Young Adult Science Fiction Questions

[ChrisIsStifled]

Edited.

[Sage]

Welcome, Chris.

When I query my YA fantasy, I first query agents who want both. Then I query agents who want YA and don't specifically say they don't do fantasy. Then I query agents who want fantasy and don't specifically say they don't do YA.

Fantasy and sci-fi always tend to be a little longer than non-spec fic. The number one comment I got from betas for my latest YA fantasy (at 43K, querying at 50K) was that it was pretty short.

[Red.Ink.Rain]

What Sage said. :) Query the ones who rep both, then each one individually. It ended up working for me.

[jmascia]

When I went for YA fantasy, I queried all YA reps unless they specifically say they don't want fantasy and then I queried all fantasy reps unless they specifically say they don't want YA.

It worked out pretty well, and I am finally getting my book, High School Heroes, published somtime next summer. So, all I can say is, go for both.

As far as the word length. Yes, 50,000 is a bit short, however, there are some YA books out there of similar length. The way I see it, write the length the story is. There is always someone who is going to tell you it's too long or too short, but I find that when I don't worry about the word count I get a better story than if I am writing under those constraints.