Perhaps it’s the hour.

nessie,
i think you have to write the characters and crime you feel comfy with. writing just to hook in a particular audience - and one you can't even be sure exists anyway - will take its toll on both your writing and your mental health because when you're writing a novel you have to live with it for a long while. I also write crime but it's what you'd call 'cosy' and there's always a strong element of humour and romance in it. I would feel uncomfortable writing graphic sex and violence and fortunately I know my audience would to, so it suits us both. But if you actually enjoy writing like that, then go for it.

I was wondering about the display you mentioned - could it be that it was actually aimed at kids buyingpresents at xmas for their parents? Can't see how real adults would take the slightest notice of it!

This is not completely off the point - it's re. women and cat stories - last week I went to a talk by Tracey Emin, well-known member of the Royal Academy of Arts. She told us (packed audience in Purcell Room, mainly young, both male and female) all about her cat, Docket, his peculiar eating habits and how much she loves him. It was a brilliant talk! Huge applause and a long queue to buy her book.

A woman in her mid-forties, talking about her cat - does that sound promising?

Frances

Think I''d rather have her effin and blindin rolling drunk. Never understood the cat and middle-aged women thing or th cutesy industry that has built up around it, personally. Ok kittens are cute, but less so when they indiscriminately rip apart even cuter robins.

On the Barnes and Noble thing, the marketing ploy of putting books for either sex on display is not a very good one, but to be fair there's only so many ways you can present books to browsers in a shop. I think it's less about a division in reading material between the sexes and more about desperate marketing teams trying to think of new ideas.

I personally don't worry about whether the word love is in the title of a book (I bought Emma's book, I bought The People's Act of Love etc etc). Neither do I worry if a man or woman has written it. I simply don't care about the sex of the author.

Having said that, if pushed I would prefer a muscular thriller to Chicklit or Romance (but maybe that's because I have at least one major powerboat chase per week and can be found having a gun battle while hanging from a cliff most weekends).

Believe me, nothing about Tracey Emin is cutsey! Admittedly however, she was talking to an audience predisposed to love everything she said.

Frances

My whole attitude to the business of bookshopa and their displays was changed recently.

The chief book buyer for W H Smith told me that she was at a non-fiction YA author's event in one of her shops. He sells to boys who generally don't buy books but feel okay in W H Smith because of the mags and DVDs and so on. He mentioned that there would be more of his books stocked in a big bookshop than there could be in a Smiths, if anyone wanted to buy more. At question-time, one lad put his hand up and asked very tentatively, 'Is it okay to wear trainers in a bookshop?'

There's a whole swathe of the population - including the 1/3 who never read a book at all - for whom bookshops are completely baffling: daunting, labelled in ways that don't make sense, somewhere where you're liable to make a fool of yourself, and where if there is anything you want you may not be able to find it. I KNOW displays like this seem condescending, sexist, narrow-minded, whatever, to the likes of us. But if they say to a lad like that, to whom a bookshop is such a strange and rarefied place that they might not let him in in his normal clothes, 'Look! Here are some books your mum might like - come and have a look!' how can that be a bad thing?

Emma

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This, from The Bookseller, about the way Waterstone's is trying to address this problem:

Through the doors on the left, familiar Waterstone's shelves on carpeted floors house the usual stock sections and range. But to the right, exposed brickwork and air ducts, bleached wooden floors and lots of space between displays give the store a much lighter, more modern feel. Here, genres have been completely rethought, and split into many more sub-sections than previously; biography shelves have "Celebrity" and "Painful Lives" divisions. Colourful photographs and graphics enhance text section banners, and a front-of-store "marketplace" showcases bestsellers and offers, on tables that are lower and piled less high than in other branches. It is all intended to help lead shoppers to what they want more quickly. The changes followed feedback that some customers found Waterstone's stuffy, "wordy" and daunting, and did not browse according to traditional categories. In response, booksellers now walk the store's 9,000 sq ft of floor space looking to advise customers—stock is put out only in the evenings, giving staff more time to help in peak hours. "A lot of people are intimidated by bookshops, or get frustrated when they can't find what they're looking for," says manager Alison Wood. "Everything we're doing is aimed at making it much easier for them."

Thanks for that, Emma.

It's easy to look at the issue from a narrow viewpoint, I guess.

I'm still a bit uneasy about the selection that's going on though... won't it perperuate a myth?

Vanessa

My 14-year-old has said that she would feel more comfortable in bookshops and libraries if they placed the YA books by the adult ones and not the children's. She feels uncomfortable and not cool, I guess, with being surrounded by small kids.

My 14-year-old has said that she would feel more comfortable in bookshops and libraries if they placed the YA books by the adult ones and not the children's. She feels uncomfortable and not cool, I guess, with being surrounded by small kids.

That's such a good idea, Jem - and YA books are often read by older adults, too.

Frances

I think so, too. Is there anyone I could pass this onto who is anyone, if you get my meaning?

Libraries in the USA do this already, and places like Borders do this in this country, too. It's a great idea (not so much for me - I like being able to keep an eye on my little ones as I browse the YA section, but I'm not exactly the target market!) But yesterday I was looking in the adult section of Waterstones and I was amazed by how many YA books were shelved with adult books anyway.

<Added>

I still think you should try to pass your message on, though, Jem! The YA books I saw were masquerading as adult fiction.

Luisa, I would. But I don't really know who I could deliver it to who has any influence.

My 14-year-old has said that she would feel more comfortable in bookshops and libraries if they placed the YA books by the adult ones and not the children's.

We tried this in our bookshop. But nobody could find the section! The way we have it now is quite nice because the YA/teen shelves lead off the main children's section, which is marked off from the rest of the shop by a purple carpet. So teenagers don't have to step onto the 'Patronising Purple Carpet' to get to their books, but it is right next to the children's section, so it's still not hard to find.

'Is it okay to wear trainers in a bookshop?'

Awwwww… don’t you just want to take him by the hand and lead him in…

On the other hand, two minutes standing outside any average bookshop would give him the answer.