"Fantasy" no longer a genre in Waterstones?

[HareBrain]

We don’t reduce a lot (we can’t) but, frankly, Amazon aren’t that cheap for books these days and they can’t give the atmosphere our shop can

I recently discovered an indie bookshop tucked away in the small nearby town of Petworth. I love it. It has about the quarter the floorspace of the local Waterstones but seems to have a greater (certainly more interesting) range. And yes, tons of atmosphere.

 

[BAYLOR]

From memory the big Waterstones on Princes's street in Edinburgh has a SFF alcove (with graphic novels and manga 'in the middle' of it) - no separate space for fantasy alone - and then a different alcove for YA budding off it, like an annexe. I'll pop in next Wednesday and check if they've changed it!

Decades ago in the local mall , there was a store called Paperback Booksmiths, I don't know if par t any know chain but, from What Remember is was tiny store and, it was stuffed to the ceiling with massive variety boos, k all genres. The science fiction and fantasy sectional the very back of the story was to die for , they literally seem to have everything. I found the Kane the Mystic Swrdsman series there , and they had all of Edgar Rice Burroughs books, all of them ! Gone now, long gone.

 

[The Judge]

I recently discovered an indie bookshop tucked away in the small nearby town of Petworth.

Ooh, where is it? Is it new? I don't recall seeing one when we last visited. (Though thinking about it, that's probably a good few years now. Glum.)

There's a lovely bookshop in Marlborough, with an art gallery attached, for anyone vaguely in or visiting that area. There's also a specialist SFF bookshop in Lymington which I'm hoping to get down to see sometime this/next month for those of us on the South Coast.

And yes, I popped into Waterstones in Winchester today to check, and it's Science Fiction, Young Adult and Manga in that alcove -- no heading of Fantasy, though the alleged SF section was full of it, and I'm sure the YA section has grown since we were last there. In Waterstones' new shop just opened in Romsey, the YA and Manga together have what seemed like twice the shelf space as the "SF" though to be fair there is a separate table which is YA free which adds a few more SFF titles.

In my innocence, I thought romantasy was classed as YA, so I was hoping to avoid it by ignoring that section! Any tips for recognising it if it doen't carry a big "THIS IS ROMANTASY" label?!

 

[HareBrain]

Ooh, where is it? Is it new?

No, apparently it's been there ages! From the main car-park, you bear right under the covered walkway and it's there on your left.

In my innocence, I thought romantasy was classed as YA, so I was hoping to avoid it by ignoring that section! Any tips for recognising it if it doen't carry a big "THIS IS ROMANTASY" label?!

This categorisation as "YA" seems to have got very muddy. Publishers and booksellers market it as YA even though the real core audience for it is readers in their 20s. The uncritical depiction of unhealthy relationships makes a lot of it unsuitable for under-18s, but publishers want young readers because they'll then get into the series and buy the others. I watched a rather demoralising video yesterday claiming that new YA books most people would think suitable for under-18s are getting thin on the ground.

Far as I can see, you can usually avoid romantasy in the main SF section by looking out for these features. Does the cover look like it's trying too hard to be "edgy"? From the blurb, is the female protagonist exactly 18 (i.e. barely legal in the US)? Is there a hint of dark romance featuring a male supernatural being many times her age, or otherwise in a position of power (but still hot)? Does the blurb give any whiff of "enemies to lovers"? Do the pages have black or coloured edges? Does some sixth sense make your fingertips itch as soon as you pick it up, and do you hear, as if across the aether from some far distant haunted realm, the endless ringing of demonic cash registers?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Ooh, where is it? Is it new? I don't recall seeing one when we last visited. (Though thinking about it, that's probably a good few years now. Glum.)

There's a lovely bookshop in Marlborough, with an art gallery attached, for anyone vaguely in or visiting that area. There's also a specialist SFF bookshop in Lymington which I'm hoping to get down to see sometime this/next month for those of us on the South Coast.

And yes, I popped into Waterstones in Winchester today to check, and it's Science Fiction, Young Adult and Manga in that alcove -- no heading of Fantasy, though the alleged SF section was full of it, and I'm sure the YA section has grown since we were last there. In Waterstones' new shop just opened in Romsey, the YA and Manga together have what seemed like twice the shelf space as the "SF" though to be fair there is a separate table which is YA free which adds a few more SFF titles.

