Here’s an article that is interesting and is worth reading for anyone trying to target a specific audience for their writing.  It came out a couple of weeks ago in the New York Times:   Essay – I’m Y.A., and I’m O.K. – NYTimes.com

The gist of the story is that the author, Margo Rabb, had written a novel intended for the adult market and it was sold to Random House but to their Children’s Books division as a Young Adult novel.  Not exactly what she had in mind.  I think you ought to read the article in full.  It illustrates how little control the new writer (and maybe not so new writer) has over her work.

It explains how murky the distinction between adult fiction and young adult fiction really is. This is a  ”porous border” and the people who control what crosses over from the adult to the young adult are more often than not the marketing division of a company. 

“These days, what makes a book Y.A. is not so much what makes it as who makes it — and the ‘who’ is the marketing department.”  –Michael Cart, columnist for Booklist

But can we really blame them?  The publisher is in business to make money for both his company and the writer. If a publisher contracts for a book and places it in another genre, we may be disappointed because we wanted to break into the adult fiction genre and the book was placed in young adult, for instance, but perhaps we need to reconsider our disappointment. 

I think a new writer, especially, is at the mercy of nearly everyone in the publishing business.  If our writing is good enough to be picked up — even if it crosses over into the young adult section – it really is an accomplishment that we were accepted.  We successfully brought a manuscript to its final, finished product AND it was deemed good enough for a publisher to want to buy it.  

I suppose it is possible that one could be “branded” like movie actors sometimes are, playing only one type of character and not being allowed to cross over from “bad guy” to “good guy.”  But I think it probably isn’t as prevalent.  Once established as a writer, it may be easier to write outside the genre he or she has become known for — changing publishers if necessary.

Please understand, I am not aiming these comment at Ms. Rabb.  In reading the essay, I have a feeling she doesn’t think she was given a bad deal in this cross-over stuff.

The second point about the article is that it shows the sophistication that today’s younger reader has. 

When I was a young adult — I’m an old(er) adult, now – we didn’t read the type of books that are available to today’s young adult. Today, the “approved” or books available to us without going outside the youth section, are in the library’s juvenile section for kids younger than 12 years old!  The Y.A. group today are reading books that, in my day, were considered to be understood only by adults.  I recall, in my freshman year in high school, a classmate was reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  I was curious and even speechless, to a degree, that he was allowed to read an adult book.  I later followed his lead and spent the rest of my years in the adult section at the library.  I think the first ”adult” book I read was A Voyage to Arcturus. 

At the library I quite often check Y.A. books out to adults.  They come up and ask where they can find the new Stephanie Meyers’ book or Scott Westerfeld’s latest.  I am a little surprised and taken off-guard when a 75 year old lady asks for one of these.  This is a third point I would like to bring up: the boundaries are transparent not only in the publishing offices, but they are also transparent on the consumer side.  I personally have read a couple of Ben Mikaelsen’s books and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Yes, you can tell that some of them are written for a younger audience, but that doesn’t diminish the work.  It is sometimes nice to get away from what is found in “adult” novels and read something that has a moral or an illustration of ethics or a story to which people can identify some part of their life woven through it.

Read the essay — it has much more to say than I will relate here.  Perhaps you’ll also want to read  Cures for Heartbreakby Margo Rabb — couldn’t hurt. It might give an insight into why it was placed in the Y.A. genre.

Actually, being a writer of Y.A. books may not be so bad. As today’s young adult grows older, you might have a ready-made audience for your adult novels!