Are Adults More Ignored Than Children In SF Lit?

They ’ve published books , linked to and even interviewed each other , but now author Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi are collectively wonder whether anyone is ante up attention to their most recent book , and just what is the most under - appreciated literary genre of lit : Young Adult or Regular Science Fiction ?

Doctorow start the conversation by tell fans that the reason they ’re not finding his new book , Little Brother is because they ’re looking in the incorrect place :

My editor , Patrick Nielsen Hayden , rang me yesterday to spill the beans about a weird little phenomenon : multitude who were give out to stores looking for my young , Little Brother , were walking away unfulfilled because they were looking in the skill fiction section , not the young adult section .

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But that ’s okay , he decide , because it ’s kind of cool that no - one is pay tending to the YA section :

Living in a infinite that no one watches too closely is one of the occult way that people get to do excellent material . Science fable ’s status for decades as a castaway writing style meant that writers could do things with literary vogue , theme , and political content that their mainstream counterparts could never get off with ( game , comics , former hip - record hop , mashups , and many of the other back laneways of popular culture have also enjoyed this status ) . These days , a spate of the cool stuff in the universe is happening in the kids ’ department of your bookstore ( and yes , I ’m aware of the irony of call attention to a field that has prospered because it was n’t take in too much attending to flower ) .

Scalzi , however , disagrees . Not that there ’s a hatful of amazing stuff happening in YA SF , but that no - one ’s pay care :

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I have a friend with access to BookScan , which tracks Holy Scripture cut-rate sale through stores and retail outlets , who at my petition check the aggregate bestseller inclination sales of adult fantasy and scientific discipline fable against the sale of YA phantasy and SF . Without mentioning specific routine or titles , my friend say that last hebdomad , the top 50 YA SF / F bestsellers outsell the top 100 adult SF / F bestseller ( grownup SF and F are separate lists ) by two to one . So 50 YA titles are selling twice as much as 100 grownup SF / F titles . The bestselling YA phantasy book last workweek ( not a Harry Potter book ) outsold the bestselling grownup phantasy book by nearly four to one ; the bestselling YA skill fabrication title sell three transcript for every two copy of the chart - topping grownup SF title . And as a final kick in the teeth , YA SF / F is richly stage at top of the general bestselling charts of YA record book sale , whereas grownup SF / F struggles to get onto the ecumenical bestselling grownup fable chart at all .

It ’s interesting that YA SF is great because you get to do a raft of nerveless clobber because it seems as if no - one ’s paying attending , and yet more people are paying tending to YA SF than “ grown - up ” SF .

Young grownup sections in bookstore — a parallel universe of little - regarded awesomeness[Boing - Boing ]

Lesdilley