for 50K words depending on age group. Remember, YA readers especially read upwards in age groups. So you’re 12 year old is going to be reading about 15 year olds and your later YA readers will have aged out into the adult category of books (supposedly. This is where MARKETING categories become a thing. More in a second.)

New Adult is not a thing. Until it gets a spot in bookstores. It is officially not a thing. Querying New Adult will get you nowhere. Don’t bother.

So, you’ve written your MS and it hits what you think are all the Adult markers, from age of the protag, to theme, to having ‘adult’ content such as sex, drugs, and violence. (Violence is so weird b/c we’ve normalized violence while keeping sex taboo. So, if your book has sex, it might be considered Adult, more than if your book has violence. Even then... marketing categories.) You’ve queried it as adult. You’ve got it through an editor and it’s been pitched to a publisher and they’ve picked it up and your marketing materials come out. And they, meaning the cover, and the blurb, all read Young Adult in their style and tone.

And this may be confusing because you wrote an adult book, why are they marketing it to YA? Like A Crown of Thorns and Roses? (Fae court romance is... err, dead on arrival btw.)

It’s because YA is also a marketing category which no longer equals the age group category. And there are some very popular book series you can thank for this, Twilight, Hunger Games, Vampire Academy, and Divergent are among them. These books were not only popular among teens. They were popular among their mothers. So, publishing quickly pivoted from YA being this age group category with certain things, to a marketing strategy to try and keep the attention of the moms of the teenagers with sex, and love triangles, and I dunno, forbidden romance. By the time ACOTAR came out, publishing decided maybe they should try for this college age, New Adult category so they could market these “sexy fantasy” type books to older readers and get the sex out of YA. So, they used ACOTAR to try and make New Adult happen as a marketing category for book buyers. It didn’t work. Because no one, like with Harry Potter, wants to split a book series across 2 sections. (And lo and behold Young Adult was kind of born because they didn’t want to keep the later HP books in the children’s section.)

And because it didn’t work, YA is now a mess. Because they still don’t want to give up those sweet, sweet, mommy dollars.

There is one very large aspect of publishing the author has no control over. Their marketing. Especially, their covert marketing done by the publisher. Covert marketing is the type of marketing indies salivate over, b/c covert marketing is basically the publishing house deciding where on the bestseller list this book is going to be, how much advertising it gets, does it get a fancy book launch, what is the advance of the author, when is it going to be published and will it have competitors in its genre that same month, who among the reviewers gets to read it, the style of the book cover, and more importantly, what, where, and how much book shelf space it gets in stores. Is the cover turned out? Is it at the front of the store? Does it get it’s own display? Or is it in the “new releases display?” Which book buyer at the chains gets to see it. How do Librarians get a hold of it and which ones? Because the buyer of say, romance, is not the buyer of young adult. The Adult scifi/fantasy book buyer is going to be different than say, mysteries. Same for librarians! There are more than one librarian in your system choosing your books! It is very important who your book gets to be put in front of, what they think of it to how it is going to be received and pushed on bookshelves. There was a very infamous romance buyer of a major chain store who refused to buy POC romances because she thought they didn’t sell.

If your book chain buyer, refuses to buy fantasy books or scifi books by female authors b/c they think they won’t SELL. Then, the publisher feels like in order to get your book to sell, they have to put it into a marketing category where it will sell, Young Adult. Because what do most of those “Young Adult” books have in common, women writers. (Urban Fantasy was almost an exception to the rule on SFF gendered authors. Then... UF became dead on arrival as they thought the market was glutted and yeah. Good luck on getting an UF published, you’d be better off writing paranormal romance. Same type of setting, different genre rules.) It’s not about the content of your book, or the age of your protag, or the theme of your book at that point, it is “What will make this book sell.” Publishing is an industry where profit is not a dirty word. Their job is to make your book sell and if they think it will sell better as YA, they will pitch it as YA.

Even if the book is written for, uses language appropriate for, and has content really intended for adults.

Be aware that Young Adult scifi is a very, very rare buyers market. For some reason, publishers don’t think they can market it? Dystopian yes. Scifi... no. So, if your YA is scifi, like either rewrite for adult or keep your eye open for that very rare time they’re willing to TRY and publishing YA scifi. Or, publish indie. (Dystopian is also I think DOA.)

Is this confusing? Absolutely! Because there are plenty of readers out there who are in the adult category, who don’t keep up with publishing trends, and don’t realize if they want vibrant fantasy books, they may have to look in the YA section of their bookstore. They’re adults. They want vibrant fantasy adult books. And I say fantasy because you see this happening MOSTLY with fantasy. It happens with other genres too, but it is a huge problem in fantasy due to, well, the combination of publishing trends (white, older, male) and the human bias. So, many times, if you want that cool marketed as adult fantasy book not written by a white older male, you are going to have to order it through the ‘zon because you aren’t going to find it most likely on your bookstore shelves. (Science Fiction is another kettle of fish. Outside of some very established authors, it’s not really publishing. It’s a very small category outside of indie. Like, Military SF was a thing for a bit in indie! Just... yeah. Sigh.)

