YA or Adult, best market for SF?

[JDP]

At least half of the main characters in Martin's Game of Thrones are under sixteen, but it's a straight-out adult novel.

[Theleb K]

I'm with Lin on this, To Kill a Mockingbird also springs to mind...

There is clearly more to it than just the characters' age. Style and content will also be important and it seems to me that marketing plays a significant part too.... The latest HP novel has two covers for example.. .

[scalem X]

At least half of the main characters in Martin's Game of Thrones are under sixteen, but it's a straight-out adult novel.

But with the exception of Rickon (and maybe Bran in the first chapter), most don't really act in a childish way. Martin's view is that one of an adult. If little Rickon is annoying and can't shut up, that's an adult point of view. I don't know any children who like to read from the 'adult that looks down on him/her' point of view.
Isn't the point that if you have to identify with a younger character, that its easier when that character is your age. Same goes for the sex of your main character. But in the end there are no real definitions in anything but science.

[JDP]

Originally Posted by scalem X

But with the exception of Rickon (and maybe Bran in the first chapter), most don't really act in a childish way. Martin's view is that one of an adult.

That was exactly my point -- perhaps I should have clarified! I was agreeing with the previous post:

Originally Posted by lin robinson

Dune, for instance, is not a YA book, is it? Nor is "A Separate Peace", nor "Dead Poet's Society" nor "Pornografia". And so many others. They are mainstream adult books featuring young characters.

That just because a novel features younger protagonists, it's not necessarily YA (and vice versa). I'd agree with you that it's easier to identify with a character if they share similarities with oneself, but it's certainly not a rule that the age of the protagonist == the age of the readership.

[Meadowhawk]

I stand corrected. I was presumptive to suggest that just because 98.79% of the books shelved in the respective genre areas at your local bookstore are age-centric, that this should be used as a guideline

By the way, 78% of the statistics quoted on the internet are made up.

[lin robinson]

According to wikipedia, that's not true.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Hi, Dan. It's good to see you here.

Since you actually are a publisher interested in works that are accessible and appropriate to YA readers, maybe you can give everyone here a general idea of what you're looking for.

[Meadowhawk]

In this case, Teresa, I probably should have asked Theleb for clarification. He stated that his protagonist is an adolescent. To me that says 10-12 yrs old. This would be on the low end age limit of YA, some houses would classify it mid-grade in the states (younger than YA, ie. chapter books). Hence my over-simplification. Now if his protagonist is in fact 18 yrs old and discovering love, adventure, death and all the color of life in his tome--then that is another discussion altogether.

What does Meadowhawk like? You used some of my own words on me. YA accessible. We like intelligent, wonderful tales that are written with an adult reader in mind--but are clean enough for teens to read and fall in love with. The kinds of novels I don't mind my own teenagers reading.

[ctg]

Dune, for instance, is not a YA book, is it? Nor is "A Separate Peace", nor "Dead Poet's Society" nor "Pornografia". And so many others. They are mainstream adult books featuring young characters.

It would also fail to follow that teenagers are only interested in reading about people there own age.

You are absolutely right about this, the young adults are not just interested about books written by using characters in their age-group. Just look at the R.A. Salvatore-Dark Elf (Drow) series, and you see that the protagonist is very old elf, who has world of troubles hanging from his shoulders.

J.K Rowlings had the same thing, although she wrote Potter to be an adolescent with an arch-mage like powers, but thing is, that the series went very well to all the age-groups. I wouldn't forget Ursula Le Guin, who wrote 'that it is more about the story being plausible, then the characters age being just "right".' More so, if you take grand master Tolkien work, which drops well to the all ages but more so the the young adult work. You cannot say that the halfling protagonists are really adolescents, can you?

Whatever you do Lin, you as a writer has to write a plausible story and believe in it. More you believe, better it will become! However, note that in the science-fiction genre you have be more 'illustrative' then in the normal fiction. It is because of the settings, that you are writing in.

I have been making SFF stories/adventures since 89, and what I have learned is that, more plausible I make the story for the audience, easier it is for them get sucked into it. I think the very best example in the young adult SFF genre, is the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', because in same time as it tells the story of 'one coming to an age', it takes readers/watchers to a very plausible and somewhat silly world.

[ctg]

Lin, I think I understand what do you mean with the ADULT and YOUNG ADULT market in content-wise. 'Sex in the space' might sell very well to certain audiences, to exaggerate this point, there is a profitable market for 'homoerotic Spock and Kirk' science-fiction, and it certainly isn't mainstream science-fiction. (Note that the story still has to be plausible or it will not work and you won't get sales!)

If you take a step downm and think Hunter S. Thompson work and especially his most famous novella (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). You can almost immediately see that the 'science-part' works extremely well wit the fiction. On top of everything, the story is very plausible, because it is based on the actual research.

[Theleb K]

[Now if his protagonist is in fact 18 yrs old and discovering love, adventure, death and all the color of life in his tome--then that is another discussion altogether.

My hero and heroine are both around fifteen and discovering love, adventure, an implacable enemy brooding beyond the stars etc.. There is nothing gratuitous in the content that might make it unsuitable for YA but the themes are quite complex so I hope that it would appeal to at least some adults. Its also over 112K words which may be a bit long for some younger readers? (although I read Dune and LOTR for the first time at around the age of nine...)

Alot of "grey area" here methinks... Thanks all for your thoughts!

[scalem X]

Its also over 112K words which may be a bit long for some younger readers? (although I read Dune and LOTR for the first time at around the age of nine...)

Yeah, but I guess maybe you can make it a series if it's too long for YA. I don't consider LOTR and Dune to be YA novels. I don't think you can compare the YA who reads adult novels (like Dune/Lotr) to be your standard audience if you write for YA.

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think that some of us here are failing to make the distinction between what some young adults will read some of the time and books whose primary appeal is to younger readers. A publisher is going to try and market a book in such a way that it will reach the largest number of potential readers. Just at the moment, when the YA market is relatively hot, some older books that were originally meant for adult readers are being repackaged as YA. Sometimes they are divided into more volumes to make them shorter, and therefore more appealing to the majority of young readers (Harry Potter aside, and what all of us remember reading as teenagers aside), the vast majority of younger readers are drawn toward shorter books.

But here is the point: a book that has a good chance to sell well to the adult market is going to be postioned as an adult book -- because that market is so much bigger. It's only when a book appears to have its best chance if it is aimed at young teens -- or a book that has already had it's day as a book for adults and may enjoy a new life as a YA book -- that it will be sold as YA.

This is the economic reality, and what you or I read at nine years old is really quite beside the point, because there weren't then and aren't now enough nine year olds making a steady diet of books with adult themes to inspire publishers to fill the YA section with books that have a better chance of making lots of money if marketed to adults.

There is also a distinction between what kids will read and what kids do read -- which is often simply what is available to them -- most of the time. Taking myself as an example, I read plenty of adult books when they were handy and when they looked appealing, but my steady diet of books (being a child who was always reading something) was made up of books that were easy to come by: the books in the school library, the books I could afford to buy (kids' series books like Nancy Drew, $1 in hardcover), books in the class library, books that parents and aunts and uncles bought for me, the books on my friends' bookshelves, the books I could buy (cheap) through the school when the Scholastic newsletter came round. As for my friends, these were the only books they read, and sometimes it was a task for them to get through those.

[Meadowhawk]

You made several good points, Teresa. I won't quote them to emphasize the points, because that would just be redundant.

[Havlen]

I have a book I think might work as a YA or Adult book. But, really, the whole YA thing is beyond me. I'm not sure when it started, but it wasn't around when I was a young adult. Back then it was just childrens or adult.