• Contact
  • Account
    • Become an Affiliate
    • Sign Up for Deals

    • Login
Book Cave: Authors and Publisher promotional services and features
Book Cave
Authors & Publishers
Connecting the RIGHT readers with the RIGHT books
  • About
    • Book Cave Reviews
    • Who We Are
      • Mission
      • In the Works
      • Book Cave Logos
      • Meet the Ratings
    • Privacy Center
      • Privacy & Terms
      • Your Privacy Rights
    • Affiliate Program Agreement
    • Trademarks
  • Current Deals
    • Deals from Retailers
    • Book Cave Direct Deals
      • Exclusive Ebook Downloads
      • Free Group Deals
    • Giveaways
      • Win a Free Ereader!
      • Last Giveaway Winner
      • Past Winners
  • Readers
    • Sign Up
    • Rated Books Database
    • Rate a book I’ve read
    • Browse Author Pages
    • Reader FAQ
    • Reader Blog
    • Giveaways
      • Win a Free Ereader!
      • Last Giveaway Winner
      • Past Winners
  • Authors
    • How It Works
    • Our Services
      • Feature Your Book
      • Group Features
      • Subscriber Magnet Services
      • MBR Ratings
      • Create an Author Page
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Pricing
    • Submit a Book
    • Create Account
    • Become an Affiliate
    • Author Resources
      • Author Blog
      • Author FAQ
      • Promotion Tips
      • Cover Guide Calculator
  • Book Swag
  • Contact
  • Account
    • Become an Affiliate
    • Sign Up for Deals

    • Login
  • About
    • Book Cave Reviews
    • Who We Are
      • Mission
      • In the Works
      • Book Cave Logos
      • Meet the Ratings
    • Privacy Center
      • Privacy & Terms
      • Your Privacy Rights
    • Affiliate Program Agreement
    • Trademarks
  • Current Deals
    • Deals from Retailers
    • Book Cave Direct Deals
      • Exclusive Ebook Downloads
      • Free Group Deals
    • Giveaways
      • Win a Free Ereader!
      • Last Giveaway Winner
      • Past Winners
  • Readers
    • Sign Up
    • Rated Books Database
    • Rate a book I’ve read
    • Browse Author Pages
    • Reader FAQ
    • Reader Blog
    • Giveaways
      • Win a Free Ereader!
      • Last Giveaway Winner
      • Past Winners
  • Authors
    • How It Works
    • Our Services
      • Feature Your Book
      • Group Features
      • Subscriber Magnet Services
      • MBR Ratings
      • Create an Author Page
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Pricing
    • Submit a Book
    • Create Account
    • Become an Affiliate
    • Author Resources
      • Author Blog
      • Author FAQ
      • Promotion Tips
      • Cover Guide Calculator
  • Book Swag
Promotion & Marketing,Technical Tips
15 Jul 2021 at 09:07 AM PDT
Updated 9 months ago

What Content Rating Is Appropriate for Cozy Mysteries, Clean Romance, or Children’s Fiction?

By Book Cave

Advertisement

JutohWe at Book Cave prefer Jutoh for ebook creation because it gives us more control than most other ebook software out there, while still maintaining a friendly interface.

Browse by topic

All Posts Author Pages Author Website Cover Design Ebook Formatting Grammar & Punctuation Mailing Lists Promotion & Marketing Publishing Tips Social Media Technical Tips Tutorials Writing for Authors

content rating for cozy mysteries, clean romances, and children's books

I'm a book wyrm
We hope you enjoy reading this post!
If you’re like us and love to read, then click here to score tons of free and discounted ebooks.

At Book Cave, we’re often asked what the appropriate rating is for cozy mysteries, clean romance, or children’s fiction (particularly middle grade). Some authors may worry that anything higher than an All Ages rating will turn away their audience, but in truth, an All Ages mystery or romance would be boring! Let’s take a look at what the ratings really mean, and what ratings these three genres usually fall into.

What Is All Ages?

Of course, All Ages means the book has no crude humor, no nudity, and no references to sex. These levels are easy to get right, and there are often All Ages in cozy mysteries, clean romances, and children’s fiction.

However, even very clean romances also often have nongraphic sexual references. An All Ages book has no kissing, except for kissing on the cheek or a quick peck on the lips. But what is a romance without a single romantic kiss? How likely is it that two characters fall in love and only briefly give each other a one-second peck on the lips? Almost all romance will have at least the mild level of kissing.

Of course, any murder-mystery is going to have a death, even if the death is off-screen, so it cannot be All Ages. An All Ages book has no violence. This means absolutely no death—not even a mention of death. Only minimal cartoonish-like violence is considered All Ages (like a character slipping on a wet floor and landing on their knees).

