Age-branding - more pros and cons

The age-branding debate is still bubbling away. Here are some more bloggers who've joined the fray:

Table Talk

Books, Mud and Compost

Logorrhea

Emma at Snowbooks

An afterthought on Fidra, wondering about the silence on the issue from a certain JKR.

Also see the dozens of interesting comments onthe Telegraph's piece


Jean Hannah Edelstein on the Guardian blog - again, worth a look at the dozens of comments from both camps (including a couple from Meg Rosoff, who is vehemently pro age-branding - or at least vehemently anti the anti-branding protesters!)

By far the most important contribution I've seen today, however, is Catherine's long, impassioned, thought-provoking and persuasive argument on Juxtabook in favour of some form of age-branding. It's a message from the coalface - from someone who's worked with children for whom books play no part in their home or family life. Is this whole debate simply about middle-class children and their reading, she suggests. And while writers, editors, librarians, readers and middle-class parents are all adding their names to the petition in droves, where, asks Catherine, are the voices of the teachers in all this? It's excellent stuff -and I would urge everyone who's interested in this issue to read it.

One small response to Catherine's piece which springs to mind is that bookshops, libraries, the ELC shops, and even supermarkets, all shelve children's fiction in broad age categories anyway. Some more specifically than others, but there is usually some clear indication, so that the most bored and uninterested Saturday assistant can point and say 'over there' in a rough approximation of 'help' for the frightened once-a-year book buyer.

But this kind of broad guidance isn't the same as a publisher printing a million stickers and then trying to squeeze each of their children's books into a single age-banded category in a formulaic fashion. I can't help seeing Catherine's boys who only wanted 'boys' books' (presumably because they needed to reinforce their view of themselves as tough and non-girly) as the other side of the coin from the hesitant reader aged 10 who doesn't want to be seen reading a book with an 'age 6 to 8' sticker on it.

And we keep using the word 'stickers', but I'm sure we've all encountered those dreaded 'stickers' which turn out to be printed on the covers (I'll mention no names but the letters R and J spring to mind) because how much more economical that is for the publishers, in the long run, than paying for the additional palaver of applying stickers to existing books. If 'stickering' goes ahead on what's in the warehouses now, then come the reprints it'll be non-removable, non-optional, printed flashes on covers.

And it is that to which the authors who are heading up this campaign are so adamantly opposed, because it's the thin end of a very fat and festering wedge.

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Anyway, this is all most exhausting and I'm off now in search of the corkscrew and a good book. On a lighter bookish note - Legend Press are conducting a survey of fiction reading habits in the UK . I suspect that the results will show 'reading habits of bookbloggers and existing purchasers of Legend Press books', and thus be somewhat skewed, but hey, they've asked for our input, so we may as well spill the beans (it's not very complicated and takes about 1 minute to complete).

Not suitable for all readers

Should children's books display 'age branding', labelling them 'suitable' for a particular age range?
Publishers, it seems, have decided that they will sell loads more children's books if they brand them all with an age recommendation and are pressing ahead with a move to make this the industry standard on book covers.

The campaign No to Age Branding passionately believes that this is a wholly misguided step:

'We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, publishers and booksellers. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.

But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.

We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.'

Since the campaign went online on 2 June it has received over 800 messages of support.

Signatories include Philip Pullman, Quentin Blake, Anne Fine , Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Shirley Hughes, Anthony Horowitz, Terry Pratchett, Alan Garner, Alexander McCall Smith, Nina Bawden and Darren Shan, as well as many less well-known writers and illustrators, librarians, teachers, booksellers, editors and parents.

Darren Shan offered his forceful, cogent, 'definitive' argument against age-branding on the consistently excellent Vulpes Libris yesterday.

He is absolutely right.

I am extremely lucky. I have never had to cope with dyslexia or any other learning difficulty, either personally or as a parent. My children all read well for their ages but, even so, each of them stalls quite frequently, and needs some (low-key, softly-softly) encouragement to help them pick up something to read which will absorb them completely and carry them off again, into other worlds and down new avenues of discovery and enjoyment. It often seems that, at any given moment, I have two reading voraciously and one who's 'stuck', unable to find exactly the right thing.

