Ooh I like this idea. A real experiment! Test the idea in the field - with volunteers to be in the control group! If authors who opt not to have the label find that their sales have either decreased or remained unchanged against similar measurements for those WITH the age range label…do you think they’d change their minds?

Ooh I’ve just been to read the comments at the Bookseller and seen that YOU started the row!

Very sensible idea - i wonder if anyone will do it…

Well - that’s effectively what Pullman is suggesting. Unless they actually persuade publishers to change their minds and call the whole plan off, those authors will become the control group. Then it will be just a matter of looking at the data.

Hmm. I think it will hurt authors in the bracket immediately below 13/teen. Where most kids are happy to read up in age, a 13- or 14-year-old is quite sniffy about buying something labelled for 9+ or 11+, where they might quite happily of read the book without that label.

So books that are in the ‘young adult’/teen sections won’t have a problem, it’s more books that tend to be in the children’s section but are read by older children (such as the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness) that might get disadvantaged.

I’m not sure that argument holds as strong as it once would have. For a start, we’re all used to “crossover” these days. Then there’s the video games experience – they’ve had VERY large age labels since 2003 – with no obvious impact on sales.

What hurts authors in the bracket below 13/teen is the fact that in this country most boys stop reading at around that 12.

You won’t see many teen/YA books aimed at male readers. They’ve moved on to adult sci-fi, fantasy, rockstar biography or just away from books completely.

So in fact its probably an advantage to be in the 9+ or 11+ band.

And what Peter says re crossover, but again look carefully and you’ll find that crossover really means ‘read by children, young women and mothers’.

Interestingly, Joshua Files going to be banded 9+ here, in Germany it’s 12+. Does that mean German boys don’t stop reading at 12? Or that they are ‘going’ for the crossover market. Hmmm.

If DVDs are anything to go by, age banding varies a lot between different countries on the attitude to components like sex, use of weapons and other types of violence. Some DVDs of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer are age rated 12+ here, but 18 in Ireland.