Banning Without Bennies

First off, I’m throwing out a blanket apology to all those folks who wrote in these past couple of weeks only for me to remain silent. The webpage was wonky . . . what can I say? To be truthful, it took me some time to notice. This is what comes of keeping your head down, your blinders on (to minimize despair, envy, lack of confidence that you ever once sorta kinda understood how to do this), and sticking to your knitting. I’m not saying all those emotions are gone or anything; my latest work-in-progress has been an uncooperative sonuvagun, and probably reflects my protag’s general angst (and my desire not to wash, rinse, repeat). She’s a difficult young lady, but then again, so am I.

ANYWAY, my apologies. I think I’ve caught up with comments. If not . . . if you happen by and find that I’ve approved your email but had the gall NOT to acknowledge your presence . . . feel free to stick me with a fork.

Now to business: This week’s PW had a pretty interesting little piece on the divide between middle-grade and YA fiction. The article was primarily focused on the retail/marketing side of things: how to get the “right” books into the “right” readers’ hands; how to help kids (and adults) not feel so weird for reading either up or down; whether or not there truly is a divide since so many readers are beginning to converge given the popularity of several series; that kind of thing. Specifically, the piece talked about whether it made sense to shelve YA and middle-grade in separate sections, or just put everything together, with no signage, nothing to really differentiate the books from one another. It’s an interesting, short piece and worth your while, even if only to skim.

Now, while the article makes the point that publishers frequently signal a book as YA or middle-grade via the cover—something you intuitively “get” with a cursory glance—I’ll be honest: whether retailers agree or not . . . of course, you need to shelve these books separately. Of course. First off, not every book is shelved so the cover’s facing out, right? So you can’t rely on a general cover style to guide you, which means that all those books whose spines face out will be overlooked by the casual browser.

Second, not to post signage is ludicrous. Think about it this way: if you’re a romance reader, but you only like Gothic, are you really willing to wade through romantic suspense, historical romance, etc., etc., to get to the books you want to see? (This is the problem with a lot of e-book commerce sites; everything’s lumped together.) Yeah, yeah, piling everything together gives you a chance to potentially find something you might not otherwise read, but let’s get real here. Who has that kind of time or patience? I’d have a better chance herding cats.

Look at it from another angle: what if more mature YA was lumped together with adult fiction? (This is why there’s now that weird little sub-genre, New Adult, which I know sells well and is, IMHO, simply a way to slip in sex for teens/late teens, but . . . now you’re really splitting hairs.) To return to my point . . . if you lump, do you think your audience will find you? Not a chance.

Categories exist for a reason; they are signals to consumers as to what they’re likely to find inside the package/box/whatever. This bit about retailers worrying about kids feeling they ought to read up or down or sideways—or that adults might be embarrassed to read up or down or sideways or bloody backwards—smacks of too much neurotic hand-wringing. Really, people just aren’t that fragile, and any librarian will tell you that if a kid doesn’t like a book—can’t connect with the story or gets bored—she’ll stop reading, period, whether it’s a book she ought to like because it’s the “right” age range or not.

There’s also another problem here, and that is the assumption that most/all YA is too dark, too mature, too . . . whatever for more vanilla YA, whatever that is. I mean, I sort of get this; I do. I’m not stupid. Clearly, a book about the end of the world or a kid on the run is fundamentally different from one that revolves around a girl playing football and angsting over a guy, or catty kids at a private academy. There is nothing wrong with any of these types of books, by the way; we all know that one person’s great book is another person’s garbage.

BUT . . . here’s where it gets a little tricky. Let’s talk about the opposite end of the spectrum: when people don’t lump but split hairs—and do so in a fairly disturbing way.

A few months ago, I was passing through a small town and noticed the local library, which also just so happened to be attached to the local high school. (This happens a lot in small Midwest towns. Me, I love it because, theoretically, my audience is strolling past my stuff all the time.) So I decided to stop in, see if maybe they had my books. Since my books have made it to so many state library lists, I’ve come to find that I’ve got a decent shot at this. Anyway, I wander over to the YA section—and find nothing.

So I’m, like, okay, that sucks. Being generally hopeful, though, I decide to check out the card catalog and come to find that the place has most of my books, only they’re not shelved in the general YA section. They’re shelved in a special “mature” YA section, waaay the hell and gone from where any self-respecting teen would find herself, and not even at eye level.  I mean, we’re talking really high stacks that force you to look up to find the books.

And I’m, like, wuh?

