Malinda Lo
Blog
Sep 14, 2011
I have numbers! Stats on LGBT Young Adult Books Published in the U.S. – Updated 9/15/11
On Monday I noted that in light of this post from two authors who were asked by an agent to de-gay their book, I was planning to do some statistics wrangling and see if I could quantify some of what’s happening in LGBT YA publishing. Apparently my latent economics major is raring to go (or else I just really want to procrastinate, which is a distinct possibility), because I spent last night making pie charts.
To get my data, I used this bibliography of LGBT YA compiled by librarian/researcher Christine Jenkins, which lists books published in English from 1969-2009. I supplemented that bibliography with information for 2009-2011 kindly given to me by researcher Michael Cart, who specializes in LGBT children’s and YA books. Mr. Cart’s data for 2011 was incomplete because the year isn’t finished yet, but because I’ve been keeping track of LGBT YA novels for Diversity in YA, I topped off the list with a number of books I know have been published or will be published this year.1
The ultimate list of 371 titles is, therefore, as accurate as I could make it. I’m sure I missed some titles, but hopefully not too many.
The data showed that from 1969 to 2011, the number of LGBT YA novels has risen somewhat steadily, with a few dips in various years.
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The most notable recent dip occurred in 2010, in which only 11 LGBT YA titles were published, compared to 36 in 2009 and 25 in 2011. This might be a reflection of the economy, which crashed in 2008, and most publishers shrank their lists in 2009. It’s nice to see, however, that the trend continues upward once again this year.
Then I took a closer look at LGBT YA published from 2000 to 2011, first splitting it up by publisher.
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The category “Other Publishers” includes independent presses like Foglight Press and Alyson, as well as medium-sized publishing houses such as Disney Hyperion, Bloomsbury/Walker, Amulet, Candlewick, and Flux.
When the number of books published from 2000-2011 are added up, this is the distribution of LGBT YA among American publishers:
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As you can see, 30% of LGBT YA is published by non-big 6 publishers, with Simon & Schuster leading the pack of the big 6. However, this data doesn’t conclusively prove that S&S is the the most gay-friendly publisher, because it doesn’t take into account the percentage of LGBT YA published by a publisher in relation to the total number of YA titles published by that publisher.
For example, let’s say a hypothetical Big Publishing House published 300 YA titles in 2010. If only 5 of those YA titles were LGBT-inclusive, that amounts to 1.6% of its entire YA list. On the other hand, if Medium Publishing House published 150 YA titles in 2010, and 5 of those titles are LGBT-inclusive, that’s 3.3%. If I had about a zillion more hours, I’d try to figure out the proportion of LGBT YA published by each of the major publishers in order to get a more accurate picture of how gay-friendly they are.2
I was also very interested in seeing the proportion of LGBT YA books that focused on boys, girls, and trans characters. The common wisdom is that books about gay boys vastly outnumber those about gay girls, and the numbers prove this:
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I also discovered that a number of LGBT YA books weren’t actually about an LGBT teen, but rather were about a straight teen and his LGBT parents or adult guardians.
Adding the 2000-2011 YA titles together and splitting it out by gender brings us this handy pie chart:
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This shows us that 50% of LGBT YA books are about boys, with only 25% about girls. I find this extremely depressing, especially considering the predominant readership of YA is female.
Even more depressing is the fact that only 4% of LGBT YA books are about transgender or genderqueer characters. The only light at the end of the tunnel about this statistic is that since 2007, every year has seen publication of at least one trans/genderqueer title, and in 2011 we have three (including one book that includes both trans and lesbian characters).
Finally, according to Harold Underdown’s YA Books Are Booming–but not That Much, there were approximately 4,000 YA titles published in 2010. That same year, only 11 LGBT YA titles were published. That amounts to 0.2% of YA books. That fraction is frankly too small to make a pie chart out of.
The numbers aren’t much better for this year. If we assume no growth and stick with 4,000 YA titles, we have 25 LGBT YA titles within that, which amounts to 0.6%. That means:
Less than 1% of YA novels have LGBT characters.
My takeaways from this number crunching are:
- I often hear people saying that publishers aren’t willing to publish LGBT YA, or that each publisher only publishes one LGBT YA per year. This, statistically, isn’t true. Every one of the big 6 publishers (and plenty of smaller ones) publish LGBT YA titles, and several of them do publish more than one per year.
- However, the proportion of LGBT YA to non-LGBT YA is so tiny as to be laughable.
- The good news is, the numbers have continued to increase over time, and other than the dip in 2010, the increase has sped up since 2000.
- The bad news is, the G in LGBT far outpaces L, B, or T.
I think, overall, it’s a two steps forward, one step back kind of situation. And I think that true growth in the number of LGBT YA novels will only come through active effort on the part of agents, editors, and publishers, to seek out and acquire LGBT YA novels.3 I know that change happens one person at a time, but simultaneously, it’s hard to not be discouraged by the stats.
Updated 9/15/11:
Several people have asked me to share the bibliography of books I used to make these lovely pie charts. The bibliography for books from 1969-2008 is available online here at Christine Jenkins’ site. For 2009-2011, Michael Cart shared his list of books with me, and then I supplemented it with my own list. I combined our lists into this handy PDF of 2009-2011 LGBTQ YA titles that you can download.
I can guarantee you that this list of probably not complete. Someone on Twitter yesterday told me I’d omitted the Pretty Little Liars series, and after reading her tweet I realized I’d also omitted the Gossip Girl series. This is true! My question is: Does every book in those series count? Do they all contain LGBTQ main or secondary characters? Also, sadly I should note that even if I double the number of titles on the list, the total percentage of LGBTQ YA will still only be approximately 1% of all YA books.