Many children’s books also have mild violence, so before marking All Ages on your middle grade book, you’ll want read over the action scenes to be sure the violence is actually minimal and cartoonish. Children’s fiction often has mild crude humor in the form of fart and other jokes, so be aware of that as well.

If your book is All Ages, that means it has no drug or alcohol or tobacco use (beyond a small mention by adults, such as drinking a glass of wine with dinner). So, if your character goes to a bar and has a few drinks, that increases this level.

All Ages also means the book has absolutely no profanity. Yep, not even a “Thank God” that isn’t truly a prayer to deity. You can see what Book Cave considers profanity here.

As you can see, an All Ages cozy mystery or clean romance would read as if it were written for a four-year-old, with little action, no death, no sexual tension, and no kissing! This ultimately means that only books meant for the very young (usually picture books) should be All Ages. Basically, as stated at the beginning, All Ages is an easy call. It’s only when we get into the other levels that things start to get tricky.

What Level Are Cozies, Clean Romances, and Children’s Books Usually?

Most of the cozy mysteries we receive are rated Mild+ or Moderate, with a few being Mild or Moderate+ for the violence level. You can see these books and their ratings here.

Most of the clean romances we receive are rated Mild or Mild+, with a slightly lower number of them being Moderate. You can see these books and their ratings here. Once you get to the Moderate+ for the intimacy level, it is not considered a clean romance for those who crave clean reads, even though the actual culmination of the lovemaking for Moderate+ must be off-screen. (Keep in mind that it is also possible the Moderate+ rating came from the violence or language level instead of the intimacy level. For this reason, we always tell you WHY a book is rated at that level. Read more about how our rating system works here.)

Most of the middle grade books we receive are All Ages, Mild, and Mild+.

Do the Content Levels Equate to an Age Range?

Book Cave’s content levels do not equate to an age range, since we understand that people have different opinions about what is appropriate for different ages. Instead, we aim to describe the content, so individuals and parents can make their own choices based on what they are comfortable with.

That being said, if we compare our system to movie ratings, we get this rough correspondence to age ranges:

0 and up — All Ages

8 and up — Mild

10 and up — Mild+

14 and up — Moderate

16 and up — Moderate+

18 and up — Adult

Again, these ages are suggestions only; it is not a one size fits all, but rather a way for you to get a better feel for what the ratings mean.

Let us know if you have any questions about the appropriate content rating for cozy mysteries, clean romances, and middle grade children’s books in the comments below.

If you’d like to learn more about Book Cave promotions and receive more writing tips, please enter your email below and click the “Learn More” button to receive our author newsletter.

Copyright 2021 by Book Cave
Reuse notice: Non-commercial users, feel free to print out “What Content Rating Is Appropriate for Cozy Mysteries, Clean Romance, or Children's Fiction?” for personal use or give to friends, share online, or make a meme of, as long as you attribute and link back to this post. Commercial users, you may share a link to this post or quote a short excerpt from it with attribution and a link to this site, but you may not use this post in its entirety. Thank you for caring about copyright.

Share this authorpost

Keep Reading

find time to write

5 Ways to Find Time to Write

In this digital age, setting aside time to write is becoming more and more difficult. How can writers find time to write, especially if writing isn’t their only job? Here are five tips that might help.

ISBN FAQs and Tips

ISBN FAQs and Tips: Are They Worth It?

Do you need an ISBN? Are they even worth it? And where can you get one? Check out these ISBN FAQs for answers!

How to Use the Microsoft Word Text-to-Speech Feature

Read Your Book Aloud: How to Use the Microsoft Word Text-to-Speech Feature

Every author should give the Microsoft Word Text-to-Speech feature a try as they fine-tune their manuscripts. When you listen to your book aloud, your ears will find many errors, repetitive words, and even plot flaws that your eyes (and the eyes of others) have often missed.

Hello fellow book lover! We hope you are enjoying this post.
If you want free, content-rated ebooks that you can download straight from your favorite retailer, just sign up for our free newsletter
Sign me up!

Leave a Reply

Cancel


Comments

    Receive free ebooks on Amazon Kindle from Book Cave
    Receive free ebooks on Apple Books from Book Cave
    Receive free ebooks on Google Play from Book Cave
    Receive free ebooks on Kobo from Book Cave
    Receive free ebooks on Nook from Book Cave
    Receive free ebooks on Smashwords from Book Cave
    Book Cave
    Book Cave Direct
    My Book Ratings
    MY BOOK RATINGS
    Connecting the RIGHT readers with the RIGHT books
    • Sitemap
    • Contact Us
    • Free ebooks
    © Book Cave - All the rights reserved!