In my innocence, I thought romantasy was classed as YA, so I was hoping to avoid it by ignoring that section! Any tips for recognising it if it doen't carry a big "THIS IS ROMANTASY" label?!

if the dragon looks like it will eat you, it’s fantasy. If it looks like it might shag you, it’s Romantasy.

@HareBrain - range is what brings people to us, and most good indies, because everything is curated and chosen by the store. Waterstones are centrally bought and driven by algorithms. So many people just can’t find books they like anymore. They also have a huge monopoly in the U.K. and it’s really not helping readers and, especially, interesting, groovy and downright fabulous mid list authors and small presses (don’t get me started on the margin they take….) - which is most of the writers here, frankly

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Also YA and Romantasy have a big cross over. Very difficult to tell the difference sometimes

 

[Astro Pen]

As a relatively hard SF writer (ie on the other side of the sff coin) I have found it distressing how little proper SF is around these days compared to back in the seventies. The slide really started with Moorcock and others bridging SF and fantasy.
Hard SF, at least in book form, struggles for shelf space. I find it interesting that the opposite seems to me to be the case in cinema. Little fantasy (excluding LOTR of course) but a lot of half decent SF.
How far books and films capture young audience taste I am not sure.
I'll ask @Jo Zebedee who has a finger on the pulse what sort of age bracket is now buying fantasy? Is it teenagers or now a previous generation with youngster's tastes changing?

 

[paranoid marvin]

To be fair to Waterstones, there is only so much room for books, and only so many categories you can shuffle them into.

Whichever bookshelf a librarian/bookseller puts a book on means bugger all as to its actual genre. It's simply an indication of where in the store to look.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

To be fair to Waterstones, there is only so much room for books, and only so many categories you can shuffle them into.

Whichever bookshelf a librarian/bookseller puts a book on means bugger all as to its actual genre. It's simply an indication of where in the store to look.

Nope. Waterstones have plenty of space. They have actively chosen an algorithm based buying model which selects by marketability rather than writing quality. Since they buy so many books (as do the big US chains) and the supermarkets also buy these titles in large numbers, we are now rewarding books-by-numbers. It’s not about space, but profit - a thing most small bookstores dream of, as they buy and select by quality.

I have a tenth of the space of a Waterstones but most customers find the range and diversity to be competitive to them

 

[Jo Zebedee]

As a relatively hard SF writer (ie on the other side of the sff coin) I have found it distressing how little proper SF is around these days compared to back in the seventies. The slide really started with Moorcock and others bridging SF and fantasy.
Hard SF, at least in book form, struggles for shelf space. I find it interesting that the opposite seems to me to be the case in cinema. Little fantasy (excluding LOTR of course) but a lot of half decent SF.
How far books and films capture young audience taste I am not sure.
I'll ask @Jo Zebedee who has a finger on the pulse what sort of age bracket is now buying fantasy? Is it teenagers or now a previous generation with youngster's tastes changing?

Question the first - hard sf us primarily bought by blokes, but women are *by far* the bigger book buyers (and readers) - since publishers mostly focus on sales and marketability, hard sf has struggled. Look to the specialist publishers for it (and support them!) - the last big breakthrough in hard sf was Andy Weir, but Tchaikovsky does okay (he’s on the edge of hard sf) and Peter Hamilton’s new one is doing okay, as is James Corey (and yes, I know they’re all at the softer end of hard sf)

In terms of fantasy there are two diverse markets at the moment

Trad fantasy eg epic is *mostly* bought by older readers and young males (20 ish) bar Terry Pratchett etc who cross ages

Romantasy - blending fantasy with romance - is generally a younger audience with females leading the way (early twenties through to thirties) - it’s easy to dismiss these as ‘fluffy’ but some are very good. Priory of the Orange Tree, for instance, has strong world building

 

[hitmouse]

As a relatively hard SF writer (ie on the other side of the sff coin) I have found it distressing how little proper SF is around these days compared to back in the seventies. The slide really started with Moorcock and others bridging SF and fantasy.
Hard SF, at least in book form, struggles for shelf space. I find it interesting that the opposite seems to me to be the case in cinema. Little fantasy (excluding LOTR of course) but a lot of half decent SF.
How far books and films capture young audience taste I am not sure.
I'll ask @Jo Zebedee who has a finger on the pulse what sort of age bracket is now buying fantasy? Is it teenagers or now a previous generation with youngster's tastes changing?