- After I compiled all these lists together, I sorted through it to identify trends/gaps. The bibliographies provided by Ms. Jenkins and Mr. Cart feature LGBT characters as main characters, as supporting characters, as parents, and sometimes they feature LGBT issues as a backstory. But I noticed when going through the original 1969-2009 bibliography that it omitted several major fantasy series that include LGBT secondary characters. I think this is because LGBT characters have only recently appeared in genre YA. In the past, they only appeared in realistic “problem novels.” Since the bibliographies already included books with secondary LGBT characters, I went ahead and added in those major series, as well as a few contemporary YA novels from the past few years that I’ve read and know contain secondary lesbian characters, but were omitted from the original bibliographies. Finally, when I went through the books from 2000-2011 to determine the percentage of books with boy vs. girl main characters, I removed the few middle-grade books and books published by non-American publishers that I found. [↩]
- I’ll note here that I’m published by Little, Brown, which in 2011 has published 4 LGBT YA titles, three of which are about girls, and one which is about an FTM trans boy. [↩]
- Some people will see that negatively as affirmative action or quotas, which is also disheartening because that misunderstands the purpose of affirmative action entirely. [↩]
So glad you brought this to light.
I reviewed 11 books that were published in 2010 – does that mean I got every single one? Or are our lists different? Here’s mine:
http://daisyporter.org/queerya/?cat=179
I am curious about how many of those characters are cisgendered and high on the Kinsey scale versus being cis and closer to the middle of the scale. One of the things that I always felt growing up as a bisexual woman was that I felt like I had to choose– I was blessed to live in a place where people were accepting of the fact that I liked girls, but still questioned whether I could like girls AND boys. ASH is one of the few books I’ve read that made me feel like a book was actually being written for the kind of young person I was, which is how I looked up your blog in the first place.
These stats are both disheartening but also make me feel like I need to light a fire under my bottom and finish one of my books.
Huh, I had been thinking for a while now that I seemed to find a lot more gay characters in books compared to lesbians (and already knew that bisexual and transgender characters are completely underrepresented) but I hadn’t realized it was 2:1 difference. That’s rather depressing, come on YA peeps, we need more diversity here!
Wow, I am impressed by the detail and also loveliness of these charts! This is quite helpful since I’m doing a blog post on YA in the coming weeks and wanted to touch upon LGBT YA and the Tweetchat yesterday with the #yesgayya hastag. It’s also good for personal reference since I’m working on a contemporary LGBT YA book and to know the outlook for GAY YA.
Hopefully these stats get bigger and bigger especially in proportion to what gets published. I’ll do my part and keep purchasing!
Thanks, Malinda!
This is a brilliant post and full of amazingly useful information. Thank you so much!
Great post. It’s interesting to see all the numbers laid out like that.
I did have one issue though: “I find this extremely depressing, especially considering the predominant readership of YA is female.”
Why is this a negative thing? Yes, it would be lovely to see more L, T and B fiction. I’m really supporter of more bisexual representation in YA, but why would you find it depressing that gay boys make up 50% of LGBT books? There’s nothing wrong with gay boys. Not to mention, you mentioned the reason for it right there. Most of our readership is girls. And girls like reading about gay boys. Look at fanfiction as a prime example. Almost the entirety of fanfiction is written by girls, usually in our target demographic, though sometimes a little older, and most of it is slash fiction. Taking two (most often straight) boy characters and putting them together. This isn’t a trend for anime or manga fans, it spans across movie/TV/books/anime/manga fanfiction. Yes, it’s unfortunate that we can’t shine light on other aspects of LGBT characters. But if girls who are familiar with slash fiction pick up more books about gay boys, they may encounter a lesbian or transgendered teen in those books. They might be more open to reading books solely on them. And the more they read, the more publishers are going to buy those books. It’s win all around, I think.
Now the real question is, how many of those books features a LGBT main character as opposed to a side character?
This so funny, because I blogged/whined about this just a couple of days ago and then BOOM! it’s all over the internet. And absolutely not because of me, but it’s a funny coincidence.
Mostly, I whined about there not being any good LGBT YA in Sweden, not written in Swedish and not translated into Swedish. But I realise now that that’s not true, there’s lots of LGBT YA in Sweden, but the roles are switched, there are A LOT of books about young lesbians, but almost none about young gays. I don’t know about the Transgender part, because I don’t read it, but I know there are *some*. And this is just based on my experience while browsing shelves, online bookstores and book blogs, but I have on the other hand been browsing the shelves and bookstores for quite a while, so I’m quite sure about the L/G/B part, but as said, I don’t really know anything about the T part.
And I have no idea where I’m going with this comment, sorry. I was just surprised that there is such a big difference between L/G literature in US and Sweden.
Malinda, thank you! You’ve gone to a ton of work. I’m going to use these statistics at a LBGT panel I’m on this weekend (readers before the panel are Brian Farrey and David Levithan, woo woo!). People will be very interested.
THANK YOU for doing the number-crunching on this! This topic is something I wonder about a lot. I love having cold statistics rather than relying on vague perceptions of trends. As a writer who had an LGBTQ YA book published in 2010, I am staggered to hear that there were only about 10 others. (I think I must have read them all, then.) I am published by an eensy-weensy press (with 100% of their books being LGBTQ) so although I have to worry about making my book actually appear in a libraries and bookstores, I don’t have to worry about unconscious homophobia in my publishing milieu. One kind of invisibility versus another. Anyways, this statistical information will be incalculably valuable to me in a webinar on lesbian YA I am doing in a few weeks, and I can imagine that so many people will find a use for your info. I hope it was as satisfying to do as it is to read the finished pie charts!
Wow. Great post. Thank you for doing the number crunching, because I’d never be able to figure this out!
I’ve noticed the unbalance in terms of books about young gay women and books about young gay men. Hopefully in the coming years, we can see more girls falling in love with other girls!
Tea–I’ve noticed how bisexuality gets lost in the shuffle of LGBT YA fiction. It’s so frustrating!
Would it be possible for you to share the title/author list you used for these numbers? I’m on the Rainbow Project committee this year and we aren’t finding many titles. Any help would be much appreciated.
Malinda, you rock! Thank you for doing this.
I looked through your GBLT bibliography list… it does not include the Pretty Little Liars series (which features a bisexual girl as one of the 4 main characters, and whose sexuality is a large focus of the series) AT ALL. It doesn’t include ANY of the books.
It’s also doesn’t include Hex Hall or A Great and Terrible Beauty, both series have lesbians in them (although Hex Hall’s lesbian is a minor character, the other series has them as main characters).
