(Title of a ‘69 Rolling Stones album/concert/DVD in case you thought I was going weird.)

Time for new tech to unleash the power of YA (and all) readers.

You know a bunch of genres and subgenres, right?

• Mystery
• Sci Fi
• Magical Realism
• Elderly female reader with emphysema
• Middle-aged, one-armed fireman reader who enjoys worm farming

Whoa, whoa! Hold on, Dave. What’s up with those last two? They’re weird categories of readers, not genres. Well, yea. See, elderly female readers only like one kind of book. Same with middle-aged firemen. They…. oh, no they don’t, do they?

Point is, Young Adult (YA) isn’t so much a genre as it is an audience. And even that’s not true. It’s not one audience any more than the middle-aged male demographic is. On this planet, there are 336 million people in the 15-18 age range who read, and every one of them has a different idea of what makes a good story.

Sure…authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians and editors call good shots about what a 15-year-old girl or a 17-year-old boy wants in a story – young protagonist, quick pace, a sense of adventure and discovery, finding love and a place in the world, pushing against the machinery of authority. All that and more.

But isn’t it time we shifted power to each one of those 336 million young adults…and to every individual in every conceivable demographic?

Let’s say right now you want a 70,000-word romantic comedy. Sixteen-year-old Latino protag with autism spectrum. Over-the-top intelligent voice. The book might exist – maybe 20 similar – but good luck finding it.

If it was a ride you were looking for, CarMax could find you a purple SUV with chrome wheels, tan leather seats and Blu-ray video in ten seconds. Why not with books?

How about if every book published from now on was entered into a check-box database by publishers and readers? Voice, tone, setting – you name it. You check what you’re looking for and – Bam! – in 5 seconds you have a list with synopsis and first 5 pages.

The idea’s not to replace what a good bookseller, librarian or Goodreads does for you, but to help all of us find something other than the same handful of titles that circulates in every brain and every “Customers who bought THE MAZE RUNNER also bought IF I STAY.” (Really?)

Hey, it’s not perfect, I know. But guess what? If you build it, I will come. And maybe, just maybe, young readers (and middle-aged firemen) will find more than what’s stacked on an age-labeled shelf. So yea…let’s get more YA YAs out there and give every reader the power to find them.