Moorcock started to strut his stuff properly in the late 60s so it is a bit of a stretch to blame recent trends on material half a century old. Also, taking Moorcock’s oeuvre as a whole, as a key new age writer and editor, he was important in SF’s post-golden age re-invigoration.

 

[Astro Pen]

Moorcock started to strut his stuff properly in the late 60s so it is a bit of a stretch to blame recent trends on material half a century old. Also, taking Moorcock’s oeuvre as a whole, as a key new age writer and editor, he was important in SF’s post-golden age re-invigoration.

Not critical of Moorcock, merely saying that, at least in my memory, he was there at the beginning of the shift toward 'sword and sorcery" as a movement. One which has, to his credit, maintained a strong shelf presence ever since, even as it has undergone mutations in style and audience.
Hard SF was a casualty of this shift, Maybe SF was too crisp and dry, too squeaky clean modernist for the post modern era, though back then I think there was still faith in a technological future, people wanted something else. Some went the S&S route and others like myself went the Ballard road in search of something more deeply human.
(I realise we are drifting off the OP topic here)

 

[AE35Unit]

Waterstones bought Barnes and Noble in 2018.

Our Waterstones looks good. Has a cafe upstairs. But its book stock is lousy. No SF and no music books whatsoever. And what books they do have are pricey.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Our Waterstones looks good. Has a cafe upstairs. But its book stock is lousy. No SF and no music books whatsoever. And what books they do have are pricey.

Comparatively books in the U.K. are cheaper than across the world - by quite a long margin. We don’t have VAT on them which helps. We get customers from Europe, America and Australia who pay for extra luggage to bring books back…

And, honestly, the cinema is a tenner at least for 2 hours entertainment. How long does a book last? And it can be passed along - but there is still a perception they are expensive.

The author has to be paid, the editor and cover designer need to be paid, the shop has to get a cut, paper is expensive

 

[AE35Unit]

When you're unemployed, books are expensive

 

[Jo Zebedee]

When you're unemployed, books are expensive

I agree - but at least you can pick up secondhand beauties

 

[BAYLOR]

I agree - but at least you can pick up secondhand beauties

Over the years , Ive found lots of great stuff in used bookstores .

 

[Overread]

I've always considered "Young Adult" to be a particularly difficult term because its so open ended. From what I can tell it mostly boils down to "won't contain sex scenes" and "might not contain any super intense graphic violence" but they can still contain lots of action and killing and fighting.

It's a really broad category and I've generally seen more and more authors in fantasy aim for it; I suspect because it's generally seen as a bigger market so publishers/editors likely guide people toward it as well. Perhaps what we are simply seeing is that this has happened for so long that fantasy, for the most part, became just the YA section to the point where its easier to just call it one or the other and YA won.

Fantasy, sci-fi and so forth have always been super-broad categories as well.



That said the last time I went into a book store to the fantasy-sci-fi/madeupstuff section I found myself lost and realised that I've not kept up with reading as much as I should have. I could only recognise the superbig names on the shelf and none of the new authors were ones I was at all familiar with!

 

[hitmouse]

YA is a bit of a moveable feast which is probably best viewed as a marketing niche rather than a distinct genre. It is hard to pin down what it is exactly. Much of it is probably read by adults. It is hard to separate from either children’s or adult fiction, outside of personal opinion.

I suspect the perception of what separates children’s/YA/adult fiction changes with time.

When I was a kid in the 70s I had Puffin editions of Watership Down, Earthsea, Alan Garner, Rosemary Sutcliffe.

 

[Toby Frost]

Oh well. Looks like I'll just keep sitting on this four-volume epic fantasy about grown-ups, then. If nothing else, sitting on it gives me a good view.