So I had a friendly chat with the librarians (really; I was nice about it) and here’s what I discovered: some parents—parents—got upset about my books. (Did they read them?  No.  They “heard” about them.  But where?  Is there a special black ops site out there where you need to know the secret handshake and have a special decoder ring in order to get the skinny on those types of books?)  These parents got upset about other folks’ books, too, and as you might expect, they’re the usual suspects, the ones to which those mega-blockbusters playing at your local multiplex owe their success. The parents were disturbed by the dark themes, the death, the mayhem . . . perhaps even the depiction of what cads these same adults can be when given half a chance. These parents then complained to the librarians, saying that they really should create a separate section for those types of books as a kind of signal to kids that, you know, think twice before you pick that up because we don’t think that subject matter’s really appropriate for someone your age.

Mind you—we’re talking splitting out a subsection of YA from other YA here but not on the basis of sub-genre: on the basis of theme.

Now, I love librarians; I do. They are wonderful people. They are tireless advocates, but they are also public servants. They have to listen to the school board, to the state, to parents. So what these librarians have done is shelve my books and other like them in an entirely different YA section that is hard to find and, in this library, sandwiched between—I think—adult biography and DVDs. You have to look to find them, and—as opposed to other more “approved” and “recommended” YA titles which are placed on a special display table, facing out—these books are shelved so only the spines show. This is the metaphorical equivalent of slipping that purchase into a plain paper bag.

I used to joke that I wouldn’t mind being banned because I bet my sales would go up. I still think that way to a certain degree because there is no such thing as bad publicity unless you’ve written a true stinker. But being segregated like this is similar to being friends without benefits: the books are there but with a warning and moral judgment attached.

Now maybe I’m overreacting here. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. I am not opposed to signage. I think breaking things out by general reading levels makes perfect sense and is helpful. But I am opposed to books that are broken out of the category to which they belong simply on the basis that they are a certain “type” of book. This is not censorship; I’ve not been banned. But I have been segregated—pushed into a different corner because of what my books are about and some parents’ concern about what I’ve written.

If my books “deserve” to be in a library—whatever deserve means here—then they deserve to be found, with their peers. Period. You could make the argument that this is precisely what the librarians have opted to do; I mean, honestly, can I complain about being with the likes of Veronica Roth and Suzanne Collins? Of course not; get real. But where do you draw the line? How high does the body count have to go before your book is zipped off to that “dark” YA section? Is one death okay but not three? What makes death by magic okay—in this library, J.K. Rowling’s first two books are in middle-grade, and the others in general YA—but not death by zombie? Or arrow? Or zap gun? (In this library, I guess suicide’s okay because there’s a moral and lesson involved. Jay Asher’s got the stamp of approval and in the YA section. Ditto John Greene, so a book about dying kids with cancer who are also in love is kosher, even if they end up in bed together.) How many kisses are one too many? If I Say is shelved under YA; Before I Fall is just too dark because those naughty girls were drinking and thinking about getting laid and all. I guess. I don’t pretend to understand this. My God, who makes these kinds of decisions? What, there’s some library policeman/woman hanging out in a back room, chained to a desk, with a stack of books and a score card? Whoops, that’s clinch number three . . . Wait, did I see the word “nipple?”

YA is YA, and middle-grade is middle-grade: genres aimed at certain demographics in which there are sub-genres. My personal feeling is that if you must split hairs, do so on the basis of sub-genre, so you shelve YA romance, YA apocalyptic, YA sf/fantasy, YA contemporary . . . you get my drift. Frankly, that’s what some retailers have begun to do, and I think that’s a good approach.

But this is not okay. You don’t like what your kid wants to read? Well, gee, I don’t know: how about talking to your kid about what she/he finds interesting about the book? Or is thinking about in general? Or why that book speaks to her? I know: how about reading the frigging book yourself? Are you so uninvolved and such cowards that you must put librarians into the position of having to be the arbiters of (your) public morality—and librarians, why ever would you stand for this?

There are fundamentals, I guess. Any society has them. But if you’re going to ban a book, ban it and then be prepared to defend why because this kind of quiet neglect—this banning without bennies–is worse. You avoid bad press, sure. But you also ensure that many of these books will go undiscovered, unless they’re made into a blockbuster movie or something. They will die a quiet death and their perceived lack of value will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, too, because they will not be seen; they will never be checked out; and then, some day, the book will be pulled for a giant sale or given to the Salvation Army; and then everyone responsible will nod and pat themselves on the back and say, “See? I told you.”