{"id":9965,"date":"2015-08-04T16:40:30","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T22:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=9965"},"modified":"2015-08-04T16:40:30","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T22:40:30","slug":"content-ratings-for-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/content-ratings-for-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Content Ratings for Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, there was a discussion on The Passive Voice<\/a> blog about trigger warnings and\u00a0how they are destroying literature. The post spawned a\u00a0discussion<\/a> that went on for 240 comments before Passive Guy closed it (probably because we got too political), but it ended up being very insightful.<\/p>\n

Laying aside\u00a0any issues of politics social justice, the fact exists that there is simply not a standard content rating system for books. We have rating systems\u00a0for movies (MPAA<\/a> is the main one here in the US) and video games (ESRB<\/a>), but\u00a0the majority of books are published without any sort of rating at all.<\/p>\n

Is this a bad thing? Personally, I don’t think so, but I know that it matters to others. Last year, there was a big kerfluffle<\/a> in the book world over an app called Clean Reader that screened objectionable content based on a number of user-controlled filters.\u00a0It seems that there is an unmet need\u00a0for some sort of system to help readers\u00a0avoid offensive content.<\/p>\n

That was why the discussion on TPV was so fascinating to me. Between\u00a0the cries of “censorship!” and “triggering!” there were some very interesting points brought up. Yes, there are politically-motivated people who use “trigger warnings” as a means of advancing the\u00a0political correctness regime, but there are also sensative readers who appreciate that sort of thing. When I first published Bringing Stella Home,<\/b> I put a warning on it that stated “if this were a movie, it would be rated PG-13,” and at least one reviewer really appreciated that.<\/p>\n

It’s a little bit ridiculous to equate trigger warnings with censorship, though both may be found on the same slippery slope. Still, there are places that scan your metadata and block you from publishing based not on the actual content, but your description of the content. Erotica writers know far more about navigating this maze than I do, though I have experienced it with books like\u00a0Sholpan.<\/strong> Ironically, adding a content warning to the book description can sometimes get your book blocked altogether, even though the content is far tamer than some of the books on the site from traditional publishers.<\/p>\n

So what’s an indie author to do?\u00a0The commenters at TPV mentioned a site called AO3, or Archive of Our Own<\/a>, as a place\u00a0to check out. It’s a massive repository of fanfiction with a very refined system of filters and tags, along with a rating system<\/a>\u00a0that seems to work really well.<\/p>\n

Since I really don’t want to reinvent the square wheel, I decided to check it out and see if this was the sort of thing I could apply to my own original books. I’ve never been a big reader of fanfiction, but I know that many of my readers are, so adapting the AO3 system seemed like a good way to present them with a system that felt intuitive and familiar.<\/p>\n

The AO3 content ratings system<\/a>\u00a0has four components: content ratings, pairings\/orientations, content warnings, and finished\/unfinished. Obviously, the last one really doesn’t apply, since anything I publish commercially is going to be a finished work. The pairings\/orientations component also seems unnecessary, since in a book where romance is a major plot driver, the\u00a0\u00a0reader should be able to gather from the book description whether it’s\u00a0M\/F, M\/M, F\/F, or whatever. Also, fanfic readers tend to read for that sort of thing, while general readers do not.<\/p>\n

That means that the relevant part of the system is the content rating and the content warnings. I looked for a more detailed official explanation, but it really does seem like ultimate\u00a0discretion is left to the writers.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a>There are four countent ratings: G, T, M, and E. If you’re more familiar with AO3 than I am, please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that the equivalent\u00a0MPAA ratings are as follows:<\/p>\n