I don't despair, however, because I remember only too well the wilderness years in my own early adolescence when I was too old for Enid Blyton and pony stories, but not old enough for Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen. What I remember most of all was (a) yearning for books which would give me the kind of all-consuming enjoyment which Enid Blyton had given me at the age of 7; and (b) harbouring a steely determination not (on any account) to read anything of which my mother had proclaimed 'when I was your age I was reading this'. (Hence I have never read Treasure Island or Children of the New Forest!)

After a lot of browsing through mainly non-fiction in my early and mid-teens, I discover Monica Dickens and Daphne du Maurier and then Thomas Hardy and - whoosh! - I was off and have never really stopped. Right up until A-level, however, the books on my school's curriculum seemed absolutely guaranteed to turn off any interest in reading whatever. Apart from some dire and deeply boring 'age-appropriate' novels, written apparently exclusively for the schools market, I was forced to plough reluctantly through H Rider Haggard and T E Lawrence, plus Dickens at far too young an age. All jolly good improving stuff for a Boy's Grammar School in the 1940s, perhaps, but this was the 1970s and I was a girl!

The relevance of these autobiographical ramblings is that what got me reading again was not the pointed recommendations of my mother but chance encounters with interesting novels which I discovered for myself. They were never books which declared themselves 'suitable for my age-group'.

I read my first Agatha Christie under the bedclothes with a torch while staying with my great-aunt, and felt very daring for having purloined it from her shelves. I sneaked Tess of the d'Urbervilles out of the 'senior' section of the school library when I was really only eligible to borrow books from the 'junior' section. I read my first Ian Fleming James Bond when I was 12 - stolen from the top shelf of my father's bookcase purely because its position there flagged up the fact that it was 'unsuitable for children'.

As a former bookseller I am only too familiar with the customer who wants 'something suitable for a 7-year-old boy'. My own response was always to try to establish what kind of 7-year-old we were talking about. What were his likes and dislikes? Was he able to read to himself or were we looking at something which he'd enjoy having read to him? Often the customer didn't have the first idea. The 7-year-old was a godson, or a nephew. They were on uncertain ground (and consequently often defensive - even aggressive). They would have loved to see stickers on books which branded them 'suitable for 7-year-old boys you don't know very well'. But what effect would such stickers have had on the 7-year-old boy who came in to browse through books himself? If a book had a 'suitable for 8-year-olds' sticker on it, would he reject it? Yes, probably, he would. Which would be a Bad Thing. A Very Bad Thing Indeed.

Here on the Muddy Island, we have been sorting out SD#3's bookcase these past few days. 'Oh, I can't have this any more, you'd better send it to the charity shop', she said, holding up Stories for Five Year Olds. 'But you love those stories', I replied, 'don't you want to read them any more?' 'Yes', she answered, 'but I'm 6 now, so I can't'.

Age branding helps the hesitant buyer of books for their own or (more likely) other people's children. It certainly does not help children themselves. If children are exposed to a wide range of books, at school, in libraries and at home, they will find what is right for them. It may be a surprising choice. It may very well not be what we would have chosen for them ourselves. But they will be becoming real readers and forming the habits of a lifetime.

Personally, I take a fairly 'how dare you?' attitude to being 'marketed at' by publishers or by purveyors of any consumer goods. I want to discover things all by myself, thankyouverymuch. I do not fall for the transparently cynical 'hey, if we make the cover of this useless book look almost identical to the cover of that good and very popular book then those stupid mugs will buy it' conspiracy between too many publishers' marketing and design departments. I don't know many people who do fall for it, but still the publishers persist. Neither am I particularly keen (call me a snob by all means ) on having non-removable 'stickers' printed on to the book I am reading which proclaims it to be a favourite of Richard and Judy's.

How much worse, then, to be 8 yet to find that the stories one really, really loves in all the world are stamped with the words 'suitable for aged 2-4'. How would that make us feel? Babyish. Foolish. Hopeless. Lost.

(Which brings me neatly to another first-rate post on Vulpes Libris, about the estimable publishers Barrington Stoke , who publish ‘real’ books for less able or struggling readers. So a 14-year-old with a reading age of 6 or 7 will find books with themes, characters and plots which interest and excite them rather than have to be stuck with books aimed far younger readers.)

I've signed the No to Age Banding petition. If, reflecting on your own reading journey and/or those of your children, you too feel strongly that books should welcome readers in and not keep them out, then do please sign up too

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Age banding/branding - update

The campaign against age-banding/branding now contains more than 1,700 signatures.