All of these are YA books featuring GBLT characters, but they do not advertise themselves as “THIS IS A GAY BOOK.” They portray GBLT kids in a normal environment, where the plot is not 100% about gay issues, but treats it as just a natural character trait.
I think your stats and graphs are way off base, if they’re only including GBLT “issue” books. Pretty much every lesbian YA book I enjoyed reading is not on your list. :/
It would be interesting (although difficult) to compare indie LGBT books to tradpubbed. I suspect that there’s a lot more diversity out there than most people think
Still, to get more diversity into the mainstream would be nothing but good, and it’s up to everyone in the industry to work to achieve that.
Wow – you’ve answered questions that I’ve been brewing about, and while the answers are hardly encouraging (I’m trying to sell a YA fantasy with a gay hero), it’s good to know.
I’d be curious to know how many of those 25 (in 2011) or 11 (in 2010) feature LGBT main characters. There’s progress in including LGBT storylines in the mainstream, but I feel there’s a big difference between a story where LGBT youth are front and center, versus sidekicks, subplots, or colorful characters on the periphery of non-LGBT youths’ experiences (the parallels to youth of color in YA are apparent).
I’m working on a project based on the hypothesis that LGBT youth read more, on average, than the general young adult population. This is based on my experience as a social worker for LGBT youth. I have some preliminary indications, but it’s an important question to be explored, ultimately to make the case that publishers are missing out on a vital market; besides the fact that many LGBT adults read LGBT YA.
Wow Malinda – what a great article. It would be really interesting to see your full bibliography… I do see on my blog as well (where my focus is YA and MG with main queer characters) that there are far more YA books with Gay main characters (147) than with Lesbian main characters (76) Bisexual main characters (10) Transgender main characters (13) or questioning main characters (24) – though I include a number of self-published titles as well and there’s some overlap there, as I’m trying to be comprehensive.
Being able to state – as you inform and empower us all to do – that YA books with GLBTQ main characters comprise far less than 1% of what’s being published by traditional publishers itself is a strong argument that we need MORE! I’ll be referencing this post and your stats in my panel on diversity at kidlitcon 2011 this Saturday. Thanks! Lee
I’m not surprised to see S&S leading the big names in publishing gay YA. David Gale is a badass.
I agree totally with this. Could we not say it’s “bad news” that male gay characters happen to have the highest representation? Call it maybe “less good news” that the others are not as represented, but let’s be a little more careful about stringing together “bad news” and “gay males” shall we?
Agree about bisexuality being lost in YA, or being erased as a ‘stepping stone’ to becoming a lesbian. One of the best portrayals I’ve read is the love interest in the Australian YA novel, About a Girl by Joanne Horniman. The love interest is written as a bi character and I really related to her part of the story!
Any good titles published in Sweden in English that you’d like to share?!
Thank you so much, Malinda, for putting this together! It’s a fantastic resource for looking at what’s out there and at the current trends. And, hopefully, it’s encouraging for more writers to get writing LGBT stories!
Melinda, so much good work here, thank you. I’d just included Scott Traey and Rose Fox’s interesting pieces in my new column today (Writing on the Ether – http://ow.ly/6viIc ). And based on what I see Scott wisely stressing in his work, are you able to tell, without going to a lot more trouble, how many of the books that factor into your research are actually about LBGTQ characters? Or is it just too hard weed those out from the ones that have secondary and peripheral LBGTQ characters in them? Thanks again -
I just uploaded the 2009-11 list, so you can check to see if we have the same books or if one of us missed something!
Thank you for that kind comment about Ash! I haven’t read all these books (obviously) but I do know that bisexual characters are very few and far between among them.
I think you just answered my own (unspoken) question of why there are more books about boys than girls.
Yes, straight girls love boys, and they definitely love gay boys — but note I said “straight” girls. It is my experience that queer girls, or girls who are bi or questioning, want to read books about GIRLS who are bi, lesbian, or questioning. Sure, they can identify with some boys’ experiences, but to be honest, coming out is a bit different for boys and girls. So my being depressed about that statistic comes from the perspective of a queer girl. I’m thinking of queer girls here. There’s so much about boys in our society. Girls need to get their own too.
You’re amazing! Thank you for being such a force in getting this information out onto the internet.
That’s so interesting! Go Sweden! Seriously, the more I hear about Sweden, the more awesome of a place I think it is.
I think you were looking at the 1969-2008 bibliography, and you’re right, it doesn’t include some of those books. But in my own calculations I added in Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle series, as well as Cassie Clare’s Mortal Instruments, Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tales, and Sarah Rees Brennan’s Demon’s Lexicon series. I just uploaded the bibliography for 2009-11 above if you’re really curious. Plenty of the books from 1969-2008, also, do not advertise themselves as “THIS IS A GAY BOOK.” (Although, there’s nothing wrong with that in my opinion!) Many of them are about straight teens who have an adult guardian who is LGBT and is simply there as a background character.
And actually I don’t think the stats are way off base. Even if I doubled the number of books, the total percentage of LGBT YA would still be only 1% of all YA. If you have specific titles, please share them though. (E.g., which of the PLL books include the lesbian character? All of them or just specific ones? There’s a lot of them!) It’s great to add more books to the list!
I couldn’t determine how many of those 2010 or 2011 books contained main vs. secondary LGBT characters. I think that in the past, books were included on Jenkins’ list if they even mentioned gayness, because it was so rare in YA fiction. Today I think the methods by which we judge a book to include LGBT characters is different. There are more books with main LGBT characters now, and sometimes yeah, I don’t think a secondary gay character cuts it anymore. And yet some of the books with secondary gay characters are among the most bestselling of YA novels — so does their increased exposure outweigh the sidekick stuff? Interesting to think about.
Thanks, Lee! I uploaded the 2009-11 bibliography above if you want to take a look at it.
No, I couldn’t tell, but the number of main LGBT characters is definitely increasing. Then again, the number of books with gay sidekicks is also increasing.
I just uploaded the 2009-11 list above, so hopefully that will be helpful to you!
