Preppy shoes and an email from KLo that continues our discussion from yesterday, sort of: Basically, what I write sort of borders somewhere between YA and adult fiction. Is there any hard and fast answer for where exactly that line is? There’s an easy answer, but there are exceptions. For […]
age ranges
20 posts
A fantastical shoe1 for Christine, who writes with a doozy: We have written and published (through a small, indie publisher) a MG fantasy book. When we wrote it, we though it was YA, but now I understand there is a significant difference between the two. Our protagonist is a 12-yr-old […]
Four shoes for Kathy, who emails, "I'm almost ready to begin sending out my first MG novel. I've got four more drafted using the same characters as they age over the years. I don't hear other characters talking to me, so these are the ones I've worked with. Is this going to be a problem with an agent or a career?"
Curious about the breakdown in queries I receive? I hope so, otherwise I've wasted a huge amount of time tracking these things by the numbers! Nathan Bransford shared some of his recent stats the other day, and inspired me to do the same. So, at the time I read Nathan's post, I had 157 unread emails in my query folder. A few of them turned out to be misdirected, or better sent to other folders to deal with, which left me with 151 queries.
Some comfy but trendy sneaks for Beth, who writes, "After much revision, I've got what I can only classify as a "tween" novel--a bit above MG, a bit below YA. How should I query this?"
I actually wore almost these exact shoes in high school with my uniform, but these go out today to Beth, who writes, "Could you tell us about some of the distinctions between YA and MG? Would me labeling a manuscript as YA be a death knoll for my query if the agent thinks it's better off as MG?"
Spent another day running around the city to meetings with editors, authors, and scouts, and while I had to replace the battery on my phone/mobile email device, my Kindle is standing up like a champ! I am the new champ of subway reading! Granted, I got a head start on my flight into town, but I am tearing through my submissions pile and have found at least four manuscripts out of the 40 or so partials I requested where I'd like to see the full novel. And they're not all what I might expect.
News from out of the UK that you may have heard already, but it's worth repeating. A long distinguished list of children's authors including Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson, Terry Pratchett and many more have founded the site No To Age Banding to protest publishers' decisions to start labeling their children's books with age ranges. There's been loads of coverage, and I encourage you to check out No To Age Banding and read for yourself their reasons for rebelling against the idea.
There's a pretty interesting blog over on Publishers Weekly about SciFi and Fantasy authors being marketed as teen fiction, and vice versa. The blogger makes a pretty good point that in this regard, buying books on the internet has a clear advantage, as you can search for "YA fiction," or "SciFi", or the author's name, and find everything they write, not just what's shelved in one spot in a bricks and mortar bookstore.