A "Rating" System For Books

I don't agree with ratings for anything. I can decide for myself, thankyouverymuch.

Exactly. That's why I don't like Explicit Lyrics stickers, either.

Ratings are over rated...

Keyword tagging systems are awesome though. It would be great if publishers could adopt the sort of systems fanfic archives have been evolving over the past decade.

I'm all for rating quality. One to five stars, that kind of thing. But this is about PG, PG-13, R, etc. I find that somewhat subjective and silly.

Plus, reading is so personal. I can remember, as a young kid, finding and reading a copy of Scruples, by Judith Krantz. It gave me a chance to think about relationships and sexuality in a way that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. I don't know. I guess I think some things are just a rite of passage.

I'm all against banning.

Even stars are subjective. And ratings seem to get stupid, fast. Look at moviemakers 'playing' the ratings to get the one that suits their marketing. And television 'viewer advisory' warnings. I've seen 'may contain offensive language' warnings on innocuous cooking-shows, or 'may not be suitable for sensitive viewers' on, oh, just about anything. Decorating, or home-buying shows. (Yeah, I watch a lot of homemaking shows )

Lyxdeslic said:

http://goodereader.com/blog/electro...ss&utm_campaign=do-books-need-a-rating-system

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I haven't even read the article, but the notion of uniform rating system to apply to all novels is completely repellent. Along comes the adventurous and different novel, but it doesn't fit the rating system. Too bad. Off to the shredder.

I would enjoy a rating system for books. I'm tired of reading books that I thought would be the equivalent of a PG13 or R movie and instead end up safely in the PG range. I would like to know ahead of time if the book is violent, has crude language, or sex scenes. It would save me quite a bit of disappointment from reading novels that are TOO PG for my taste.

Jersey Chick said:

Exactly. That's why I don't like Explicit Lyrics stickers, either.

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Agreed. They're pointless. Back in my record shop days, it always made me laugh when we'd get certain releases in stock with the Parental Advisory stickers on them. Firstly, it made me wonder if I was supposed to ask my mum before I could listen to them. Secondly, these labels were more often on a rap CD than any other genre, but if a release didn't have one, it didn't sell. The whole thing was a marketing ploy.

Anyway, for books, this idea blows goats.

This again, eh.

Authors are overwhelmingly against it. Retailers, parents, and teachers, however, are generally for it (it helps them make merchandising or buying decisions.)

I'm against it, myself, mostly because I think your whole package - cover, copy etc - ought to do the job. If someone buys your book expecting something very different to what's inside I think that's often a failure on the part of the publisher to communicate effectively.

We do sometimes put a kind of 'explicit content' label on books that are at the older end of the spectrum, I admit, but we don't put a number on it. It's kind of a concession to parents that doesn't upset authors.

As a writer, I'm not keen

As a mother of two voracious readers who read WAY above their actual age, I'd find at least the explicit content label quite handy. I really just can't keep up with pre-reading for them both. My son isn't so much of a problem now he's older, but when he was younger, he was bored with MG/YA and asked to read some grown up fantasy.

I'm reallly glad I pre-read one of them that had several graphic rape/torture/murder scenes in (to the point I said EWWWW and couldn't read any further). I didn't really want that to be his first literary experience of sex....

One (of many) major problems with ratings systems is that they don't differentiate between the various reasons that a parent might object. You see an "R" rating on a movie, and you don't know whether it's because of cursing, seeing someone nekkid, or graphic violence. "R" by itself tells a parent very little. (As Frimble says, studios just game the system to get the rating that fits their marketing, anyway).

I'm all for giving parents and school librarians more ways to easily determine the content of a book to facilitate decision-making, but I don't see how a ratings system accomplishes that.

I'm with Mr Flibble - as a writer, ratings be damned. As a parent - hmm, wait a minute. We can't always pre-read the books our kids want to read, just as we can't always preview TV shows or movies. I know there have been shows on TV that I turned off because I discovered they just weren't suitable for my son at that age - and then had some explaining to do. Can't really do that with reading. So if I still had younger kids, I'd want some way of knowing what was in the book - but the rating system(s) around now are ridiculous. As mentioned above, "R" can mean any number of possible 'culprits' and I'm only concerned about one specific one.

So yes, I'd like to see some kind of guide for parents, but simplified. "A" - graphic language; "B" - graphic violence; "C" - graphic sex. Period. If I saw those as a parent, I'd know how to proceed.

I don't see any harm in it. If someone is going to ban a book they don't need a rating system. They'll find any reason to ban it. "It has talking animals! Ban it!" And it gives parents a good indication of what's in it: strong language, mild sex, talking animals, that sort if thing.