Well done. Great work. You’ve made it impossible to argue that things are just fine as they are.
The entire Pretty Little Liars series is about 4 girls who are best friends. There are 4 points of view, and all 4 girls are treated equally as protagonists. One of those four, Emily, is bisexual (in the tv show they made her a lesbian). She is in every. single. book. She’s sweet and spunky, deals with her sexuality AND other things throughout the series. So yes, the entire… 10 books now. A ten book series featuring a bisexual female protagonist.
I checked your 2009-2011 bibliography, and none of the PLL books are on there. Haha… I don’t know if 10 books would really make much of a dent, but I worry that if you’re missing one of the most popular YA series out there right now, what else are you missing in your list?
(I think I’m coming off very antagonistic. I don’t mean to be! I think these stats are great, and the information you’re spending time to provide is helpful, especially about particular publishers. I just am trying to make it accurate? heh heh)
I said this below, but I thought I’d say it here, too… the entire Pretty Little Liars series features a very strong female bisexual protagonist. Early in the series she struggles with her feelings for girls, and then about halfway through the series, she realizes she has feelings for guys, too. She makes the excellent statement, “Maybe I just fall in love with people, you know? Maybe their gender doesn’t matter to me.” She worries about maybe being mistaken about being a lesbian, and eventually concludes that no, she likes both genders. It’s very real, and the story is a gripping thriller, so she is involved in other things besides her sexuality. I know the book is not everyone’s cup of tea… but I’m a bisexual girl too, and I’m always looking for more books featuring bi girls. I was overjoyed to find PLL. haha.
Would it be possible, maybe, to create a list that people can contribute to? Since not all of us can read everything… but those who DO read the book can say whether the characters were minor, or major characters… and if, like, 4 people all agree that the character wasn’t a major character, it could be moved to another list?
Probably not something you’d be able to do, since you’re involved in other stuff, but since so many of us are interested and willing to help, maybe someone could pick up the idea? If I knew more about computers I’d offer… haha.
Thanks. I appreciate your passion in talking about the series, which I can see that you love.
I bet PLL (and Gossip Girl) aren’t on there because they’re not exactly like other YA. I mean, they’re produced by Alloy Entertainment, which is a company that packages novels and sells them as concepts to corporations. They’re not published in the same manner as the other books, which tend to come through agents representing individual authors. It’s a different category of publishing entirely. That doesn’t necessarily mean they shouldn’t be on the list, it’s just an attempt at explaining why they’re not.
Because of the way they’re published (by entertainment, not traditional publishing), it makes me wonder if the bi character is more for shock value. I hope not, from the bottom of my heart, but it makes me wonder.
This is fantastically useful and interesting – and I think you’re spot on in your conclusions! Looking forward to having a good look at your 2009-2011 list. I’ve just finished compiling my own bibliography of LGBT YA and children’s books (as part of my PhD research) and I have 557 that are currently in print. It’s not online yet as I only just finished it but I could email it to you if you are interested?
Thanks again for doing this work (and for writing your amazing books!!)
Ladies got needs, son. *nods vehemently* I was having a twitterdebate on this very topic yesterday. Thank you for the numbers and the wise words: I am almost as inept with wisdom as I am with numbers, but this is a fabulous and enlightening post.
Hey Liz! I was stoked to see your comment: I’m aiming to start a PhD in the UK next fall in LGBT YA and children’s books after finishing an MA on the same subject two years ago–I’d love to be in touch with you! If you’re up for chatting, send me a line: erica[dot]gillingham[at]gmail[dot]com. Hope to hear from you!
The dichotomy is very weird to me. If thousands of young girls are reading a book about a bisexual character whose struggle is very real, and very relatable, and who falls in love with sweet and charming girls and guys and where you can’t put the book down because you want to know what happens to her… who cares who published it? Just because they’re published “for entertainment” (um, aren’t all books?) … why does that matter?
And the entire book is full of girls doing “shocking” things… dating their teachers, shoplifting, having eating disorders, getting molested by their friend’s dad… The gay girl was, honestly, the tamest of all of them. Haha.
I admit I know nothing about publishing. I just read.
On a largely unrelated note, Christine Jenkins was one of my library school profs. I’m reasonably certain that if you contacted her, she’d put you in touch with some grad students working on similar projects in the department, because I know there were several just while I was there.
So what *does* make these lists? Protagonists? POV characters? “Major” secondary characters?
I’m finding this whole discussion rather interesting. When I sold my first YA novel, it was from 3 different points of view and one of them (Cory) was a lesbian, though that information was not in the proposal, so when my editor and I decided to rewrite the book from Astrid’s POV ONLY, I know for a fact that Cory’s sexuality had nothing to do with that (we also cut Phil’s — straight — POV). But I didn’t change the storyline, which is that Astrid is not aware of Cory’s sexuality. Thus, in Rampant, it isn’t clear that Cory’s a lesbian, and doesn’t become clear to clueless Astrid until she starts dating another girl in Ascendant.
The change in POV also “downgrades” Cory and Phil from main characters to secondary characters.
I think there has been a definitely uptick in the prevalence of gay secondaries…
I did contact her, but she’s on sabbatical this fall.
That’s why I followed up with Michael Cart, who has worked with her on this issue as well.
It is explained in the footnote #1 above. From what I could tell, Jenkins and Cart were being generous in including certain books on their bibliographies, which is understandable since there were just so few books in the past. I tried to follow their practice same in the additions I made, but that does come up against the question of whether the qualifications need to change in order to better reflect the *current* state of LGBT YA.
Thanks! And you’re welcome!
Sure, email the list to me at mlo at malindalo.com. That would be great! I can’t promise to do anything with it right now, since I’ve already spent way too much excellent procrastinatory time on this
but I’d be interested in seeing it. In fact, if anybody wants to take up the suggestion that someone else in the comments raised, to create a public bibliography that people can work on together, that would be fab in my opinion.
This is a fascinating discussion, and as a numbers dork as well as a book guy, I’m impressed.