Since my last round-up, I've landed upon some more views in the blogosphere:

Adele Geras on the Guardian blog

It's a Crime (or a Mystery)

Fictions

ManiacMum

The Naughty Step

A chair, a fireplace & a tea cozy (for a view from the US)

Phil Bradley

and some second thoughts on the matter from Books, Mud and Compost

plus [later addition] here's Alan Garner's comment on Fidra blog's excellent post on the subject:

"The Thought Police seem to have been wrong-footed by the surge of rage over this proposed attack at the root of literature. My agent and I each objected to age banding, and my publisher, HarperCollins, has agreed not to apply age banding to any of my work. Philip Pullman reports the same instant climb-down. The speed with which the publishers have backed off may be simple courtesy (yet why were authors not consulted in the first place?), or there may be something in Kay Tie’s blog in the Telegraph last week, which pointed out that authors now have moral rights in law. Did the Publishers’ Association take legal advice before attempting a fait accompli? It could be, though this is only conjecture, that the Association is now running scared. Anyway, let’s hope so. The best way forward is for as many authors and illustrators as possible to object to their publishers; and to do it now. Once the pebbles start to tumble out of the dyke, the structure must fail."

and [even later addition - I can't keep up!] yet more on Fidra about what's really behind age-banding - ie more Tescofication of our lives . . .

Bloggers and buyers taking a stand

Following the report in last week's Bookseller that publishers are determined to press ahead with their ill-conceived plan to stamp age branding on children's books, and Darren Shan's impassioned argument on Vulpes Libris, it's been exciting to see the book blogging community, over the weekend, adding its weight to the campaign opposing this move.

I vented my own spleen at unnecessary length here. And from a quick whiz around the blogosphere this evening I see that many others are raising their voices and signing the petition, among them: Emma Darwin; Random Distractions; Fictionbitch; Fidra blog and Dovegreyreader (in a guest post by Steve Augarde). I'm sure there are, and will be, many more.

If this is something you feel strongly about too, then you can add your name to the petition here, which now comprises well over a thousand names.

And on the other current bookselling hot-potato, Amazon's falling out with Hatchette, the UK's biggest publishing group, which accuses the online giant of a 'breach of trust' with its customers, see Emma Darwin , and also BlogRabbit (the blog of BookRabbit.com).

Perhaps this might be a very good juncture at which to consider abandoning the over-powerful Amazon and hopping over to BookRabbit or one of the other excellent alternatives which are expanding their range of services for customers, at a time when Amazon seems intent on alienating both publishers and buyers.

Hearts and Minds

In Hearts and Minds, Rosy Thornton takes us into the heart of academia, with a warm, witty and wise tale from a fictitious Cambridge college.

James Rycarte, a former BBC correspondent-turned-top-executive, is the newly appointed Head of the all-female St Radegund's College - a position formerly held exclusively by women, most recently his sainted predecessor, Dame Emily, in whose flounced floral chambers James now finds himself ensconced. It's all rather bewildering for a man whose previous connection with academic life ended when he graduated more than three decades ago. From the start, it's clear that he's not going to have an easy ride in his new job. His appointment is still strenuously opposed by some determined members of the college hierarchy, chief among them the imposing Dr Ros Clarke, 'a woman who knew her own mind . . . She would have him out by the end of Full Easter Term'.

Considerably more sympathetic to James's position and determined to help him make a go of it is the Senior Tutor of St Radegund's, Martha Pearce. Fortysomething, dedicated and serious, Martha is constantly beset by guilt - 'professional, familial and horticultural' - a juggler between family and career, but no overstated fictional archetype. Her dilemmas are handled by Thornton with huge sensitivity, and while it is easy to empathise with Martha, the very qualities which make her such a lovely character can at times make the reader yearn to take her to one side and give her a teeny bit of a shake.

As well as having a new Master to settle in, student unrest and rent strikes to deal with, plus her own career to worry about (her tenure as Senior Tutor runs out at the end of the year), Martha has problems at home. Her poet husband is on a long and apparently aimless 'sabbatical' and seems mainly interested in drinking wine and taking himself off to Italy at inconvenient junctures. Then there's her mother, who is showing the first scary signs of dementia. Meanwhile Martha's 17-year-old daughter, Lucia, has removed herself from school and, protesting that she wants to 'write', seems instead to be sliding into inertia and depression. The minefield of mother and daughter interaction is delicately trodden, as is Martha's bewilderment at the crisis which has crept up on her marriage by stealth.

