Topics of the YA Mafia

I came home from school today and opened Twitter to find a plethora of tweets about the YA mafia, a topic that both Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier had discussed on their blogs. I've spent most of this afternoon reading all the blog posts and comments about the YA mafia, as well as a bunch of related, older posts.

I have so much to say. There's so much here to discuss.

First, what is the YA mafia?

It's the idea of a tightly-knit group of YA authors who blurb, promote, and review each others' books who can also ruin your (possibly non-existent) career if you insult them or give them a bad review. It's a concern primarily for those who are both book bloggers/reviewers and aspiring authors.

It's also not real. But the issue is a bit more complex than that. There are a couple of facets at play here and some of them are legitimate concerns that I'd like to talk about.

1. The idea that there is a clique of YA authors who blurb and promote each other's books because they are friends.
2. Negative reviews harming the possible writing career of the reviewer.

CLIQUES IN YA

I may be in the minority of readers/aspiring authors here, but I don't care if YA authors are cliquey. Do I think they are? No. I think that authors who are, after all, colleagues, have every right to be friends with each other, read each others work, enjoy each others books and blurb and promote them. The idea that a blurb on a book cover should be accompanied by a disclaimer that the two authors are friends strikes me as ridiculous. 

Authors are allowed to be friends. As a reader, writer, aspiring author, I'm glad they're friends. Writing is lonely. Having somebody understand how difficult it is, sympathize, talk you off the ledge and discuss books in your genre with is great. If an author likes a friend's book better than another author's book, maybe they honestly think their friend's book is better. Everyone has a bias. Knowing the person behind the book often does help you appreciate the book more. That's not a bad thing. To me, there's nothing ethically wrong about authors sticking together and cheering each other on.

NEGATIVE REVIEWS ARE BAD FOR THE ASPIRING AUTHOR

I don't know if this is true, but I don't know it's not. Many authors that I hugely respect and admire, including Maureen Johnson and Justine Larbalestier, say that authors don't have the power to make sure that their agent or editor doesn't take on a blogger, even one that gave them a scathing review. But by the same token I've been told (me, personally) by agents that they won't take on a client whose publicly spoken against another client's book. I've also been told by an author that she'd be offended if her agent took on a blogger who hated her books. 

Whether or not reviews can harm your writing career, it is a legitimate worry. For some, there is an undercurrent of fear running through all of this. Though I gave up reviewing I second-guess nearly every. single. thing. that I say on this blog because of what happened last month during the #querychat and ensuing posts by Stacia Kane. It may be true that the only one who can ruin my (nonexistent) career is me, but it's equally true that there's a fear that I could ruin that career without even realizing it. That's the terrifying part. Not that there's a secret YA mafia out there, not that an author is going to be offended by something I say, but that somehow I'm doing something terribly and obviously wrong and there's no way to take it back. 

My personal opinion on this is that there's not actually anything wrong with aspiring authors reviewing books honestly and critically, but I have no power. And obviously as much as I see nothing wrong with it, I don't have the fortitude to stand by that and continue reviewing books myself. If I don't think I was doing anything wrong, why stop? Because honestly I have heard enough that makes me worry that I'm hurting myself and burning unbuilt bridges with those in the publishing world by reviewing. Not that there's a "blacklist" of publishing or a YA mafia, but that I would step on the wrong toes and hurt my relationships with authors who might someday be my colleagues. 

IN CONCLUSION...

I know I'm not the person to talk about this, but I wanted to toss my hat into the fray because this is an issue that's close to me and since I was mentioned in Larbalestier's post (in Phoebe North's comment), I wanted to give you my perspective on the surrounding issues.