However, one thing that hasn’t been mentioned or (possibly) considered is that many LGBT novels are not published as YA despite teenage characters (though it looks like some are counted in the bibliography while others are not). At Kensington, we have regularly published 12-15 gay and lesbian books per year, many of them appropriate for YA readers. I’m grateful for the recognition of Michael Griffo in the list, but that’s only because our KTeen imprint is very new. THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS by K.M. Soehnlein and A SECRET EDGE by Robin Reardon, among others, are by and large YA, but due to the whims of publishing, sold as adult books. Which leads me to wonder just how many other books fall into the same category.
And it also makes me ask, why are we assuming that teenagers are only reading YA books?
thanks for compiling these stats!
As a bookseller, I delight in steering YA readers to books as fabulous as your Ash instead of the retro-sexist supernatural tripe that pollutes that market. It’s very sad seeing that publishers are so unwilling to publish and promote (and I’ve never seen any heavy promotion done on books with LGBT characters) YA books with LGBT characters — especially since the target audience is in a time of their lives where LGBT visibility is absolutely vital. A voracious reader of YA books when I was a teenager, I’m sad to remark that I probably would have had a lot easier time with my own sexual preferences had anything but heterosexuality been positively depicted in the books I consumed. We all have friends and family who have lost the fight over the despair of being different in a world intolerant of those differences. Most of us even know that depression keenly ourselves. YA LGBT lit could do a lot to ease that incredible burden of shame and invisibility. That it doesn’t is something that needs to be addressed more often than it is. Thank you for your work!
This is very interesting and disheartening data. Yet also oddly inspiring – since it gives us all great reasons to read, purchase, publish, and write more LGBTQ YA books. I, for one, would love to someday write a novel and add it to this collection.
Thanks for putting this together! And yes, an online, editable, comprehensive bibliography would be excellent.
I found you here too.
I was referred here by Madam Hardy from Whatever.
I think the article by Brown and Smith tries to make two points. The first point is that LGBT characters are underrepresented in YA literature. Your work here demonstrates that clearly. I agree that your methodology will under-report the number of novels with LGBT characters, and I also agree that doubling your estimates will still result in an under-representation of LGBT characters.
The second point that Brown and Smith make is that it is the fault of the publishers for the under-representation. I never accepted their argument for that point, as they are only using anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately, your data can’t make any conclusions about that point because it does not include acceptance rates by publishers.
I think the only way to get accurate data would be to survey authors and ask how many manuscripts contain LGBT characters, how many got accepted, and how many total manuscripts got accepted. That should give some estimate on the effects of LGBT characters in acceptance of novels. If anybody was interested in researching this further, I would start there. (Or, just follow the spiders.)
Finally, I am admiring your beautifully exponential data. I think a nice trend line would set if off nicely. That would give a short-term prediction on the number of novels in 2012 and 2013. I assume that a logistic regression will be more suitable over the long-run.
Keep up the fine work.
You’re my new number-sleuth hero, Malinda! I love, love, love your graphs and charts.
Oops! I just checked your database, and noticed an error in my book title. Could you change it to MY INVENTED LIFE instead of MY SO-CALLED LIFE (which was an excellent TV series 15 years ago, btw). Thanks for including me in your list!!!
Thanks, Chris! Your comment was temporarily trapped in spam due to the links. Re: regression analysis … wow that just gave me a real flashback to econ stats class.
I have no idea how to do this anymore. The fact that I once knew how to do it, though, gives me a weird pride.
Oy, sorry about that Lauren!
Thanks for your kind words about Ash!
Sure, teens have often read adult novels, and adults often read novels marketed toward teens. Just as scifi readers sometimes read mysteries. But just to keep this thing manageable, we have to have some defined parameters. That’s why the focus is on books published as young adult titles. If they’re not marketed toward teens, they’re not shelved in the YA section of bookstores, and they don’t get the same kind of library attention. Adult titles are just a different category.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “traditional” publishers here. Bold Strokes Books, which has a single title included on your list, is an independent GLBT publisher with a YA imprint, Soliloquy. You can view available titles here.
Thank you for this response.
To me, the previous comment sums up one part of the bigger issue: that (straight) girls are the target demographic. While that may be true of YA fiction generally, it’s not necessarily true of LGBT YA specifically. An LGBT publisher with a YA imprint isn’t necessarily going to have the same readers.
I’d love to see a statistic post like this with inclusion of race
I think that also speaks to the wider cultural issue in which we look at things from a male perspective; most entertainment media of any stripe is from a male perspective. Look at the comics page on Sunday, or look at any random selection of books, and you’ll get a preponderance of male views over female. If girls are the target of YA literature, then queer YA literature should offer more female perspectives than male; it likely doesn’t because the male view is the customary view, the one we’re all conditioned to adopt when reading or viewing something, and that is, overall, a problematic thing.
I’ve just started reading Good Girls Don’t, by Claire Hennessey, an Irish writer. This has a bisexual main character and so far it’s really good! It seems to have been unjustly overlooked though…
Erica – I’ve emailed you! Looking forward to chatting!
I’ve emailed it to you! I’d love to get together with other people and create a publicly-available list, it’s an excellent plan!
Another point from the UK context is that terribly few of these novels are published in the UK – which is one reason why it was really exciting to see Ash and Huntress being published in UK editions. Many of the other books are available, through Amazon or specialist bookshops such as the amazing Gay’s the Word in London, but this still means that they only really come to the attention of people who already know about them or are specifically looking for LGBT YA novels. My own research looks at provision in libraries and the preliminary results suggest that these books aren’t ending up in libraries because so few of them come from mainstream UK publishers.
I don’t really know why UK publishers are so reluctant to publish them – perhaps it’s because the UK market is smaller and so it is perceived as even more of a ‘niche’? Needless to say I don’t think this argument really cuts it, I’m hoping that my research will help to raise awareness and that we might see a turnaround soon, but sadly there is also a risk of publishers becoming even more risk-averse due to the poor economic situation.
The following books appear on my 2010 list but not yours:
Rhythm and Blues by Jill Murray – a great read. Protag is a lesbian.
The Frenzy by Francisca Lia Block – a bad, bad book by a wonderful author. Protag’s best friend is a gay boy.