As a parent I use the movie rating system as a guide for what is appropriate for my younger son. I see nothing wrong with rating books the same.


Won't affect me. My children don't read anyway.

shadowwalker said:

So yes, I'd like to see some kind of guide for parents, but simplified. "A" - graphic language; "B" - graphic violence; "C" - graphic sex. Period. If I saw those as a parent, I'd know how to proceed.

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But who decides what's graphic? One person's 'graphic' is no big deal for another. Plus where do we draw the line at classifying books and someone calling for censorship based on the apparent graphicness of a book?

I think the info for a parent is already there. OK, it's not a straightforward box on the back of the book that says how rude/violent/sweary it is, but with a bit of research, a parent can find out online.

(For some reason, my computer won't let me link to the actual story - but regardless...)

Oh, look. When my kids were young, I read the books before they did - so we could talk about them. Once they got older I trusted them to make their own decisions.

Reading the books before they did was how I discovered Terry Pratchett. Worth it for that alone

seun said:

But who decides what's graphic? One person's 'graphic' is no big deal for another. Plus where do we draw the line at classifying books and someone calling for censorship based on the apparent graphicness of a book?

I think the info for a parent is already there. OK, it's not a straightforward box on the back of the book that says how rude/violent/sweary it is, but with a bit of research, a parent can find out online.

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I think graphic is pretty well understood to mean it's not just 'alluded to'. As to censorship, that's going to be a problem regardless of any or no rating system. Books have been banned in the past, you know.

I don't have a problem with a simple rating system so the parents know if it's something they need to research before letting their kids read it. If they don't care about graphic violence, then a book with that rating won't matter. If it supposedly has graphic sex and that's a concern, then they can research further to see how graphic it is. But looking at the ratings on movies and TV shows - hell, I wouldn't know what's supposed to be in the thing going by those. That's going way too far with detailed ratings.

I would not want there to be any ratings like that - I'm sure it will be like with video games, music and movies - if it has a sticker on it saying it's bad, that's what the kids will want to read. And how would a book-seller deal with this? Not sell books to kids who aren't accompanied by their parents?
Even with graphic sex/violence/language, I think youngsters can learn something. And it can also help them make better choices for themselves if they go wrong once or twice and read books they don't feel ready for.

Nobody's yet shown me any evidence that reading books causes harm to young people or incites them to commit harm, either to themselves or others. Until we have some actual evidence that any book needs to be withheld from any reader, this is a non-debate.

Buffysquirrel said:

Nobody's yet shown me any evidence that reading books causes harm to young people or incites them to commit harm, either to themselves or others. Until we have some actual evidence that any book needs to be withheld from any reader, this is a non-debate.

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Oh, I don't think one can say that reading some books has not done harm to kids. Just on a personal level, I can say that there are books I read that I really shouldn't have until I was older, because they negatively influenced how I felt about some things. Kids are not miniature adults, after all. They read things differently, imagine things differently, interpret things differently because they haven't the experiences/education adults have had.

So yes, there are definitely books that need to be kept from children until they are ready for them - and it's up to the parents to determine when the kids are ready. A rating system should only be a guide for the parents.

shadowwalker said:

A rating system should only be a guide for the parents.

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Better the parents should read the books and decide for themselves, (and their kids) though...

For those of you with kids, I am curious as to what age you pre-read until, if at all?

It's just that I don't see this as a terribly viable option if your kid is reading a book every 3 days...(that would have been me for several years). Especially if you have more than one such kid.

Plus I would have hated the intrusiveness of it.
I can't imagine coming home with a book from the library and having to wait for Mom or Dad to read it first.
Maybe it's extreme, but I can imagine this would have negatively affected my love of reading.

LJD said:

For those of you with kids, I am curious as to what age you pre-read until, if at all?

It's just that I don't see this as a terribly viable option if your kid is reading a book every 3 days...(that would have been me for several years). Especially if you have more than one such kid.

Plus I would have hated the intrusiveness of it.
I can't imagine coming home with a book from the library and having to wait for Mom or Dad to read it first.

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For me - I had two kids, both avid readers - I guess I did it till they were reading Pratchett; about age 10 or 11. I don't see how it could be intrusive - it gave us a discussion topic to share over breakfast or dinner. I was a faster reader than either of them - so it really wasn't a burden. By the time they were twelve or so I suppose it would have been a bit odd - but by then they had other people to discuss books with, so it just slipped away.

Obviously I'm not suggesting the parent read every single book before the child does. Just that it's quite a lot of fun and beneficial to read the authors your child finds enjoyable, and be able to discuss them with the kids. And it's probably better than somebody else's rating system.