I've been puzzling over the categories Amazon and Barnes & Noble use to classify their teen books. For two reasons. One, where do I put my YA book? Two, a more general question, what does it mean for YA writers when we choose what we write about?
Start with B&N categories. There is a huge category of teen fantasy books. There is no category for teen scifi books.
Now Amazon categories. They do divide Teens into Fantasy and Science Fiction. The numbers in each are 12,204 and 3,213. So fantasy outweighs SF by about 4 to 1.
Then if you look onto the SF category a pattern quickly emerges: Almost 90 % is post-apocalyptic. Not what I'd call "real SF" at all. The "future" is more like the past than the present.
So right now I'm kind of confused. Can anyone make sense of all this? Are teens really unable or willing to handle a future where the world has progressed to at least a marginally better place? Or has the universe of online sellers no connection with reality, and it is masochism to try to find any connection?
Start with B&N categories. There is a huge category of teen fantasy books. There is no category for teen scifi books.
Now Amazon categories. They do divide Teens into Fantasy and Science Fiction. The numbers in each are 12,204 and 3,213. So fantasy outweighs SF by about 4 to 1.
Then if you look onto the SF category a pattern quickly emerges: Almost 90 % is post-apocalyptic. Not what I'd call "real SF" at all. The "future" is more like the past than the present.
So right now I'm kind of confused. Can anyone make sense of all this? Are teens really unable or willing to handle a future where the world has progressed to at least a marginally better place? Or has the universe of online sellers no connection with reality, and it is masochism to try to find any connection?