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar – doesn’t really count as a queer book so shouldn’t be on your list. It’s in my “passing mention” category.
Poor Rich by Jean Blaisar – quality is so poor as to be unreadable, but the protag is a gay boy.
The Good Girl’s Guide to Being Kidnapped by Yxta Maya Murray – exciting book about getting kidnapped by a gang, funny & smart. The protag’s adopted dad is gay.
And last but not least, The End: Five Queer Kids Save the World. Unsung prob. due to indie press. Great read and it features a bunch of different “types” of lesbians, a trans kid, some bisexual kids….
It totally is, and strong bisexual girl characters are even rarer. _The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don’t Mind_ is a great exception, as are _A Map of Home,_ _Of All the Stupid Things_, and, well, _Ash_.
I can address this for the 2010 list since the numbers are so small. Combining my & Malinda’s lists gives us 15* books. Of these, seven have queer protagonists; six have queer secondary characters; one has just a passing mention; and there was one book for which I couldn’t easily tell (Edges by Lena Roy – does anyone know?).
*mathematically it would seem to be 16, but I think _Very LeFreak_ is actually a 2009 book.
Thank you for publishing this!
There’s only one thing I would like to add to this very interesting and well-researched post, and that is that the way the LGBT YA novels by gender diagrams are currently framed, it looks as if “genderqueer/transgender” is being presented as a third gender. What would be better would be to make separate charts: one with LGBT YA by gender (where characters who do identify as a third gender are listed as such, but binary identified trans characters are not inaccurately presented as being an ‘other’ gender just because they are trans); and a second diagram showing the breakdown of how many cis-LGB books come out versus trans books (where the trans characters could be either straight or queer).
What would also be helpful is a breakdown, to the extent possible, of how many of these YA books are written by authors with a similar background to the character: how many gay/lesbian characters are written by gay or lesbian authors, how many bi characters are written by bi authors, and how many trans characters are written by trans authors (not by cis authors of any sexual orientation). I know of only one YA book about a trans character written by a trans author, but there are several such books written by authors who are not trans (and this can lead to problems in the writing!).
I noticed that the gender charts are misleadingly named not only because of the trans/genderqueer thing, but because one category is “adults.” Obviously, “adult” is not a gender. I plead working very late at night on pie charts and not being able to come up with a better title.
The goal of the chart is to show the breakdown of books about LGB boys vs. books about LGB girls, and by “boy” and “girl” I mean the most mainstream of definitions of boy and girl. As for how many books are about cisgendered books vs. trans books … er, there’s only ever like 1 or 2 books about trans characters per year, so it would be 99.9% vs. .01% at best.
Re: The Cardturner, I think there are a lot of “passing mentions” in the books included in the bibliographies, which I think is due to an effort to be as inclusive as possible, especially in the past. These days, I think a passing mention is not enough to warrant being considered as an “LGBT book.”
That’s interesting about the UK market. I’ve heard such conflicting things about it. I mean, in adult fiction the UK market is very very progressive and inclusive, but I’ve also heard it is unusually conservative in children’s/teens (and that YA is a very new category). You’ll notice that the UK edition of Ash takes pains to present it as straight-seeming as possible.
By “traditional” publishers I mean a publisher who will acquire a book from an author, edit it, typeset it, print it, and sell it in a bookstore. Independent publishers like Bold Strokes are certainly traditional in that sense, even if they are small.
Yes, adult is not a gender… I suppose that’s another thing that could be its own chart. It just didn’t really bother me so much as the other issue. I think it would also be interesting to do a breakdown of, among trans characters, FtM spectrum vs. MtF spectrum characters.
As for how many books are about cisgendered books vs. trans books … er, there’s only ever like 1 or 2 books about trans characters per year, so it would be 99.9% vs. .01% at best.
Well, that in itself is a very serious problem, and there should be a chart which graphically shows this! The title of this post is “Stats on LGBT YA Books Published in the US,” and not “Stats on Gay and Lesbian YA Books Published in the US.” (If you meant the latter, then you should title it the latter…)
The goal of the chart is to show the breakdown of books about LGB boys vs. books about LGB girls, and by “boy” and “girl” I mean the most mainstream of definitions of boy and girl.
I find this comment troubling. You seem to be saying in this comment that trans boys and girls are not “mainstream” (by which you mean cis?) boys and girls. As a trans* and gender non-conforming person myself, when I hear this, it sounds like another way of saying that binary-identified transgender boys and girls aren’t “really” just as much boys and girls as cis-boys and girls, so it’s OK for you to place such people in a third gender category, even if these youth do not identify in a third category. I really want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I know your intentions are good — this still looks like an instance unconscious of cis-privilege.
Alternatively, you could label the chart “cis boy,” “cis girl,” “trans boy,” and “trans girl.” It’s not perfect, but at least it’s clearer, and doesn’t assume cis as the default that doesn’t even need to be stated.
(Which sort of reminds me of someone making a chart that broke down representation of characters by race, and said something like “boy, girl, boy of color, girl of color.” See the problem?)
I agree. You didn’t have The Cardturner on your list, and I think that’s the way it should be.
I hear that you feel that I’ve made errors in the representation of transfolk in these statistics. I appreciate the fact that you’re giving me the benefit of the doubt, and I hope you will continue to do that, because yes, I do mean well. Yes, I am cisgendered and do not have to deal with these issues personally on a daily basis. It’s true that I am privileged in this way. I do my best to be informed about these things, but yes, I write from my own perspective as a lesbian-identified Asian American woman. It’s definitely important that other perspectives speak up, and thank you for doing so with such courtesy.
Please also understand that the data above is incomplete and it was my best effort to be as fair and impartial on all levels, to all members of the LGBTQ community, as I could in the time that I have. If you take a look at the way I presented the results, I pretty clearly stated that the most depressing statistic of all was the very, very low percentage of books published that are about trans characters. I did not provide a chart illustrating that 0.6% of YA titles were LGBT inclusive because I felt that the sliver would have been too small to present in a way that was meaningfully readable. I think a chart about trans vs. LGB characters would face the same problem, but I’m not a graphics professional so there’s probably a way to do it that I personally am unable to come up with.
