: Re: Who decides how to classify a novel? Young Adult fiction is distinguished from Adult fiction typically by the age of the protagonist(s) and the subject matter or experiences involved. You can,

@Kristi637

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Your publisher will decide where to file your book, and it's largely a marketing decision. In the USA, books are often shunted into YA if they can possibly fit there because it's a healthy market. Also schools will often pick up or promote YA books --even ones that are a bit edgy --because they're trying to get kids to read. (Also for this reason, it may be easier for you, the author, to sell your book to a publisher or agent as a YA project than as adult fiction.)

If you self-publish you'll probably make the decision yourself but you'll have the same market forces to wrestle with. However, schools usually won't pick up self-published books, so the calculations may be a bit different.

In general, books with YA main characters are almost always filed as YA unless they are clearly and flagrantly inappropriate for teenagers (and sometimes even if they are). This is often not a huge problem. Most young adults love reading books with adult themes, and there are plenty of adults who still read YA fiction (count me as one of them). Personally, I tend to find a lot of YA fiction to be better written, more interesting, and more deeply felt than most adult fiction. If you're at all on the fence about it, I would query it both as adult fiction and as YA, and see which one gets a better response.

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