YA or not to YA

[Brian G Turner]

I do think it's ridiculous to push any writer to write in any particular way, but I think it's also important to understand the reasons for these categories because like or not, this could decide a lot of things in terms of how well your book gets exposed and sold

Another point I meant to raise is that we've seen a number of discussions here about what actually constitutes science fiction - with Star Wars routinely condemned as fantasy rather than SF. My perception is that the regular SF readers want to see some form of focus on the technology or science involved, no matter how speculative, and when I think of most of the big names in SF this is something they aim to deliver.

So if someone is writing in a SF setting, but they are not focusing on the tech and science, IMO they are not going to go down well with those same SF readers. It may be argued they are a minority, but with SF readership being relatively small in the traditional market, I'm not so sure. And while writers such as Bujold have been highlighted as an exception, I would treat her as an exception and not the norm.

In which case, if the setting is science fiction, but the focus is on characters, then IMO it's better to market such work at a wider market - such as YA, where this appears common - as opposed to the small adult science fiction market.

The Hunger Games IMO is a classic novel, but I don't think many regular science fiction readers would accept it as a science fiction novel. Similar for The Fifth Wave trilogy, Divergent trilogy, or the Red Rising series - all of which have SF settings, but all the focus is on character rather than the tech or science involved, and have been hugely success in the YA market.

(Similar arguments could be made as to why 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale are not marketed as science fiction).

IMO that's the market pointer right there for deciding whether something is better marketed to SF or Y - especially when writing about young characters coming of age in a science fiction setting.

[Anyway, I've made my points so I'll shut up now. ]

 

[EJDeBrun]

Another point I meant to raise is that we've seen a number of discussions here about what actually constitutes science fiction - with Star Wars routinely condemned as fantasy rather than SF. My perception is that the regular SF readers want to see some form of focus on the technology or science involved, no matter how speculative, and when I think of most of the big names in SF this is something they aim to deliver.

So if someone is writing in a SF setting, but they are not focusing on the tech and science, IMO they are not going to go down well with those same SF readers. It may be argued they are a minority, but with SF readership being relatively small in the traditional market, I'm not so sure. And while writers such as Bujold have been highlighted as an exception, I would treat her as an exception and not the norm.

In which case, if the setting is science fiction, but the focus is on characters, then IMO it's better to market such work at a wider market - such as YA, where this appears common - as opposed to the small adult science fiction market.

The Hunger Games IMO is a classic novel, but I don't think many regular science fiction readers would accept it as a science fiction novel. Similar for The Fifth Wave trilogy, Divergent trilogy, or the Red Rising series - all of which have SF settings, but all the focus is on character rather than the tech or science involved, and have been hugely success in the YA market.

(Similar arguments could be made as to why 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale are not marketed as science fiction).

IMO that's the market pointer right there for deciding whether something is better marketed to SF or Y - especially when writing about young characters coming of age in a science fiction setting.

[Anyway, I've made my points so I'll shut up now. ]

I don't disagree with this POV because any type of categorization is arbitrary, but I'd also say it's not good to pigeon hole. I've seen it time and time again, when anyone tries to make something "exclusive to these strict parameters" it tends to backfire and reduce exposure or sales.

I think what I'm trying to say is that broadening a category will usually help it. The more you loosen the definition, the wider the readership pool you can pull from because people don't make all their decisions based on rules. I know there are some people who are HARD SCI FI ONLY. But then you look at something like the Martian, which is wildly successful and hard sci but it's character driven. As such, it pulled in A TON more readers than might not have otherwise picked it up. And they liked it so what does that do? It creates a new market for similar books. Or it piques curiosity so they'll try something similar cuz they want something like that and that keeps going and next thing you know they're reading all sorts of stuff they never would have considered and that can only be good for ALL the writers.

If we want to talk about Star Wars: if Stars Wars hadn't been categorized as SciFi then SF movies would never have gotten popularized. The results would have been detrimental.

The categories are used to help publishers and readers make decisions. Yes, sometimes they are misguided and yes sometimes they're not as strict as people want, but they are broad for a good reason: to increase sales. Limiting a category never leads to more sales so that's a big part of the reason you see the trends you do.

But as far as specifics, that's where niche marketing comes in and Netflix is proving that it's very successful. So is amazon, but there are growing pains and we'll see how that all goes. A lot of the current market issues come from the way filtering and categorization is happening so this is an ongoing issue.