Regarding the word “mainstream”: I think you have misinterpreted the way I intended that to read. Personally, I do not at all believe that trans girls and boys aren’t “really” girls and boys. I meant “mainstream” in its dictionary sense, and placed in the context of the commercial publishing industry, which is what this post is about. In the commercial publishing industry, especially YA, gender (as you can imagine) is still broadly understood as binary; it is still broadly limited by heteronormative assumptions. So, in this case, “mainstream” = “the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.” (I’m quoting from the dictionary on my computer.) But I do see how the word “mainstream” could trigger other connotations for transfolk, and I’ll keep that in mind in the future.
I have chosen to categorize the LGBT books’ characters according to boy, girl, queer/trans, and adults because I know that in the commercial publishing industry, “boy books” and “girl books” are categories often discussed. Because there are so few books about trans characters, they are often separated out in the broader discourse on LGBT YA. In a way, it’s an attempt to draw attention to their existence; if books with trans characters were melded in with “boys” or “girls,” the very few trans characters would be rendered invisible. I pulled out “adults” as a category because I believe that YA titles with adult LGBT characters are different than YA titles with teen LGBT characters.
With these categories, I’m trying to present a picture of the books’ contents as they exist. I think the main issue here is that I’ve put “gender” in the title of the chart, when in fact the chart isn’t about gender; it’s about the kinds of LGBT characters represented in those books. That was a mistake on my part.
Yes, I do see what you mean. That’s a great way to do it. I’ll try to find some time to redo that chart and maybe post more about these concerns.
Thank you! I appreciate the time you are putting in here to make this happen. I am glad that the conversation about Gay YA is taking place because it’s an issue that deserves more attention. If there’s any way I can be of help, please let me know. In no way do I speak for all trans*/gender non-conforming people; I’m trying to do my small part so that trans* voices aren’t absent from the conversation (both because some trans* folk are queer, and also because LGBT has a T in it).
I think that both saying cis when you mean cis, and labeling the chart something that doesn’t create confusion, will solve this problem. ^_^
It is not my intention to attack anyone, only to provide constructive criticism. I recognize that you are putting a lot of effort into this and mean well. Trans* perspectives are often overlooked in some LGBT spheres. This is not about you personally, but a general, and sad, fact.
It is my personal experience that most instances of whatever-privlege cropping up are not about malice, but simply due to overlooking things, or lack of knowledge and awareness. So that’s why I posted. “LGBT” is a complex acronym, because it describes two separate things; trans and queer are, in a sense, separate “axes”. One can be trans and queer, or trans and straight (or asexual), just as one can be trans and binary-identified, or trans and non-binary identified. Yes, this makes graphical representations more complicated, but it also more accurately describes reality.
I think a chart about trans vs. LGB characters would face the same problem, but I’m not a graphics professional so there’s probably a way to do it that I personally am unable to come up with.
I think the best thing to do in that situation would just to be more transparent about the charts you did not make and why. It would be helpful for you to explain the charts you did not make (queer vs. straight YA, trans vs. cis YA) and why you did not make them, and to be transparent about the statistics you gave here, so it doesn’t appear that these charts were omitted because you never thought to make them, but because the representational problems are so stark, they cannot even be translated into a pie chart. One to three trans YA books published each year, all almost certainly by cis authors, is quite a problem! (I know of only one trans YA book written by a trans author. Only one.)
Regarding the word “mainstream”: I think you have misinterpreted the way I intended that to read. Personally, I do not at all believe that trans girls and boys aren’t “really” girls and boys. I meant “mainstream” in its dictionary sense, and placed in the context of the commercial publishing industry
I am glad to hear that you do not personally consider transfolk to not be “really” their genders. I recognize that you meant “mainstream” in the dictionary sense, in the context of the commercial publishing industry. All this essentially says is what I already know: that in the cis-centered, hetero-normative world of commercial publishing (as in elsewhere in society), transfolk are not “mainstream” examples of their genders (i.e. cis-provilege and transphobia are the default, are themselves mainstream). This is why this is triggering. (I know “mainstream” = cis. >_<)
I recognize that the publishing world, like most of society, still thinks of transfolk that way. You have the choice as a blogger to accept that assumption, or to challenge it in how you represent your statistics.
Also: if transfolk make up such a small number of these characters, anyway, including binary trans characters in the "boy" and "girl" categories won't even change your percentages by any visible margin! It almost feels in this case that there should just be a footnote that trans characters are categorized by the gender they identify with, and that you would have made a separate chart showing cis/trans breakdown except there actually are almost no trans characters at all, and so, yeah, a different problem.
Alternatively, as I said below, making "cis" and "trans" separate categories (with cis labeled and not default) would also mostly solve the issue — the only folks who would be left out in that analysis are non-binary identified characters. (As a non-binary identified person I care personally, but hey, any movement in the right direction is good movement. And there's probably, what, one non-binary identified character in all of these books?)
You are absolutely correct in saying, "In the commercial publishing industry, especially YA, gender (as you can imagine) is still broadly understood as binary; it is still broadly limited by heteronormative assumptions." I think we can agree that these are the assumptions we would both like to see challenged and broadened. My only point to add here is that many transfolk are binary identified — it's a common cis misunderstanding that all transfolk are non-binary in terms of gender simply for being trans (just like it's a common misunderstanding that all transfolk are queer). I'm not sure whether there's been a misunderstanding/momentary mental slip on your part, or if you are aware of this and are simply stating what the publishing industry still believes. It can be difficult to parse this out in online communication.
Because there are so few books about trans characters, they are often separated out in the broader discourse on LGBT YA. In a way, it’s an attempt to draw attention to their existence; if books with trans characters were melded in with “boys” or “girls,” the very few trans characters would be rendered invisible.
Here is the Catch 22, as I see it: if you include trans characters as the genders they identify with, you risk making them invisible, but if you pull them out and place them in a separate category, you reinforce the narrative that they’re not “really” that gender. I think, as I said above, that one solution to this is to include a footnote to the chart explaining that both cis and trans characters are included in each gender category, and then give a separate statistic about the trans characters (i.e. “Only .5% of LGBT YA included a trans character (three books this year), all three books were written by cis authors, two of these books included a MtF spectrum character, and one included a FtM spectrum character.”). Or whatever the real stats are. Then both goals are accomplished.
