I wrote on one of the forums I admin that part of the reason I was against this is because I think it will be limiting author audiences. A friend, one who writes for fun but is sane enough not to want to do it for a living, remarked that he thought selling a story was basically giving up all control over it, and that there were more compelling reasons to oppose this movement than authors complaining about what appears on the covers of something they’ve already sold.

Since I didn’t talk much about the business side of it before, here’s some of my response to that.

“Not exactly …It’s true that most authors, particularly less established ones, get little-to-no input when it comes to cover design. My point, though, is that it’s absolutely not a case of closing your eyes, clutching that advance and hoping it’s worth the beating.

This is a business and I think things that could potentially effect an author’s audience – and livelihood – are fair game for complaint.”

The strange thing is that publishers are insisting that this will increase sales. They might be right about increasing sales in general, but I still think this has the power to negatively affect sales of individual books and authors. Of course authors want all kinds of books to sell well, but mostly we want one book to sell really really really well – ours!

The strange thing is, that’s what publishers want too. It’s a lot for them to line their pocketbooks with one book that sells 10,000 copies than with four books that sell 2500 each. I might be missing something here – I’m certainly not an expert on marketing or publishing industry trends – but this doesn’t even seem like a very smart move, let alone a good one.

“And the books that are going to get slapped with an age brand remain ours, no matter who we’ve licensed the work out to. I think that’s fair game for complaint, too.

Once that age brand appears on your book, it’s not just a question of what it will do to your potential audience. Suddenly you’re endorsing something that you might absolutely not support, for any number of good reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with publishing.”

With gold! Think they’ll mind if I borrow some?

It seems we’re going to start slapping age restrictions on books, or at least, something the publishers call “age branding”. Word choice aside (Mmm. Burning irons, anyone?) some people think that slapping on an “ages seven and up” label is a less-than-stellar idea.

Some think it’s a bad idea, plain and simple. It’s ill-conceived, it’s insulting. It’s undignified. It’s potentially alienating to audiences. It’s pretty much useless. It’s one step closer to censorship.

If I may now express my not-so-humble, somewhat vehement opinion (ha! You knew it was coming, didn’t you?):

They’re right.

According to publishers, age branding will “help potential book buyers” and “increase sales”.

Uhhhh… That’s a joke, right?

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