The No to Age Banding website, backed by the support of Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Michael Rosen and Jacqueline Wilson
Unless you have been, in Anne Fine's words, "living in a shoe box" you'll know all about the age ranging debate. There is a website where more than a thousand writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, booksellers and parents have signed up to register their objection to it and more names just keep on coming. The arguments have been rehearsed on this blog and I did say, not too long ago in a comments box just round the corner from here, that I wouldn't say anything further on the subject.
I've changed my mind. And that's because while the educational, moral, ethical, financial and commercial reasons against this proposal are well-rehearsed, as far as I know nobody has mentioned that if the plan does go ahead, age banding will have another consequence: it will lead to a two-tier literary landscape.
The authors who sell in their zillions will not be affected because their publishers would not put an age on their covers without their consent and they have all witheld that consent. Horrid Henry, Alex Rider, Lyra, Charlie and Lola, and Harry Potter will quite rightly not submit to the system.
This is partly because these authors have commercial clout, but in the case of Harry Potter at least, it's also because Bloomsbury is a publishing house which is not age banding. Neither are Andersen, Walker Books, or David Fickling books. Other publishers, to their great credit (hats off to HarperCollins and OUP), would not dream of putting anything on the cover of a writer's book without permission. I believe others (Macmillan and Egmont) are also adopting an "ask them and see what they say" approach. This is good news for the opposition.
However, the others - those not even consulted, the less commercial, the unwary, the very new, the overlooked and the '"I don't mind either way" people - will come to be regarded as second-class literary citizens. That means that their books will stand less chance of being stocked by the chains and not more. They will suffer in terms of how seriously they are taken. A kind of literary snobbery may well creep in. Got an age range on your book? You're obviously not important enough.
Some writers (including me, and I have more than 10 publishers) have not once been consulted by anyone about this matter. I know of at least one case where a good and popular and well-respected writer has found an age band on his book without his knowledge. Fortunately, most publishers realise what they have been doing and are now beginning to notice what authors want, but it's too late for some.