I hope this is helpful.
Fandom’s actually had some recent discussions about the fact that a bigger percentage of slashers are queer girls than people tend to think (including slashers themselves). But I think the fanfic parallel goes more towards explaining the why than towards making it all okay.
Part of the reason women who could be interested in slash fic about women OR men (whatever their own sexual orientation is) tend to read and write about men is that the selection of well-developed male characters and complex relationships between men is bigger in popular media. That’s only one reason, and a huge debate in itself, but it’s also a factor that doesn’t exist in original fiction. The fact that there are twice as many books about gay boys than gay girls brings that factor back in where it didn’t already exist, so you’re back to having more boys on offer than girls, as the focus and as the ones who get to narrate the experience. And with both readers and writers being mostly female, we end up with women talking to girls about queerness through the medium of boys and their sexuality. It’s not inherently bad, it has a place, but I’d be happier if that place wasn’t twice as prominent as the one for queer girl characters.
I think that’s important for queer girl readers, for straight girl readers who might find out later on they’re not that straight (because being able to find characters like you is good but already knowing they’re there is even better), for any kind of reader being exposed to more than one kind of queerness.
And in general, I’d just like things to be more balanced. I wouldn’t want YA to have twice as many boy MCs as girl MCs. Tjis is and important enough issue that I’d like balance here, too. Girls are given enough encouragement to prefer a male narration of the world without all that extra help.
“This shows us that 50% of LGBT YA books are about boys, with only 25% about girls. I find this extremely depressing, especially considering the predominant readership of YA is female.”
For Star Trek fanfiction, the predominant readership was female, and _as a consequence_ there were a lot more LGBT male characters than female characters.
I don’t have statistics one way or the other, but I’d wonder if the YA market is similar — ie, there are more LGBT boys because that’s what sells better to a female audience?
I assure you, I am not trying to invalidate your research in any way, but I wonder how many YA books skip the issue entirely? Can a book be about the adventure, the problem, the issue and completely ignore who likes whom? I understand that in which case it is automatically assumed that the characters are not LGBT, but could such books also give LGBT readers someone to identify with, since the “straight” relationship is a non-issue?
Based on the amount of reading I do, I believe your overall conclusions are accurate. My observations seem to confirm them anecdotally: there are far fewer gay than straight characters; those who are gay tend to be secondary rather than main characters; and they tend to be male rather than female . Bisexual and transgendered characters are the rarest.
But a caution is in order that nobody systematically surveyed these 4000 books. I could see some omissions immediately, particularly with the 2010 books. Here are four 2010 books with gay characters that came immediately to mind, which would increase the 2010 list by 30% alone:
Hex Hall, Rachel Hawkins
The Secret Year, Jennifer R. Hubbard
The Deathday Letter, Shaun David Hutchinson
Mostly Good Girls, Leila Sales
And since I didn’t do a systematic survey either, but just came up with these off the top of my head, I know these lists are still under-reports. Still pitifully small numbers, I agree.
Interesting how some of the talk was about how some groups are not ‘mainstream’ and that may affect the number of books written, the number of books sold, or so on.
From what I’ve seen, the needs, wants, and life of ‘non-mainstream’ folk are 90% mainstream. They go through puberty, attend high school, get jobs, have friends, fall in love, and so on.
If fictional works about these ‘non-mainstream’ characters focus specifically on those things that make them different, I could see how the books might be marketed differently.
However, if the books were about a, say, teenage bisexual transgender werewolf fighting Italian demons, well, being transgender may present some interesting challenges, but most may not be related to that.
Personally, I think the most under-represented minority is the asexual teen. I’ve only come across one character who identified themselves as asexual, and that was in Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey.
Oh, thank you for raising this issue!
I’m asexual and I read about no one who was like me growing up. That was very confusing, to say the least.
Thank you for putting this together!
Noticed the Gone series by Michael Grant are missing from the list. The character in question, Dekka (a black lesbian with the power to turn off gravity), is in all four books released so far, but she wasn’t introduced until late in the first book so I don’t think her sexuality was mentioned until the second one. By the fourth book she’s one of the major supporting players though (pretty much best friends with the main hero), and she’s supposed to be included on the book jacket of the next book. The first book was released in 2008, with one per year published ever since.
There’s also one in Lauren Bjorkman’s _My Invented Life_.
I can see how a reader could read a character with no romantic interests as queer, sure. But YA these days, anyway, is almost always about romance. I don’t remember the last time I read a YA that didn’t include a romance. Even YA books targeted at straight boys include romance somehow. Regardless, I think if the character isn’t openly LGBT, they couldn’t be counted for this list, since it seeks to count books in which characters *are* openly LGBT.
Actually, I think Christine Jenkins’ list from 1969-2004 is pretty accurate. I could be wrong, but she’s been working on that bibliography for years and it was analyzed extensively in her book with Michael Cart, The Heart Has Its Reasons. The last couple of years are, yes, less accurate. But as I mentioned, even if you double the number of books counted (which I don’t think is possible), it will still be a very low number.
It would be fascinating to create a list of YA novels without any romance. Shipbreaker is the first one that comes to my mind.
I loved Ship Breaker! One of my favorites of the last few years. But … I thought there was romance in it? Not exactly swoony romance, but it was pretty clear to me that Nailer had a thing for the girl.
I read it awhile back so you may be right…Does unrequited love count as romance for these purposes? If so, then the only one I’m coming up with off the top of my head is Hatchet, and that’s neither recent nor exactly YA.
As You Wish, by Jackson Pearce, has a gay character in it. It was published in the last three years or so. Please include it, it was a really good book.
Thanks so much for this! I’m compiling a list of LGBTQ books for my own readers for my webpage, and unless you object strenuously, I’m linking to both this article and to Jenkins’ work. (Need I say ASH and HUNTRESS are on the list?!) It makes my head ache to think of the work you did!