“Not a girlie book” is a comment one of my friends, a teacher, said about my books, and specifically about Traveler. We discussed it for quite a while, because she is a very good person for me to talk with to understand who my ideal reader is. What it confirmed to me, is that my books are for people who like reading what I do! These days, that tends to be girls with good reading skills from about 10 upwards, who aren’t into ‘girlie’ things like fashion, gossip, the latest boybands or reality tv type of things, and boys who like reading but don’t want super-macho heros all the time.
I’ve never been into ‘girlie’ books other than pony books, which aren’t the same thing at all. I liked school stories, but those were more like Malory Towers with girls getting into scrapes and escaping out of the school dorm at midnight to swim in the lake and then of course there has to be a dramatic rescue (oh, wait, that might have been The Chalet School). I read What Katy Did but seem to remember not liking it that much, although I thought the third in the series was best. Or was that Little Women (Jo’s Boys was by far the best)? And I loved the Gasworks Alley Gang and A Chicken for Christmas. Not heard of those? They sold quite well in their time, they were by Jo Hatcher, and she’s my cousin. But I’ve lost my copies, so I doubt whether you’ll find them in print any more.
There seems to be a greater divide between what is suitable for girls and what is suitable for boys these days, which is strange considering how far we’ve come in equality issues since the 1970s. I occasionally see requests on the Amazon forum for “books my daughter would like that aren’t all girlie or vampires” and ditto for boys that “aren’t all bullying and teenage angst” and I think they’d quite like my books, but of course I can’t post that on there.
My question to you is whether ‘Not a girlie book’ is a reasonable tagline for them? Especially since Traveler is now on B&N, Kobo, Diesel and soon will be on the iBookstore. A nice catchy tagline like that would do me fine.
What do you think?
