Sci-fi for the teenage market

[RcGrant]

Trying to work out which category my novel(s) fall into gives me a headache. My protagonist is 15, but other main characters range from 9 - 80+.

I personally consider it something adults or children could read (is this becoming a trend, with the likes of His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, and Eragon?), so I figure send it to any agent that accepts adult or children's fantasy.

[John Jarrold]

All you can do is try various agents, and they will make their minds up how they see it. Crossover does happen, but there is still demarcation with a fair amount of the adult and children's fantasy market. Some books first published as adult fantasy are now bleeding into YA - Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan have YA editions from their UK publisher Orbit/Atom, for instance. I think you'd definitely call George R R Martin and China Mieville mostly adult, though, so there will always be those differences, and it will depend upon each individual book

[RcGrant]

Thank you for the advice, John. When the time comes I'll send it to those I consider applicable, and let them take it from there.

[indigotwilight]

Originally Posted by TheEndIsNigh

I know what you mean. Since joining this hell hole of a forum I'm commited to finding a cure for world hunger, peace and poverty. The latter is currently on hold as I have to fill my days keeping droves of monkeys happy while I use them to find the secret of eternal life.

The bannana skins will soon be a serious problem and do you know anyone that recycles typewritter ribbons in industrial quantities.

However if I can crack the eternal life I should be able to funnel some of the profits into the poverty program. God only knows when I'm going to get the time to finish the book.

By the way not liking apples dosn't mean you don't like cider. Personally not too keen on chomping on hops but the odd lake of beer has been known to pass my lips.

lol. I can't think of any typewriter ribbon recyclers off hand - but I'll keep my eyes (ahem) peeled.
Maytal, a small girl who lives on the edge of the Sea of Clouds, has suggested using the banana skins to polish leather - particularly shoes. She says you can also extract the oil and use it for cooking. Mind you, she's now trying to insulate her treehouse with them.
And Maytal wonders why her roof collapsed in the last hurricane from the Ocean of Storms!
The sky darkens. One can only wait and see ...

******

Would this be the same lake of beer just over the Rainbow Bridge, and next to the Foaming Sea?


Twi

[Simon Haynes]

Originally Posted by indigotwilight

I'm interested in this too. Is the boundary between "Young Adult" and "Adult" fantasy that well defined? Knowing from personal experience I read material from both genres, and there's often quite a lot of overlap.
YA readers may not necessarily be "young adults" themselves, either. I've also read the likes of George Orwell and Stephen King when I was little...

Sometimes even publishers don't know which market to sell a book to. As an example, my first novel came out in 2005, aimed squarely at the adult market, and yet it's found a big following in high schools. Now the whole series is being recommended to reluctant readers (mainly boys), and whenever I go into a library it's a toss-up whether I'll find the books in Junior or Adult fiction. (Some have half the series in each section.) So far, they've always been shelved in the Adult section in bookstores ... but maybe they're working off a different cheat sheet? There aren't any teen protagonists in the books and they're not written with teen readers in mind, but when I was working on the first I knew my (then) ten-year-old was hanging out to read it the minute it was ready, so I was forced to work within certain constraints. Sex, swearing and violence are the three mainstays of humour, so writing a funny novel without any of them presented a unique challenge, I can tell you.