Meg Cabot,
I discovered
your writing when I was in middle school. I first read Princess Diaries when I
was in 6th grade. I connected with Mia because I often felt I was an
outcast and struggled with public speaking. I still remembering lying down on a
church pew waiting for my Mother to finish our Church Choir practice and
discovering the mind of Mia and her quest for self-actualization. I have
followed all of your written works since then, particularly enjoying your newest
Abandon series. I learned more about myself with each book of yours I read. I
enjoyed that your characters were not necessarily born or started the books as
these epically strong females, but became them. They grew and developed and
learned to be strong women.
As an avid
reader I was quite upset when the New Adult genre took over in the past few
years. While I want to read books aimed for college students, as a college
student myself, I do not want to read graphic sexual scenes or intense
violence. Most disappointing was the many young adult authors whose words I had
grown up with and enjoyed switching their series midway or starting a new
series in the new adult genre. The genre began gaining momentum and popularity
with authors the same year you were finishing the Heather Wells series. Rumors
abounded as to whether or not you would follow the crowd and make the series
switch into New Adult. I wanted to thank you for not changing the series at the
end by graphically going into detail about their sex lives.
Research has shown that readers are
Exposed to about 30.23 acts of aggression after reading one hour of novels
compared to 18.46 acts of aggression when watching an hour of TV (Coyne &
Archer, 2004). I think that the new adult genre, with warnings for sex and
violence intended for mature audiences, will likely only cause this divide to
increase and books to show even more aggression.
I want to end this letter by asking
you to use your influence to show the increased need for Amazon to better label
and categorize their books. You are already an example to fellow authors that
you do not need sex to sell and that success for a series can come without
creating novels that many readers may be uncomfortable or unable to read due to
graphically sexual scenes. But since amazon is still working on labeling its
products, especially new adult kindle books, with warnings it can be difficult
for consumers or parents to realize that the book they have purchased for
someone or themselves will contain inappropriate scenes midway through.
I sincerely hope you consider what
I have said and continue to write clean books as well as influence others to
either write clean books or use warnings for others to be aware of what they
are purchasing! Books don’t have a rating system so we rely on the genre and
the warnings of sites like amazon or goodreads to help insure we have a clean
book. Help continue the campaign for increased labeling and awareness.
Thanks,
Lisa Norton