These intimacies are offset by the larger world of college life, involving a large cast of well-drawn, wholly believable characters, and this is what helps to make Hearts and Minds such a 'comfortable' read. There's something very nineteenth-century about it. I wouldn't say it's 'cosy', exactly, but it's definitely a novel one can sit back and sort of expand into in a wholly satisfying way.

Not that the book doesn't have its thought-provoking and heart-wrenching moments. It tackles some very pertinent contemporary issues in education as well as the tangle of moral dilemmas raised by the offer of a much-needed donation of funds to the college, which doesn't come entirely free of strings. The library is crumbling and there's pressure to offer financial assistance to impoverished potential students, but there are those (like Ros Clarke) who will not countenance the injection of such potentially tainted cash under any circumstances. Points of principle swarm and clash.

Thornton shows a finely nuanced appreciation of the private inner tussles between altruism, self-interest and political principle in all of the players, and how these manifest themselves when it comes to arguing individual corners and casting votes. If we didn't already know, I think we could guess from these scenes from the inner workings of the college that this book is written by an 'insider'.

While James and Martha very much take centre stage, there are lots of little wry and amusing sub-plots being played out at the same time - the girls' drinking club with strange initiation rituals; the uptight secretary and the saga of the kettle; Dame Emily's tastes in interior design; the love life of Darren the Dean; the archaic rituals of formal college dining; and, of course (this being Cambridge) various incidents involving bicycles.

But the great joy of this book for me was getting to know James Rycarte and Martha Pearce. They are the most absolutely believable characters. They're so real you feel you could just hug them. In fact, I keep thinking that I have hugged them! I was very sorry to part company with them at the end - there's a real sense that they are still out there, living and breathing and moving on with their lives, despite the fact that it's several weeks since I turned the final page.

You'll have got the general idea, by now that I enjoyed this book enormously and would warmly recommend it as a good traditional kind of read that will stay in the mind and leave you wanting more. You can find out more about the author (who is - surprise! - a Cambridge academic) and read more reviews of Hearts & Minds on her website.

My copy of Hearts & Minds arrived courtesy of BookRabbit.

And that would be that, were it not for one major quibble I have with this book. [Rant alert, rant alert.] And it is a quibble, I hasten to add, which has absolutely nothing to do with the author or with the novel itself. Those of a nervous disposition please leave the room now.

I think we all know now (if we didn't know before the age-banding crisis) that book covers (especially of fiction) are very much the preserve of publishers these days. Authors can count themselves lucky to be allowed any say in the matter at all. Covers are part of Marketing, and Marketing, as we all know, is everything.

What does the cover of this book say to you? If 'chick-lit' didn't spring immediately into your mind I'd be very surprised indeed.

Such unsubtle 'genre branding' might (I suppose) increase supermarket sales but to attempt to 'guide' regular book buyers who browse in 'real' bookshops (or indeed online) in this way is, in my view, a mistake and can only limit sales, not increase them. Readers of good, thoughtful fiction appreciate good, thoughtful covers on their books.

To me, this cover, with its pastel shades and whimsical hearts and flowers and dove shrieks 'light, fluffy, inconsequential holiday reading for women only'.

I do so resent the current assumption by publishers that every book has to be squished into a 'genre' for a bit of easy niche-marketing. It's dumbing down in every sense. But the worst of it is, that in this case the publishers have quite literally got it wrong. They have simply picked the wrong 'genre'! I seriously doubt that the twentysomething woman looking for light and sexy beach-read would get very far with this. What can they have been thinking of?

To be perfectly honest, I would never have picked up this book if I'd seen it in a bookshop. And if that exposes me as some kind of literary snob, then so be it. This cover completely belies the nature of the novel and in my view does a huge disservice both to the author and to potential buyers - especially to potential male buyers, whom I simply can't imagine would entertain the idea that a book with a cover like this could possibly be of any interest to them. By deciding to 'go girly' the publishers have alienated this book's entire potential male audience and reinforced that tired old assumption that books by women can only be for women. What nonsense! This is an intelligent book about people, for people.

So, chaps, please buy it online (or get a willing woman to buy it for you in a shop), carefully affix the manly cover of your choice (or plain brown paper) over the top of the silly one it comes with, then read and enjoy.