The rest of the publishing industry may be in the doldrums but according to The New York Times we are riding high:
Juvenile books overall, including paperbacks, were up 3.1 percent, to 900.9 million copies. Net revenue in the juvenile segment, the largest of all categories in terms of copies sold, increased to $3.66 billion, from $3.4 billion.
Perhaps surprisingly, sales of children’s books, which includes the rapidly growing young adult segment, are not expected to rise strongly over the next few years. “If it weren’t for Y. A., this sector would be in worse shape than it is,” Mr. Greco said.
Given that picture books and middle grade are doing crap,1 the article leaves me wondering how fast Young Adult sales have been growing? I suspect the answer may be google related or I could just, you know, ask the people in the biz I know, but, well, I’m lazy and there’s this book to be writ.
So I’ll settle for going YAY! And hoping those sales remain strong for the next forty years.
Update: Gwenda reminds me that this excellent Newsweek article cites growth figures of 25%.
- Though I hear middle grade is about to start improving. [↩]
In that recent Newsweek piece, the state was 25% growth for YA over the last few years.
Thank you, Gwenda! I knew my laziness would be rewarded.
Actual research is SO overrated. Sometimes it’s just easier to make up random statistics that sound truel And frankly, I NEED you to keep writing the new book! Now that I’ve finished How To Ditch Your Fairy, I need to have the warm fuzzy feeling that there’s more wonderfulness to come. 🙂
I work as a kids/YA bookseller and so many adults (including my Dad) are reading mostly YA. The genre is brillaint and I wish so many great YA books existed when I was a teen. Thanks to you and the other members of the YA Mansion for reading such great books.
I MET KELLY LINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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She told me to read Gwenda Bond’s blog.
I met her at BEA. Twas very fexcellent!
I don’t know about sales, but the explosion of galleys littering my office floor tells me that there are almost twice as many YAs on the market than two years ago.
I saw Sharyn November on a panel at WisCon last weekend. She said the growth in YA was no surprise, that 15 years ago it was picture books, then early readers, etc. That it was like watching the lump in a snake’s throat after it swallowed a rat–that you could just see it moving along down the line, natural progression and all that.
Lori
whoops! I meant writing — sorry brain a bit wonky since I moved this weekend.
The worrying part is whether the fact that picture books and middle grades are down means that we’ll see the reverse of Lori’s snake-digesting-a-rat phenomenon (…eww) — if younger kids now aren’t buying books (or having books bought for them), does that make it likely they won’t be book-buyers when they’re teens?
The other possibility, as Caitlin pointed out, is that the growth isn’t teen-driven at all, but adult. Which is a good thing. Break down those ghetto walls!
Suzanne: I think November’s argument is more one about demographics. There was a mini baby boom and when those kids were little their parents bought them pictures books and as they grew a little older middle grade books and now they’re teenagers and gobbling up YA.
It’s not that the littlies now aren’t into picture books; it’s that there aren’t as many of them as there were.
This still could spell bad news for us YA writers as these teens become adults. The good news is anecdotally the current YA boom has brought in many adult readers and quite a few of the teen readers seem to keep reading YA even as they hit their 20s.
Poor kids with not as many picture books… Maybe their parents should just read them Shakespeare? To, I don’t know, ensure a love of reading at a very young age?
Hahaha.
I always figured the recent boom was because my generation (X-Y) watched TV and were lazy readers but the current generation spends time on the computer and are better readers (reading blogs, articles, text messaging, etc).