Young Adult or Adult?

[Mwaan]

If a majority of my characters are about 18, wouldn't that put them right on the line between teenagers and adults? I've been doing some research with different publishers, and when I look over what they've published, the Young Adult stuff seems very childish in comparison to what I'm doing, but at the same time, the Adult stuff is much more serious and graphic. How do I classify it?

 

[Map the Dragon]

The age of your characters has nothing to do with the label applied to your peice in terms of genre. YA fantasy can feature adult characters and epic or high fantasy can feature younger ones.

If you sign with a publisher, they will assist you in classification. When my publisher had to register my novel with the Library of Congress/register for an ISN #, she sent me several variations on how we might classify the work. There are certain labels/types that are already preregistered. You probably want one of those. Hopefully you'll have some help in this matter.

If you choose to self-publish and you want to label your work for purposes of certain online retailing or other such necessity for genre categorization, then just go with whatever makes you more comfortable. Right now, YA sell the best in our genre in terms of multiple and new authors. Epic fantasy top-dogs make the most (outside of Rowling) to include guys like Martin and Sanderson. There are other sub-types and categories in the fantasy label to include things like "Sword and Sorcery" and a newer one like "Steampunk".

 

[Mwaan]

The only reason I was stressing was because of the query letter. I didn't want to send it to the wrong publisher. Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it.