PART THE FOURTH: In Which I Talk About What Exceptional First Person Narration Can Do For A Book

[barbarienne]

Part One
Part Two
Part ThreeFirst, I’m going to note something: Character voice is a very hard sell to me. I do not hear most 1stP narrative voices as being particularly unique

Comments

[barbarienne]

My personal theory/suspicion which is whiffy with ass-gas but has some basis in real-time observation is: Market Chasing.

Which isn't an accurate term. The problem for a lot of editors is getting their sales force on board to help promote their books. There's a lot of headgames and politicking in some pub houses. (Others may not have these problems; I don't know them all.)

So in addition to finding a book they love and think has an audience among readers, editors also have to make other people in their company get behind a book. Depending on the personalities involved, this may require a lot of "It will sell because these similar books have sold!"

Right now (though slowing), YA Fantasy is huge. Even if a book isn't specifically marketed as YA (as Kelly's books were not), it's possible that a younger (teens, 20s) "target demographic" of readers was considered a high priority.

I have no way of knowing. But that's the only explanation I can come up with. Who had the power to enforce this decision, and how accurate that notion is to begin with, are up for debate.

[barbarienne]

Seems like they're chasing the wrong market to me, but of course this is all anecdote.

-->Maybe, or maybe they're just not chasing the market that is you.

Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight, and a great many other bestsellers say this is a market well worth chasing.

Whether "youngify characters in books that aren't explicitly aimed at the YA market" is the best way to chase that market, I don't know. I tend not to think so, but unless someone gives me a publishing company to run experiments with, I can't say for certain.