Conclusion: Publishing category does not always equal marketing category. Even if the publishing category and marketing category are named the same thing. And it’s probably not going to change until something major happens that the big four are FORCED to change their current publishing and marketing methods. (Yeah, big FOUR now. Scary.) It’s a complicated system with the author having the most at stake and the least amount of control (and often the least amount of pay outside of agents.) I mean, when Disney of all corporations, doesn’t want to pay Alan Dean Foster his legal royalties for a book they acquired when they got Star Wars, there is a PROBLEM in the system.

Just be aware if you are going into this publishing game. I cover this and more in my FREE PDF “I Finished a Book, Now What? A Tongue in Cheek Guide to What Happens Next.”  Everything from editing types to querying to social media for authors.

It’s available for download on my website. https://ginny0.wordpress.com/books/

[meggannn]

hello do u have any fantasy/scifi/dystopian books to recommend?? i love ur taste in books

UHHHH i’ve been reblogging posts about most of what i’m reading lately so none of this will probably come as a surprise, but off the top of my head......

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin made me cry and was easily the best book I’ve read so far this year. an ambassador from Earth (for some reason this is a cisgender guy) goes to planet full of genderless aliens to invite them to join a intergalactic league of worlds. there are politics, and of course some gender exploration (not perfect but still interesting), but mostly it’s an exploration of the human condition, like most of Grandma Ursula’s books. very good, also heartbreaking, with an enemies/rivals-to-lovers relationship in there, sort of. the first time I’ve liked an enemies/rivals-to-lovers anything tbh.

I just finished Graceling by Kristin Cashore and ngl it was dumb as shit at times but still kinda fun lol cause it had Prince Po who fulfills a lot of my favorite character tropes. it’s a YA fantasy/adventure/romance where people with heterochromia have “Graces” which are like superhuman abilities unique to the person. the main character has the grace of “killing” and for this reason has been used as a weapon all her life by her uncle the king. I’m reading the sequel right now which I think is a lot better so far and expands the world and character depth. there are a lot of POC, the protagonists are (mostly) WOC, and there’s some gender commentary about being a woman with power that isn’t really mind-blowing, tbh I found it kind of trite in the first book, but so far in the sequel I think it’s handled a bit more maturely. I hear the third book gets gud.

if you’re in an Avatar: The Last Airbender mood, I was surprised to enjoy The Rise of Kyoshi by FC Yee and I hear the sequel is as good or even better. it didn’t blow my mind—some things were predictable but others did surprise me at times. and I enjoy Kyoshi struggling her wants with her identity as an Avatar, a pursuer of justice, and also a killer.

the MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam) by Margaret Atwood is probably one of my favorite dystopian books, or “speculative fiction” as she calls it. it’s near-future world where most people either live in corporate compounds provided to them by the companies they work for, or in poverty in half-flooded cities. most of the world is in need of resources. the books follow two parallel stories, one of what happens after a worldwide extinction event wipes out humanity, and the second of how society gets to that point. predictably, it’s a dark and unpleasant read. despite my enjoying it, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this series, it’s super weird on race (like most Atwood things I’ve read) and I didn’t like the last book at all, but I thought the first two were pretty good and enjoyable in a sick way, if you think you can stomach a story of where we might be in 20-30 years wrt climate change, capitalism, genetic modification, and scientific freedom gone rogue. it’s definitely a hard series to read. I feel like I need to give a disclaimer for why I like this one so SLIGHT SPOILERS: personally, I think of Oryx and Crake as like a typical “male” narrative of the apocalypse, where a regular guy who was there to witness the events of the End of Times ends up alone at the end and trying to rough it out by foraging a ruined land for supplies and living day by day, and I think of The Year of the Flood as a more typically “female” perspective, where the apocalypse just sort of happens to a regular woman and her community. then she—eventually they—have to find ways to deal with it and come together to think of surviving the future, not just each day. it’s not to say that one way is better than the other, but I think both perspectives combined make for a fuller view and YOTF really had a sort of light at the end of the tunnel that I found myself hoping for after reading OAC. (meanwhile, the last book.... I ignore it.)

the Murderbot series by Martha Wells is a delight and really funny. in the far-future where humans are exploring the galaxy, a security robot develops feelings and takes on bodyguard and mercenary work as it discovers how to be a person. I’m still not done (and the series is ongoing) but this is a pretty sweet, lighthearted read of a scifi future in which corporations are still awful and technology is still misused, but not everything is terrible and friends can still be made and robots have feelings for their charges.

looking back it is embarrassing how few books by WOC I have read this year, I am trying to rectify that. but also I’m glad in a way that I’m reading at all because this is the first year in a long time i have actually, like, read stuff that isn’t fanfic or comics? and that is entirely because this year I am working in a job that isn’t working me to the bone and have time to read at the end of the day, unlike the previous 4 years, so this list is not as long as I’d like it to be, but so far, the sixteen books I’ve read this year are a lot better than the total of one book I read in 2019, which was a Deadpool novel, so.

feel free to add me on goodreads btw