Hi Ms. Stiefvater. I really love your Raven Cycle series first of all. Secondly I have two questions: Do you think the current marketing around YA books is beneficial or no? (Like before we had stuff written with teen protagonists YA wasn't a "thing" like it is now.) And also how do you feel about the Raven Cycle being called paranormal romance/ put in the teen romance section even though it really... isn't that? (I mean there's barely any kissing)
Hello Ms/Mr Rollercoaster.
First of all, thank you. Secondly, your questions.
1) Do you think the current marketing around YA books is beneficial or no?
No. Well. Sort of. Well, I’m certain it’s a no, but I’m also certain that it’s not a YA-specific problem. YA got popular and it got commercial, and so the genre inherited the problem inherent in commercial fiction of any sort.
Which is this: Our culture is a flow chart that has girls reading different things than boys, women reading different things from girls, and of course it goes to follow that men certainly do not read those girl things that boys also do not read. So in commercial fiction, fiction that is meant to appeal to The Everyone, one of the first decisions is whether or not the book is going into the boy box or the girl box.
Boy box? Okay, good. Emphasize the action! The chase scenes! The cars! DON’T MENTION THE GIRL CHARACTER WHATEVER YOU DO NO NO ANYTHING BUT THAT. Is there maybe some kind of aggressive design we can put on the front? Like, a dramatic logo, or perhaps the sleek edge of a fender, or maybe the subtle crest of someone’s hardened member? Too far, Stiefvater. Too far.
Girl box? Okay, better. Because statistically most readers are going to be Teh Ladies, so bring on the Bucks McBucks. The cover copy should emphasize the romance. Is there kissing? Can there be kissing? Look, is there just a way to frame this that lets readers know that at some point she and the guy look into each other’s eyes? Come on. It doesn’t matter that she’s in a Siberian prison camp. She’s enslaved, not dead inside! Now, let’s add a pretty cover. A face, maybe? A pretty girl? Some luminous baubles? At least some cursive font then, sheesh.
Then there is the literary box. Literary is a nebulous, unspecified creature that doesn’t have to follow the rules as often. It often sits outside the commercial room drinking dark coffee and blowing smoke rings at its cousins. When young adult fiction first got its feet beneath it, it behaved like literary fiction. It was full of experimental prose, weird covers, and genre-bending stories that were strange in the unselfconscious way that comes from suspecting not many people are watching and being right about it.
And then it got popular, and while those strange books are still in the section, they are outnumbered by commercial YA. We’re making money, baby!
But I don’t think it’s helpful. I think specific marketing and sectioning of the bookstore is helpful as long as it is helping readers to find other books they want to read. When it expands a reader’s selection. It becomes counter productive when it encourages tunnel vision and limits a reader’s selection. And on a broader scale, when it does nothing but broaden the gulf between men’s entertainment and women’s entertainment. History has shown us that when the two things are held apart, the woman side is always considered less important and worthy.
UPSHOT: NOT GOOD NOT GOOD AT ALL
2) How do you feel about the Raven Cycle being called paranormal romance/ put in the teen romance section even though it really… isn’t that?
The cover copy of The Raven Boys promises a love story and little else, but the problem is that if you’re reading only for that, you’re going to have to skim over a lot of other characters and mythological shindigs. This series is simply not a paranormal romance series. There’s nothing wrong with that genre — I wrote this one series, you know, the Shiver trilogy, and it’s basically romance and eye-snogging wall to pining-forever-love wall far as we can see — but that’s just not what the Raven Cycle is. But it’s in the girl box, so that’s how it was always going to be framed.
Moreover, it’s in the commercial teen box, which is a new-ish box that I don’t like the looks of. This one, across all media, buys in to the idea that teens are hormonal, senseless, foolish, inarticulate, easily distracted, and self-obsessed. This teen box says they won’t get complicated characters, they won’t want complicated story-lines, they won’t read complicated prose. So boil it down, kids. Boil it down.
Here’s a quote from the LA Times review of The Raven Boys, back in 2012, on my use of third-person in a genre dominated by first: “But in a literary marketplace that trades on identification and plot-driven readability, the third person voice is sometimes a risk. And it’s especially risky because The Raven Boys’s narrator indulges in plot digressions, emphatic repetition, lush description, long lists.” The NY Times review also calls out how “Stiefvater … doesn’t talk down to her readers” and notes “Stiefvater’s respect for her readers’ intelligence.”
Damn straight. Do authors of adult paranormal fiction get praised for such things, though?
I trust teen readers. But I’m not sure anyone else does.
So, the marketing. I’ll say it: it’s maddening. The problem is bigger than just me, though, and from this side of the table, I can best attack it with my stories. I’m getting out my pen.
amandla
pixelskylines
prguitarman
