Not sure exactly how I feel about this, so I’m opening it up to comments in an attempt to get a dialogue going, and maybe I’ll be able to sort out my own thoughts. Basically, I saw this piece on MediaBistro yesterday which reads as a pretty rough indictment of YA (the author Caitlin Flanagan proclaims “I hate Y.A. novels; they bore me.”), but at the same time, the full-length piece in the Atlantic from which the MediaBistro extract is pulled is a lush paean to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.
So I came across the following article in my Google Reader, from the Editors of the Children’s Book Insider (where a special Ask Daphne! column appears quarterly!). Anyway, the article asks “Do You Need a Literary Agent?” And it raises a number of good points, as well as making a few statements I disagree with, so I thought I’d go over a few of those.
There’s another brohaha brewing on the interwebs about Margo Rabb’s essay in The New York Times about her book being labeled as YA, and the assumed stigma that comes along with it, quoting a number of writers of both adult and children’s books. Justine Larbalestier wrote about the “stigma”, disagreeing with many of the points Rabb raised. I think it’s telling that she picked authors like James Patterson to quote, which seems an easy agreement to her point, especially since the Times has written before about Patterson’s horror at the sales of his books when they were shelved only in the teen section.
But Cory Doctorow (yes, him again) posits an interesting idea on publishing, and the value of giving stuff away for free.
Normally, it just isn’t “done” for an author to complain loudly and publicly about a review. HOWEVER, if said review is about other writers’ books? And if the reviewer goes so far to say that “I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers.” Well, then authors are inclined to get mad, and say so in public ((or on the blogosphere, which is pretty much the same thing).
